Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
The First Continental Congress began meeting in 1774, the Second Continental Congress in 1775.
They both operated without an official constitution, or "Governing Document" until the Articles of Confederation were formally ratified in 1781.
But Founders did use the Articles, as a sort of beta version, before full ratification.
And I would remind you that Great Britain to this day has no official constitution or "Governing Document" and yet has somehow managed.
Likewise with our Founders.
They all believed a Constitution was important, and should be written & ratified, yet it was not their most urgent priority.
Winning their war for independence came first.
Nothing in their Declaration of Independence served to define, limit or authorize structures for the Continental Congress, and yet somehow they managed.
DegenerateLamp is stuck on an “chicken vs.egg” conundrum and is revealing his ignorance at biology as well.
On January 9, 1861 Florida was still a Union state and Fort Pickens Union property.
On January 9, the Florida "militia" who attacked Union troops retreating to Fort Pickens were indisputably insurrectionists, regardless of what they may have claimed after Florida declared secession.
This incident proves beyond dispute that secessionists were eager for war with the United States and did not hesitate to threated violence.
PeaRidge: "...days later the Joseph Whitney docked at Ft. Jefferson, on Garden Key in the Tortugas, with Maj. Arnold and his company of artillery setting up as reinforcements for Capt. Meigs."
On January 9, 1861, before Florida declared secession, Fort Jefferson was a Union fort.
Days later, after Florida declared secession, Fort Jefferson like every other Union fort, was still a Union fort.
By April 1865, Fort Jefferson was used to house prisoners, including some of notoriety.
The fort was no longer used by the Army after 1888.
Today it is part of a national (not state) park.
PeaRidge: "The Brooklyn, had also been sent days earlier to help the Star of the West, loaded with war materiel and soldiers, in her attempt to aid Ft. Sumter, another aggressive move."
Every day the US sends men, supplies and war materials to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, despite the Communists claim that base belongs to them.
Regardless, no US effort to resupply or reinforce Gitmo is "aggressive", but any Communist actions to threaten or attack Gitmo certainly are aggressive, could be provocations or even acts of war, depending on the level of violence.
PeaRidge: "Then, on January 27 the Union Navy Department dispatched to Ft. Pickens at Pensacola, Fla., more reinforcements."
Same response as above.
PeaRidge summarizing: "So if it is predisposition to aggression, you have it with two US presidents."
I'll summarize as I've posted often before: there are at least three excellent analogies to Forts Sumter, Pickens, Jefferson and others sometimes mentioned.
FRiend, it's often the case that when you substitute insult for reasoned argument, the insult will simply make you look ignorant, as we will soon see.
PeaBrain: "Specie was precious metals, partly owned by the US Treasury, partly by private interests, and partly by overseas entities.
It was being sent overseas to pay Federal debt and interest payments.
The Federal debt had grown immensely during the 1850s, and Treasury was paying the loans back."
OK, so let's see if a few facts don't burst your little bubble here:
In summary: specie exports seem unconnected to Federal debt, but do track the new availability of gold & silver from out west.
PeaBrain: "YOUR own report shows specie being sent to Europe to pay DEBT, not product."
This seems to be the crux of your argument, so let me ask you, FRiend, did you ever pay back a debt?
Do you possibly know what happens when you pay off a loan?
If not, I'll explain it: when you pay off debt as promised, then you make lenders happy as h*ll to loan you more money.
And we can be certain that's exactly what happened during those years because our trade deficit averaged nearly $50 million per year, almost exactly offset by net exports of specie.
That's a lot of gold & silver, which would be physically impossible if not for new production from California & other western states.
Finally, so we don't lose sight of the basic point: net "specie" exports during the 1850s were a huge factor, second only to cotton exports, in helping pay for US imports of foreign goods & services, the tariffs on which provided most of US Federal revenues.
Point being, even in 1860 cotton was not the US' only important export.
PeaBrain: "Brojoke, you are factually retarded, and gifted in posting canards."
No, those would be your problems, along with "projecting" and you really should seek professional help for it.
Your canard: “But there was no Morrill tariff so long as Southern Democrats dominated Congress and the Presidency.”
Wrong. It had passed the House well before secession.
The vote was on May 10, 1860; the bill passed by a vote of 105 to 64.
Then we have the 1860 elections.
The results of the election produced a reapportionment of Congress that all knew that even if one assumes that every single seceded state's senators had (a) remained and (b) voted against the Morrill act, they still would not have been able to muster enough votes to defeat it.
In the absolute best case voting scenario that could have occurred under the senate that took office in 1861, the best that the southerners could manage would be a tie vote, in which case VP Hanibal Hamlin would cast a tiebreaker in favor of the north and the tariff would pass. The southerners recognized this fact almost immediately after the 1860 elections and publicly stated so.
The Morrill bill was brought to the Senate floor for a vote on February 20, and passed 25 to 14.
The economic order of the United States was dramatically changed. The tariff took off on an upward trajectory that was far above any tariff in history.
Another Brojoke Canard Bites the Dust.
You will know precisely how true your own statement is if you simply reverse it and say, "Average poor Southerners served the Confederate Army to protect the wealth and institutions of slave holders".
As virtually every pro-Confederate here adamantly insists, that is simply not the case.
Average poor Southerners, who didn't own slaves, served the Confederate Army to protect their families and homes against "damn-Yankee" invaders.
Likewise, average Union soldiers and their officers had no interest in, what was your term for it? "New England Power Brokers".
They did, at first wish to preserve the Union and in the end to abolish slavery, issues having nothing to do with high finance or even basic economics, but simply the right & wrong of it.
So the only real question is whether Lincoln himself was driven by those nasty "New England Power Brokers", since Lincoln was at first almost the only member of his administration who wanted to defend Fort Sumter?
The answer is: aside from your alleged quote, "what about my tariff?", which even if true could mean almost anything, depending on context -- there's no evidence of it.
What the evidence does suggest is that Lincoln wanted to preserve Fort Sumter as a "bargaining chip" to be traded for something of value, such as the state of Virginia remaining in the Union.
DiogenesLamp: "The monster of Crony Capitalism opened it's eye in 1861, and has had us under it's baleful influence ever since."
Total rubbish.
The US has been capitalistic ever since the Pilgrims, after 1620, figured out (the hard way) that socialism doesn't work.
US government officials have depended on financiers (i.e., Haym Salomon) and wealthy citizens (i.e., George Washington) from Day One of the republic.
That some of these associations may have been corrupt or "crony capitalism" can be assumed, but not that they all were, or that all were harmful.
Scandals in US history are noteworthy in that they illustrate the exceptions, not the rule.
So there's no objective evidence, none, that either politicians or businessmen were more or less corrupt after 1860 than they were before.
But DiogenesLamp insane fixation the alleged evils of such ill-defined "classes" of people as "New England Power Brokers" suggests his Marxist education was more influential than anything true he ever learned about US history.
BS again.
From the day of its origin, Morrill rates were very high. The bill proposed raising the taxation rate from an average of approximately 37.5% with a greatly expanded list of covered items. This effectively tripled the taxation rate onimported goods. The law allowed a second additional rate averaging 47% for iron.
Your comment about 'the wisdom of Congress' raising the rates after secession is flat out BS again.
In its first year of operation, the Morrill Tariff increased the effective rate collected on dutiable imports by approximately 70%. In 1860 American tariff rates were among the lowest in the world and also at historical lows by 19th century standards, the average rate for 1857 through 1860 being around 17% overall (ad valorem), or 21% on dutiable items only.
See Wikipedia and http://www.econdataus.com/tariffs.html
The key point for you to grasp here is that I follow Madison on this subject, and that no other Founder ever seriously contradicted him, qualifying Madison's words as "Founders Original Intent".
So, FRiend, once you've grasped that you are not arguing with BroJoeK, you are arguing with Madison, then we can make some progress, even at this late stage in life... ;-)
What Madison said was there were only two acceptable conditions for disunion and the first of those is "mutual consent".
I merely listed methods by which "mutual consent" can be expressed, including a Constitutional Convention of the states, or simply an act of Congress, similar to an act admitting a new state.
Logically, since Congress authorizes a new state to come in, it should also authorize states to secede.
rustbucket: "If your "by implication" interpretation is correct, why did some Republicans in 1860 and 1861 propose amendments to the Constitution that would require something like what you propose?"
Some of those last minute amendments & bills offered in 1861, in last ditch efforts to reach "compromise" with secessionists, got a little crazy.
I can't justify them as anything else.
But the idea that Congress might approve a state's secession seems entirely reasonable to me, and according to Madison's idea of "mutual consent".
The second valid reason for secession Madison took from our own Declaration of Independence, necessity caused by a material breach of compact, rendering its mutually binding obligations null & void.
Madison's examples were "usurpations" and "abuses of power", just as colonists had experienced under King George.
These are not my new ideas, they are his, and I prefer to be on Madison's side in any such debate.
rustbucket: "...the Constitution wasn't ratified by NY and VA until those reassume or resume the posers of governance statements were put in their ratification documents."
Sure, but even if you assume such statements are legally valid (I don't), then read them carefully.
None of them refer to secession "at pleasure", but only of of necessity, just as the Declaration of Independence does.
Virginia's even spells out the necessity from powers: "perverted to their injury or oppression."
These are not, in the Declaration's words, "light and transient causes", not in Madison's words, "at pleasure" but rather only for the most serious of material breaches of compact.
rustbucket: "During Virginia's ratification convention, Patrick Henry warned that there were more Northern states than Southern ones and worried what that might portend in the future."
Patrick Henry was an anti-Federalist who voted against ratification of the Constitution.
His views were duly considered by the majority and rejected.
So they are not part of Founders' Original Intent.
rustbucket: "Sorry my excerpt was so long, but hopefully it helps you understand what Virginians were thinking in 1861."
But only some Virginians, far from all, and not even a majority before Fort Sumter.
But it absolutely explains why Virginians felt they needed a major excuse to declare secession, something far beyond "at pleasure" or "light and transient causes".
Rather, they needed a major "usurpation" and "abuse of power" to justify secession, and that is what the Confederate military assault on Fort Sumter gave them, the constitutional excuse.
Of course, the original seven Deep South secession states had no such excuse, they did secede "at pleasure" for "light and transient causes", but once Virginia joined them in their declared war against the United States, then all such constitutional niceties became mute & null.
A declared war can be a law unto itself, regardless of other laws.
“In fact, only one warship, revenue cutter Harriet Lane (crew of 95), arrived at Charleston to witness the beginnings of Confederate military assault on Fort Sumter.”
Absolute BS. From the Official Records: On April 12, 1861, at 3am the Baltic arrived at the rendezvous point ten miles out of Charleston Harbor with civilian Gustavus Vasa Fox, the planner and leader of the expedition aboard. The armed revenue cutter Harriett Lane had arrived several hours earlier, and had fired on civilian shipping attempting to enter the harbor. The Pawnee arrived at 6am.
Canard: “Those troops were ordered not to reinforce Sumter so long as there was no Confederate resistance.”
Wrong. The expedition leader had direct orders specifically to reinforce Ft. Sumter.
April 4, 1861
To: Lieut. Col. H.L. Scott, Aide de Camp
"This will be handed to you by Captain G.V. Fox, an ex-officer of the Navy. He is charged by authority here, with the command of an expedition (under cover of certain ships of war) whose object is, to reinforce Fort Sumter.
"To embark with Captain Fox, you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about 200, to be immediately organized at fort Columbus, with competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence, with other necessaries needed for the augmented garrison at Fort Sumter."
Signed: Winfield Scott
The War Department said nothing about resistance. From the beginning, Fox's intent and direct orders were to reinforce the fort with the men and provisions in Scott's orders.
Another Brojoke Canard bites the dust.
Sure, as somebody posted here recently, that was Jefferson Davis' argument in January, 1861, on the US Senate floor.
But no legitimate Founder ever made such an argument, certainly not Madison, Hamilton or Jay in the Federalist Papers.
Therefore it was not Founders Original Intent.
Well, if you argue: "Founders intent doesn't matter, what really matters is Patrick Henry's intent and warnings", then you reveal yourself as an anti-Federalist, anti-Constitution and not validly conservative.
But I've never seen a pro-Confederate who would admit so much.
rustbucket: "An editorial in the daily Chicago Times newspaper comes to mind [December 1860]:
I have long wondered where all these bogus numbers came from, turns out they were extant at the time.
They were nonsense, propaganda against the North and Union in general, it seems.
Much more careful studies still show Deep South cotton hugely important to total US exports, but not 72%, rather closer to 50% depending on what-all you include.
And US tariffs in 1860 averaged around 15%, not the "30% to 50%" the piece claims.
What it demonstrates is that the press was every bit as dishonest in those days as it is in ours, and in this case as least, misunderstandings lead to false grievances which helped produce declarations of secession and Civil War.
But none of this was listed as a "Cause of Secession" in any secessionist state document.
The "cause of secession" they did list at great length was their concern that Northern hostility to their "peculiar institution" made Union untenable.
Of course, nothing had happened except an election, there were no new complaints in December 1860 which had not been there in, say, October 1860, and yet suddenly the Deep South declared secession, "at pleasure" and for "light and transient causes".
It was that -- by the end of the war. But if anybody told you that the war started because Northerners wanted to abolish slavery and you didn't question it something was terribly wrong with your education. Or maybe not: to slaveowners at the time it certainly did seem like the Yankees wanted to take away their slaves when they elected Lincoln. Maybe -- since you agree with them about so much -- you're just honoring their perception of things. Anyway, I don't know how old you are or where you grew up, but 50 and 60 year old White Southerners who tell you they were taught in school to venerate Abraham Lincoln and never questioned this until they happened to read some book a few years ago, just aren't telling the truth.
You set up a straw man -- a weak argument that you can knock over easily and replace with your own (equally weak and vulnerable) argument. "Waaah, they told me it was all about how eeevil slavery was, but it wasn't. It was actually all about money." No serious historian says that most Northerners went to war to free the slaves, but few would agree that the war was all about Northern greed. There are a host of motivations in between those to extremes that you don't take into account.
My point is that we have been misled, not to portray these people as bad simply because they had an opinion that derived from their own self interest. Most rational people do.
No. It's not. You keep holding Northerners of that day to an unrealistically high standard that you don't apply to Southerners of the day or people now. And you justify that by crying about how somebody told you their motives were simon-pure and how you believed them all these years.
What's surprising isn't that Northern Whites weren't willing to sacrifice everything to free the slaves. No, what's surprising is that they showed such concern as they did about slavery -- that they weren't simply willing to benefit from business with slaveowners or unite behind the banner of White supremacy. Why they didn't is a result of a variety of factors that certainly go far beyond greed and envy.
You can, for example feel or oppose what's going on in Darfur or South Sudan or wherever without wanting to move there or welcome Darfurians or South Sudanese here. And you don't have to have an economic motive to condemn abuses there. Isn't human feeling enough? You can feel that Chinese prison labor gives Chinese industrialists an unfair advantage and still find something morally condemnable buying prison-made products. If there's something horrible, awful, unspeakable in Southern plantation owners having to pay tariffs, why is Northern concern about slavery undercutting free labor amoral or hypocritical?
By what mechanism would a slave or serf economy inhibit development? Presumably the large contingent of free populace could do the same thing they did in the North.
Businesses used slave labor. That meant they didn't have to pay decent wages to free labor. So free workers tended to avoid the South. Slaves didn't benefit from their own work as much as free workers would have, so they didn't put in the extra effort. Why did antebellum New York boom while Charleston and New Orleans lag behind? Are you going to say it was the Warehouse Act? Nonsense. New York grew because it was actually manufacturing things people actually wanted, while pre-Civil War Charleston and New Orleans weren't.
The South never had the potential to grow like the North until the advent of air cooling systems. It was great for plants, but horrible for humans.
You admit that. It was hard for Southern cities to match Northern ones in size before air conditioning. It wasn't just the heat. Yellow fever epidemics persisted in the Southern states down to the end of the 19th century. Even if a city wasn't directly effected, epidemics elsewhere in the South discouraged investment. So why do you go on about how tariff differentials could have made Charleston competitive with New York City? Why do you persist with that argument when you can see the obstacles to that happening?
The US Constitution requires that Congress has authority over all such matters, but no secessionist commissioner -- none, zero, nada -- ever attempted to negotiate with Congress.
Both Buchanan and Lincoln properly refused to see those commissioners.
rustbucket: "A fair distribution of the territories meant that the South would have gotten a share of them."
Perhaps, if Congress had agreed, but Congress was never asked.
rustbucket: "I have seen it said, that if all the transfers of wealth from the South to the North over the years via tariffs were considered, the North would owe the South money.
It is perhaps for these reasons that the North ignored Southern offers to negotiate."
I'd suggest that if you subtracted from that figure, whatever it might have been, the value of national defense over the period from 1776 through 1860, you'd find the South paid a bargain price for 80+ years of peace, or victory in wars.
So even here, the best case secessionists can possibly make, even here New York does not claim the right to secede "at pleasure" or for "light and transient causes", but only if necessary, just as the Declaration of Independence derives its authority from necessity driven by the King's long "usurpations" and "abuses of power".
rustbucket: "There was no mention of any restrictions on that reassume powers of government statement."
In fact the statement clearly refers to what is "necessary" as opposed to "light and transient reasons" or secession "at pleasure".
Indeed, from all my readings on this subject our Founders were 100% consistent.
So it took people like Jefferson Davis until 1860 to announce on the Senate floor that the 10th Amendment now meant they could declare unilateral, unapproved secession, "at pleasure".
"At pleasure" was not Founders Original Intent.
So for example, it wasn't millowners like Abbot Lawrence who supported the abolitionists, but his nephew Amos Adams Lawrence. Money moved from the actual builders and operators of the mills to their children and grandchildren who didn't get their hands dirty with day to day running of factories and were free to concentrate on philanthropic activities.
Something similar was going on in Philadelphia and New York. Older, established families avoided the Republicans at first. They tended to have Southern connections and relations and didn't want to shake things up. It was new men on the way up who supported Lincoln.
I don't want to oversimplify. Some bankers and industrialists did sign on with the Republicans early on, and after Sumter there was a wave of support for the Union all across the North. But the idea that the most powerful New England industrialists were pushing for war (or for abolition) for economic reasons really doesn't fly. It went against their economic interest.
Which Madison was that? The one that said the following when trying to get the Virginia Ratification Convention to ratify the Constitution? My emphasis below.
An observation fell from a gentleman, on the same side with myself, which deserves to be attended to. If we be dissatisfied with the national government, if we should choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence.
Hmmm. Merely "dissatisfied."
Madison was a member of the five-member committee along with future Chief Justice John Marshall who put together the words in Virginia's ratification document:
The People of Virginia declare and make known that the powers granted under the Constitution being derived from the People of the United States may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression and that every power not granted thereby remains with them and at their will.
The Virginia secession convention used those very words put together by Madison, Marshall, and three others in their April 17, 1861, Ordinance of Secession: [Link]:
AN ORDINANCE
To Repeal the ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, by the State of Virginia, and to resume all the rights and powers granted under said Constitution:
The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention, on the 25th day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eight-eight, having declared that the powers granted them under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression, and the Federal Government having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern slaveholding States.
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the Ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and seventy-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United State of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.
This Ordinance shall take effect and be an act of this day when ratified by a majority of the votes of the people of this State, cast at a poll to be taken thereon on the fourth Thursday in May next, in pursuance of a schedule hereafter to be enacted.
Done in Convention, in the city of Richmond, on the seventeenth day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one, and in the eighty-fifth year of the Commonwealth of Virginia
JNO. L. EUBANK,
Sec'y of Convention.
That did not take effect until they the voters of Virginia, the sovereign voice of the state, approved the ordinance, which they did. Checking with their voters directly was a big step further than what the original 13 did to form the Union in the first place. In the only instance where the voters of an original state (RI) voted on whether to join the Union under the Constitution, they rejected it by a ten to one margin. It was later approved by a small convention.
The Constitution was ratified in each of the original 13 by 13 separate conventions, each commissioned by the people of their state for that purpose. The people that gave the power are the ones who can take it back. From former poster 4 ConservativeJustices (later known as 4CJ):
John Marshall [during the Virginia Ratification Convention] reiterated that the powers can be resumed by the states, '[w]e are threatened with the loss of our liberties by the possible abuse of power, notwithstanding the maxim, that those who give may take away. It is the people that give power, and can take it back. What shall restrain them? They are the masters who give it, and of whom their servants hold it.'
Marshall went further, stating that 'the people hold all powers in their own hands, and delegate them cautiously, for short periods, to their servants.' Not a perpetual delegation.
The people of each state separately delegated powers to the Federal Government. The people of an individual state can resume or reassume the powers of government if they so chose. There is no power given to the lumpen mass of all the American people in the Constitution. The lumpen mass can't reassume or resume something they didn't have to begin with. The people of an individual state can.
This is all consistent with the Tenth Amendment, which says [my emphasis below]:
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"Respectively" means "individually."
I've told you much of this before. So why do I respond now? I only reply to you now to perhaps educate some who are new to these Civil War threads about what the actual history was rather than your fractured version of Mr. Peabody's Wayback Machine.
BroJoeK Sure, but even if you assume such statements are legally valid (I don't), then read them carefully.
None of them refer to secession "at pleasure", but only of of necessity, just as the Declaration of Independence does.
Who gets to decide what is necessary to someone's happiness? Do you get to decide what is necessary for my happiness? If you continually violate local law ordinances about noise at night, and I've been fighting you for 20 years through the courts without success, why is it that you get to decide whether I move away or not?
Maybe if I am disappointed (to use Madison's own words) living next to you, you can block me from moving away?
It is the aggrieved state who gets to decide what is necessary to their happiness or whether they are disappointed enough to leave. Not the state that may be ripping off the aggrieved state that wants to leave.
So, FRiend, once you've grasped that you are not arguing with BroJoeK, you are arguing with Madison, then we can make some progress, even at this late stage in life... ;-)
Sounds to me like I'm arguing with BroJoeK. You don't seem to realize that Madison was not consistent. How do you rationalize the "disappointed" statement he made in response to Patrick Henry. Was Madison promising one thing to mollify an opponent and saying something else later?
Madison even tried to come to grips with "happiness" and how it applied to the Union. From Madison's Federalist Paper No. 45, where he tried to explain the Constitution to the people:
Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union.
New York's ratifiers may well have used his happiness statement as a basis for the "necessary to their happiness" statement in their ratification document. Madison said it; they used it in their ratification document; now BroJoeK says "noooo!"
The Southern states certainly viewed that the Union had become inconsistent with their public's happiness, as direct votes on secession certainly established.
Arrgh! “disappointed” should have been “dissatisfied”
But your very definition is a fantasy.
The United States went to war in 1861 to defeat the military power that threatened it, assaulted it and declared war on it.
So "independence" alone did not and could not start war.
Military actions could and did.
You even bolded your cockamamie assertion? Do YOU read the stuff YOU type up?? +1 on your commitment to believing in what is a laughable mythical theory. I must admit -- I've never heard this one. Taught at Berkeley?
Just what was wrong with the American South being "happy" to find an important trading partner in Britain, whose Big Dawg status you seem obviously to resent? The late 1700s up to the mid 1800s was tumultuous time for trade as well as expansionism. Britain was hardly unique in "seizing" or monopolizing trade or product OR land (*cough*) in their own interest.
And funny -- you don't seem to have a problem with NYC or Boston's economic opportunism at the time as the primary port with whom trade with Britain was facilitated, or their COTTON textile mills.
You've missed Diogenes' entire premise/thesis. NOT exactly surprising.
The South -- obviously an agriculture-based economy, and fragile at that -- thriving on cotton and tobacco -- simply toiled for its own survival, trading with whomever they could. Yes, their #1 trading partner was Big Dawg BRITAIN. Your quote again bears repeating, only because it's so utterly absurd: "The plantation owners and the Confederate government were the globalists of the day."
Briefly, your definition of "Globalists" or "Elites" and "19th Century Style" is apples and oranges -- their economic/political situation can't remotely be compared to today to "Globalists" or "Elites" in ANY sense. TRADING THE ASSETS AND COMMODITIES is how the South (or Confederacy") survived. Period. No conspiracy applied.
Today's "Globalists" OTOH are attempting as its goal (in large measure as seen through the EU lens) to monopolize a political/economic system without representation that would control every facet of our lives by a single authority.
Diogenes' thesis on tariffs is part and parcel of the big picture regarding internal, domestic policies that were patently unfair and biased toward the influential monied North. You've conveniently ignored all the dynamics and factors -- nuanced and obvious, pre-war and post-war.
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