Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

WFAA ^ | January 11, 2019 | Jason Whitely

[TexasGunLover]

AUSTIN, Texas — A historically inaccurate brass plaque honoring confederate veterans will come down after a vote this morning, WFAA has learned.

The State Preservation Board, which is in charge of the capitol building and grounds, meets this morning at 10:30 a.m. to officially decide the fate of the metal plate.

[FLT-bird]

Just out of curiosity, did you happen to note how many of those posts were is response to a factual inaccuracy that FLT-bird posted? I'm just curious.

its funny you say that because the vast majority of mine were in response to your factual inaccuracies.

[FLT-bird]

rustbucket: For any northern goods whose prices had been raised because the tariff protected them from cheaper and in some cases probably better quality foreign goods, the South was effectively paying the tariff to the makers of those Northern goods.

Yep. Due to domestic competitors, importers could not simply raise their prices by the amount of the increased tariff. They were forced to pay most of it themselves. Northern manufacturers could both raise prices and at the same time still gain market share by undercutting foreign imports. Great deal if you're a northern manufacturer. Not that bad of a deal if you stood to get a job at one of those Northern factories even if you as a consumer were paying more for manufactured goods. Absolutely terrible if you were a consumer and your area did not have very many factories but was producing a lot of cash crops for export. That last description fits much of the Deep South of course.

[DoodleDawg]

its funny you say that because the vast majority of mine were in response to your factual inaccuracies.

Safe to say that each of us is convinced that the other has no idea what they are talking about.

[DoodleDawg]

Yep. Due to domestic competitors, importers could not simply raise their prices by the amount of the increased tariff. They were forced to pay most of it themselves. Northern manufacturers could both raise prices and at the same time still gain market share by undercutting foreign imports. Great deal if you're a northern manufacturer. Not that bad of a deal if you stood to get a job at one of those Northern factories even if you as a consumer were paying more for manufactured goods. Absolutely terrible if you were a consumer and your area did not have very many factories but was producing a lot of cash crops for export. That last description fits much of the Deep South of course.

Case in point.

[FLT-bird]

DoodleDawg: Safe to say that each of us is convinced that the other has no idea what they are talking about.

Yep. That sums it up.

[rustbucket]

Wouldn't Northern consumers of those goods be paying the tariff as well?

Yes. I seem to remember that one of your former personas used to ask that question. Those who worked for Northern manufactures had jobs, some of which had been made possible by the existing protective US tariff. Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff.

To remain competitive with lower priced European goods in the South, the prices of Northern goods would have to be lowered significantly below those supported by the Morrill Tariff. Northern goods sold in the South would have to pay the same tariff to the South as that placed on European goods by the Confederate tariff. This would put much price and profit pressure on Northern manufacturers. This meant less profit and likely fewer jobs for Northern workers. All of that would reduce the $200 million dollars of Northern goods sold in the South. Ripple effects would follow throughout the Northern economy.

The South initially set their tariff the same as the then current US tariff, then about two weeks later the North passed the much higher Morrill Tariff for the US. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! That set up the two-tariff problem that prompted Northern newspapers to basically cry 'blockade the Southern ports', 'our pockets have been touched'. Northern import businesses started closing. The picture looked bleak for Northern tariff income.

Whatever percentage of the tariff had been paid by the South in the past, Lincoln certainly realized the problem the Northern economy and the government finances would be faced with because of the loss of the South and the two-tariff problem that the Republicans had created. As Lincoln said, "And what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government -- no resources." [Link 1 and Link 2].

Lincoln was a smart guy. He thought outside the box and provoked a war so that he could invade the South and blockade their ports solving the two-tariff problem. The tariff was not the main reason the South seceded, but the tariff income problem was the reason why Lincoln started the war.

As Lincoln basically said in his inaugural speech, you can keep your slaves, but I want your tariff income.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "15th attempt.
You are simply not going to steal hours of my day every day.
Deal with it."

By my count that's your 137th thread post & now 15th repetition of pure nonsense.
So it appears that FLT-bird Georgie Porgie, pudding & pie likes to kiss the girls & make them cry.
But when the boys come out to play, Georgie Porgie has much better things he needs to do, right away!

The truth is nobody cares if you answer or not, but there's no excuse to p*ss on the thread just because you've grown tired of playing, FRiend.

DoodleDawg: "I posted 10% of the responses on this thread?
I really need to get a life."

I admit this is often the most fun thing I do all day -- a reward for hard work, a break from more mundane issues, a rest from personal service and sometimes a great challenge to what I think I know on the subject.

DoodleDawg: "Just out of curiosity, did you happen to note how many of those posts were is response to a factual inaccuracy that FLT-bird posted?
I'm just curious."

Looks like just over half your posts on this thread went to FLT-bird, presumably to correct his errors, but FLT-bird is also, ahem, high maintenance with personal insults, so a few of your posts may be just trading barbs.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff."

Except the Morrill tariff was not that much higher.
In effect, the two competing tariffs were the old 1846 Walker tariff, passed by Democrats under Southern Democrat President Polk and the newer, lower 1857 Tariff passed by Democrats under Democrat President Buchanan.
Morrill basically returned to 1846 levels.

So, in February 1861 Confederates adopted the lower 1857 Tariff and two weeks later the Union returned to the 1846 Walker tariff levels.

rustbucket: "Northern goods sold in the South would have to pay the same tariff to the South as that placed on European goods by the Confederate tariff."

Which is the real key here -- not the 8% of US imports (circa $30 million) which landed in Confederate ports, but the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South.
Those now would have to pay, in effect, export tariffs on top import tariffs paid for raw materials.
So the real issue here was not whether Walker charged 25% on some item and the 1857 Tariff only 20%, that was irrelevant.
What mattered is the fact that Northern exporters would have to pay a tariff twice.

The same is true going the other way -- if Europeans landed their presumably cheaper goods in, say, Confederate New Orleans for sale in Union St. Louis, they'd pay two tariffs, one each to Confederates and the Union.
So the individual rates were irrelevant, what mattered was paying twice.

rustbucket: "All of that would reduce the $200 million dollars of Northern goods sold in the South.
Ripple effects would follow throughout the Northern economy."

The damage would be done not by marginally lower Confederate rates, but by the fact that exporters, North or South, would pay two tariffs instead of just one.

rustbucket: "The South initially set their tariff the same as the then current US tariff, then about two weeks later the North passed the much higher Morrill Tariff for the US.
Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! "

But the Morrill rates were more or less irrelevant.
What mattered was importers & exporters North or South would now have to pay two tariffs instead of just one.

rustbucket: "That set up the two-tariff problem that prompted Northern newspapers to basically cry 'blockade the Southern ports', 'our pockets have been touched'.
Northern import businesses started closing.
The picture looked bleak for Northern tariff income."

Maybe, but remember, one purpose of the new Morrill tariff was to reduce imports by, ahem, putting American manufacturing first and making America's products great.
That's a historical theme of Republicans from Day One.

So the fact that some Democrat globalist importers in New York were fearful did not overly concern Republicans.

rustbucket: "As Lincoln said, "And what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government -- no resources." [Link 1 and Link 2]."

Those quotes are totally suspect as misrepresenting Lincoln's concerns.
Confederate Col. John Baldwin's 1866 account is especially ludicrous in claiming Lincoln believed all Federal tariffs were at stake in Charleston Harbor.
In fact, Charleston produced well under 1% of US tariff revenues.
So regardless of what Lincoln thought of tariffs in general, Fort Sumter had nothing to do with it.

rustbucket: "Lincoln was a smart guy.
He thought outside the box and provoked a war so that he could invade the South and blockade their ports solving the two-tariff problem.
The tariff was not the main reason the South seceded, but the tariff income problem was the reason why Lincoln started the war. "

Jefferson Davis started the war, as he'd promised, when he thought Confederate "integrity" was "assailed" at Fort Sumter.
And because Davis wanted the Upper South to secede too, even Lincoln's mere announcement of a resupply mission to Union troops in Fort Sumter was plenty enough to trigger Davis.
Once war started, then many other issues jumped to the forefront, including Gen. Scott's Anaconda plan, originally prepared under Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in the event of a Southern rebellion.

It cannot have been a surprise to the new Confederate President.

[FLT-bird]

Your repetitive responding to respond in order to waste as much time as possible while failing to read and/or just claiming any source that is inconvenient for your arguments is automatically untrue, has likewise come to an end. Buh Bye.

16th attempt.

You are simply not going to steal hours of my day every day.

[DoodleDawg]

Yes. I seem to remember that one of your former personas used to ask that question.

You are confusing me with someone else.

Those who worked for Northern manufactures had jobs, some of which had been made possible by the existing protective US tariff. Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff.

There is no question tariffs aided Northern manufacturers. But Northern consumers paid the same inflated price that Southern consumers did. So if there were more Northern consumers, and the population figures would indicate that there were, then how could the South effectively be paying the tariff?

Northern goods sold in the South would have to pay the same tariff to the South as that placed on European goods by the Confederate tariff. This would put much price and profit pressure on Northern manufacturers.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. A lot would depend on how much the Northern manufacturer sold to Southern consumers in the first place. If the bulk of his business was in the U.S. then it would ease the pain of modifying his prices for Southern consumers. He would also benefit by being closer and would enjoy lower transportation costs, insurance costs, and the like.

The South initially set their tariff the same as the then current US tariff, then about two weeks later the North passed the much higher Morrill Tariff for the US. Talk about shooting themselves in the foot!

And how was this shooting themselves in the foot?

That set up the two-tariff problem that prompted Northern newspapers to basically cry 'blockade the Southern ports', 'our pockets have been touched'. Northern import businesses started closing. The picture looked bleak for Northern tariff income.

Ridiculous. Imports destined for U.S. consumers had the Morill tariff applied in U.S. ports. Imports destined for Confederate consumers had tariffs applied at Confederate ports. One had no impact on the other.

Whatever percentage of the tariff had been paid by the South in the past, Lincoln certainly realized the problem the Northern economy and the government finances would be faced with because of the loss of the South and the two-tariff problem that the Republicans had created. As Lincoln said, "And what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government -- no resources." [Link 1 and Link 2].

Yes, your compatriot FLT-bird is fond of that quote.

[BroJoeK]

By the way -- now that rustbucket has acknowledged the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South, I think we can turn the tables on Lost Causers who've endlessly claimed Lincoln "started war" over "money", i.e. $50 million in Union tariff revenues: "follow the money", they say.

1. DiogenesLamp post #672: "...it's about money.
   Prominent Northern Newspapers of the time period tell them it's about money.
   They want to believe it's about slavery..."

2. DiogenesLamp post #497: "The war was about money, but was successfully rebranded as a war about freedom, to cover up the reality..."

3. DiogenesLamp post #716: Confederates "...would not only take over the European money streams going into the North, they would take over the market for the products the North East was manufacturing and distributing by way of the Great lakes and Railroads."

4. FLT-bird post #707: "Like most wars, this one too was all about money."

5. FLT-bird post #621: "Lincoln started the war due to his insistence that the Southern states pay TAXES.
   It was about money."

6. FLT-bird post #157: "There was no way in hell the northern states were going to fight a war over slavery.
   When it came to money however, they were all in favor of not letting their cash cow slip away.
   So you are exactly wrong about that.
   It was ALL about money for the North."

For Confederates, of course, it couldn't possibly be "about money" since Confederates were driven by the highest ideals like freedom, liberty & constitutional states' rights.
No money in that, right?

Well, we can now identify at least three instances when "all about money" drove those freedom loving Confederates:

1. Most obvious was the $4 billion estimated asset value of slaves in 1860.
   In relative terms, $4 billion in 1860 is about $20 trillion today -- equivalent to our GDP or National Debt, a huge number which 1860 Fire Eaters said Lincoln's Black Republicans threatened.
   So secession too could be said was "all about money".

2. Southern planters owed money to Northern banks to the tune of ~$300 million, debts which could be repudiated and collected by the Confederate government once war began.

3. Perhaps less obvious is the $200 million per year the "North" "exported" to the "South" -- those words in quotes because definitions are vague & inconsistent.
   Such exports could, in theory, generate $20 million in Confederate tariff revenues, so wouldn't Jefferson Davis want such income?

   Well... no... because if you're Jefferson Davis, $20 million only begins to cover your government's costs.
   What you really want is the $200 million Southerners are spending on Northern imports, because that money, if stopped, will pay for your war and help cripple the Northern economy.
   So Davis didn't just want "money flows from Europe" diverted to Confederates, he also wanted money flows from the South to the North stopped.
   And nothing could stop such money flows quicker & better than Civil War.!

So, low and behold, turns out for Confederates too, starting war at Fort Sumter was also "all about the money".

Or at least so in the minds of our Marxist trained economic dialecticians.

[FLT-bird]

Your repetitive responding to respond in order to waste as much time as possible while failing to read and/or just claiming any source that is inconvenient for your arguments is automatically untrue, has likewise come to an end. Buh Bye.

17th attempt.

You are simply not going to steal hours of my day every day.

[rustbucket]

But the Morrill rates were more or less irrelevant. What mattered was importers & exporters North or South would now have to pay two tariffs instead of just one.

Sorry, I don't follow your logic. If European goods are shipped directly to Charleston they would pay only the Confederate tariff. On the other hand, perhaps you were assuming that Lincoln was going to stop and board the foreign ships outside of Charleston and demand they pay the US tariff. Perhaps he would have been that bold, but by doing so he might just have opened a two-front war, one with Confederates and one with one or more European countries whose ships had been boarded and basically robbed.

Similarly, how would exports to Europe from the Confederacy have to pay two tariffs? Are you assuming that Lincoln would demand that the Confederacy export everything through the Port of New York and pay a US tariff there? Or maybe Lincoln's ships would stand off the Charleston Harbor and stop ships coming out of the harbor to demand payment? Maybe he was really a Barbary pirate.

In time, the Confederacy would probably open up warehouses in several of their ports to store imported merchandise until it was sold, like the warehouses in New York gave an incentive to importers to land stuff at New York and pay tariff there.

What mattered is the fact that Northern exporters would have to pay a tariff twice.

I'm scratching my head again. What two tariffs would Northern exporters pay? Was Lincoln planning to charge a tariff, or really, an export fee, on things exported from the US? I wasn't aware of these secret plans of Lincoln.

By buying Northern goods whose prices had been boosted by the US protective tariff, Southerners were paying the basic price of the goods plus the amount the Northern manufacturers were able to raise their price because of the US protective tariff. The Northern manufacturers pocketed the selling price; the US government did not. The Southerners would have been paying the basic price of the Northern goods plus the increase in price that the Morrill Tariff enabled the manufacturers to charge. In that sense, the Southerners were paying the US tariff to Northern manufacturers. Cheaper for Southerners to buy European goods even with the Confederate tariff applied.

If the Confederacy imposed their tariff on those Northern goods, which they well might have, then the Confederate people would have been paying the Confederate tariff on Northern goods, plus however much the Morrill Tariff would have enabled Northern manufacturers to increase their prices. Unless Northern manufactures significantly lowered the price of their goods, the Confederate people would have switched to buying European goods which didn't have the cost of US tariffs built into their selling price. The European goods would have been cheaper than Northern goods unless the Northern manufacturers lowered their prices in the South to meet competition.

if Europeans landed their presumably cheaper goods in, say, Confederate New Orleans for sale in Union St. Louis, they'd pay two tariffs, one each to Confederates and the Union. So the individual rates were irrelevant, what mattered was paying twice.

The Confederacy had promised not to interfere with shipping on the Mississippi. The real problem for the North was European goods offloaded at a Southern port, paying the Confederate tariff there, then smuggled into the North and sold for less that the same items imported directly into the US that paid the Morrill Tariff to the US.

[DiogenesLamp]

It is clear that you cannot see it. This is why it isn't worth the trouble discussing the topic with someone who doesn't grasp how this thing called "trade" works.

Those with the goods, do the trades. Those who don't have the goods, don't.

[DiogenesLamp]

In time, the Confederacy would probably open up warehouses in several of their ports to store imported merchandise until it was sold, like the warehouses in New York gave an incentive to importers to land stuff at New York and pay tariff there.

Years ago, I saw something that had been printed in the Charleston Newspaper shortly after secession. In the article, they were joyous about how much the city of Charleston was booming, how people were moving in like crazy, how every single hotel was filled to capacity, and every potential warehouse space was leased or bought up, and how there were efforts underway to start massive construction projects building more warehousing space and on and on and on about the massive economic boom which had hit Charleston.

I no longer recall where I had seen that, and I wish I had saved a link to it. People of that era very well understood what was about to happen before Lincoln's blockade.

The Confederacy had promised not to interfere with shipping on the Mississippi. The real problem for the North was European goods offloaded at a Southern port, paying the Confederate tariff there, then smuggled into the North and sold for less that the same items imported directly into the US that paid the Morrill Tariff to the US.

I've repeatedly said that the danger to the Northern power barons was multifold.

1. Loss of 238 million/year in European trade value.
2. Loss of shipping business.
3. Loss of Southern market for their goods.
4. Loss of Mid Western markets caused by the South importing European goods and selling them all along the vast border and all throughout the Mississippi watershed.
5. Capitalization of competing industries in the South from the increased profits obtained by dumping Northern protectionist policies.
6. Other states joining the economic sphere of the confederacy, and eventually joining it politically.
7. Having to pay for the upkeep of the Federal government themselves, rather than allowing the South to pay for the bulk of it.

To name just a few.

[DoodleDawg]

This is why it isn't worth the trouble discussing the topic with someone who doesn't grasp how this thing called "trade" works.

Which is why I wasn't directing it at you.

Those with the goods, do the trades. Those who don't have the goods, don't.

A barter economy, huh? And I'm the one without the grasp on trade?

[DiogenesLamp]

A barter economy, huh? And I'm the one without the grasp on trade?

What you did here was not done because you are a fool, it was done in the full knowledge that you were being deceitful.

You know very well "trade" always comes down to swapping one thing for another. "Cash" is only the intermediary for what is actually occurring.

It is this sort of deliberate deceit that makes a discussion with many on your side not worth anyone's trouble.

[DoodleDawg]

You know very well "trade" always comes down to swapping one thing for another. "Cash" is only the intermediary for what is actually occurring.

I know enough to know that trade will go where the customers are. And what a Confederate port charges in tariff is irrelevant to goods destined for U.S. consumers. Those goods will continue to go to New York or Boston or Philadelphia. The lost revenue would only be that small fraction of imported goods that had been destined for Southern consumers before the split.

[rustbucket]

[You quoting me]: "Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff."

[You responding to my point]: Except the Morrill tariff was not that much higher.
In effect, the two competing tariffs were the old 1846 Walker tariff, passed by Democrats under Southern Democrat President Polk and the newer, lower 1857 Tariff passed by Democrats under Democrat President Buchanan.
Morrill basically returned to 1846 levels.

Not quite true. I suggest that you read, "The Tariff and Secession: Statements on the Tariff as a Major Factor in Sectional Strife and Southern Secession" by Michael T. Griffith, 2014. [Link].

Griffith said that the Morrill Tariff was a "huge" rate increase over the 1857 tariff, apparently in part because of a change in the way the Morrill Tariff calculated the actual rate of tariff compared to the 1846 tariff. He quotes a paper by Phil Magnes that said, "Morrill’s abandonment of the ad valorem schedule in favor of specific duties provided a pretext for raising the tariff on several items well above their 1846 levels.", and Griffith cites Frank Taussig's classic "The Tariff History of the United States" [see page 138] in support of the specific Morrill duties being higher than the 1846 rate.

Which is the real key here -- not the 8% of US imports (circa $30 million) which landed in Confederate ports, but the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South.

There were calculations back in those days of how much of the imports into the US ultimately went to the South. Those calculations were based on Treasury statistics. Imports might have arrived at the Port of New York and gone into the warehouse system and ultimately had tariff paid on them in New York when they were sold to buyers from the North, West, or South in the Treasury figures. The Treasury figures apparently showed that Southerners bought substantially more than 8 percent of the value of the imports. If the Treasury figures were analyzed correctly, the Southern purchases of imports amounted to a third of the total value of imports to the US. That is a serious chunk of Lincoln's tariff revenue. From an old post of mine:

I found a non-Debow analysis of 1859 that put the figure at 71% [of the value of the entire export of the United States], so it agrees in general. The figure came from: Southern Wealth and Northern Profits by Thomas Prentice Kettell. Published in 1860.

This source also broke down the distribution of imports to regions by consumption. For 1859, it calculates Southern consumption of imports as $106,000,000, Western consumption as $63,000,000, and Northern consumption of imports as $149,000,000. Kettell bases the split among regions on Treasury figures from 1856.

Kettell also estimates that the North sent $240,000,000 in domestic goods (protected by tariff no doubt) to the South in 1859, and that the South paid to the North some $63,000,000 in interest and brokerage.

I note that the calculated figure of Northern produced goods being sold to Southern buyers was higher than the $200 million figure you cited. I also remember that the 1846 tariff was supported by Southern Democrats because it reduced the 1842 tariff.

I have a lot of personal business to attend to starting now for at least the next two or three of weeks. Hopefully when my business is finished, I can resume looking at these threads. Until then, hasta la vista.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "17th attempt."

No, that's your 141st post on this thread.
So, you kissed the girls 141 times Georgie, now you're running away?

Typical Democrat.