Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

WFAA ^ | January 11, 2019 | Jason Whitely

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Sorry, I don't follow your logic.
If European goods are shipped directly to Charleston they would pay only the Confederate tariff."

Right, but suppose that is English wool, and now Charleston's new manufacturers are going to turn it into clothing they will export to the North.
According to this site, tariffs on wool were 30% under 1846 Walker, 24% in 1857 and 37% under Morrill.
So our enterprising Charlestonians would pay first 24% to Confederates then another 37% for exporting to the Union -- twice.
Now for sake of argument suppose the Union reduced its tariff on wool back to 24% does that solve its problem?
Hardly, because there are still two tariffs to be paid the combined result of which is to price products far beyond costs for their alternate sources.

So I used the example of Charlestonians exporting North, the same applies to Bostonians who wanted to export to Confederates.

rustbucket: "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. "

Lincoln's cabinet did contemplate collecting Southern tariffs off-shore, to avoid confrontation with Confederates.
I'd suspect any European ships would have been OK paying legitimate tariffs to the recognized US government, not so OK with paying a second time to Confederates.

rustbucket: "Similarly, how would exports to Europe from the Confederacy have to pay two tariffs?"

Same as in my example above -- importing raw materials they'd pay the first time (i.e., 24% on wool), exporting finished goods they'd pay a customer-country's tariffs, second time (i.e., 24% on wool clothing).
By the way, as I read this graph, US, Brit & French tariffs were all roughly the same in 1860.

rustbucket: "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."

The US had no export tariffs, only Confederates ever contemplated it, as allowed by the Confederate constitution.
But your remarks here sound like a justification for starting war against the Union, perhaps Jefferson Davis was also thinking such thoughts in early April 1861?

rustbucket: "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."

But only for items with Confederate state customers, and such products were already being supported by circa $30 million in 1860 imports landed in future Confederate ports.
The question then becomes, what about the ~$200 million in Northern "exports" to the South?
Would they be replaced by European imports or made in the CSA?
Likely some combination, and the primary beneficiary would be New Orleans, not so much Charleston.

rustbucket: "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."

Again, only Confederates contemplated export tariffs, as allowed by their constitution.

rustbucket: "Southerners were paying the US tariff to Northern manufacturers.
Cheaper for Southerners to buy European goods even with the Confederate tariff applied."

Right, but if Southerners then turned imported raw materials into manufactured exports, they'd end up paying a second tariff at the point of sale.
That is the key fact at work here, not some minor difference in the percent of tariff in one country over another.

rustbucket: "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."

"Smuggled" would last about two days -- notice from this map, Federals already collected tariffs in Detroit & Chicago.
It would take just a few days to add more in St. Louis, Cairo, Louisville, Cincinnati & Pittsburgh, etc.

Finally, consider the railroad crossings from Confederate to Union:

Confederates were not going to "export" to the Union without paying the Union tariff, which meant in practical terms very little of such "exports".

[FLT-bird]

18th attempt. You just can’t help yourself.

[BroJoeK]

DoodleDawg post #752: "Had the Southern secession been successful and even had the Confederacy set their tariff at 10% I fail to see how anyone with any sense at all could assume that all those imports that went to New York would suddenly switch to being sent to Confederate ports."

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."

So here again DiogenesLamp pretends to be some kind of expert on economics & trade when in fact the only thing DiogenesLamp ever spurts is fantasy & nonsense.

The fact is that given roughly equivalent tariffs between Union & Confederates, imports would quickly go to Northern ports for Union customers and the Confederate ports for any others.
If both sides enforced their tariff rates, there'd be little commerce between them.

So what percent of imports would now go to Confederate ports?
Answer: maybe 20% which corresponds to both the Confederate white population & GDP % of US total.
80% of imports would still go to Union ports.

So what about DiogenesLamp's great insight -- that without "Southern exports", the Union would have no money to pay for their imports and so be in danger of economic collapse?
Answer: we know what would happen because it did happen in 1861 and beyond.
Without Confederate exports in 1861 Union exports fell about 35%, but then rose again in following years such that Union tariff revenues in 1864 were double 1860.

So DiogenesLamp's argument here boils down to not actual historical events, but rather to what Northerners feared might happen economically, that's why "Lincoln started war" at Fort Sumter, say our Lost Causers.

But the only serious expressions of what "Lincoln feared" come from Confederates themselves, most notably Confederate Col. John Baldwin's 1866 testimony on his April 4, 1861 meeting alone with Lincoln where, according to Baldwin, Lincoln said all $50+ million in Federal tariffs was at stake in Charleston.

Admittedly Lincoln was new on the job, but there's no possible way anyone not pushing a Lost Cause myth would express such a nonsense idea.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "18th attempt. You just can’t help yourself."

No, Georgie Porgie, that's not your 18th, it's your 157th thread post, all equally nonsense.

BTW, I found a way to quicker, easier & more accurately count up posts and it turns out, almost 90% of the posts on this thread came from the 12 listed below -- six Lost Causers, six Union defenders.
And the counts are pretty interesting:

for the Lost Cause:

1. 157 by FLT-bird, 56 of those to BJK
2. 109 by DiogenesLamp 28 to BJK
3. 41 by jeffersondem
4. 21 by robowombat
5. 17 by central_va
6. 15 by rustbucket

   359 total Lost Cause posts

Union defenders:

1. 105 by BroJoeK, 62 to FLT-bird
2. 91 by DoodleDawg, 47 to FLT-bird
3. 49 by rockrr
4. 38 by Bull Snipe
5. 31 by x
6. 11 by OIFVeteran

   324 total by Union defenders.

683 total by 12 posters = 88% of all thread-posts.

By far the most come from our Georgie Porgie FLT-bird who wishes now to escape answering for the boatloads of nonsense he's posted here.

Typical Democrat.

[jeffersondem]

Speaking of Lost Causes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDaAjDmw6IrFg&v=aAjDmw6IrFg

[jeffersondem]

Speaking of Lost Causes:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=RDaAjDmw6IrFg&v=aAjDmw6IrFg

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "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..."

I remember your posting it, it makes sense so I had no reason to question its authenticity.

DiogenesLamp: "People of that era very well understood what was about to happen before Lincoln's blockade."

Or, more precisely, before Jefferson Davis ordered Confederates to fire on Union troops in Fort Sumter.

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

"1. Loss of 238 million/year in European trade value."

Your theoretical $238 million might be the value of total "Southern exports" representing about 60% of total US exports, including specie.
The actual reduction in 1861 "Southern exports" was $163 million, offset somewhat by $61 million in export increases from the North & West.

The net result was Union non-specie exports fell 35% in 1861, significant but not ruinous to the Union economy.

DiogenesLamp: "2. Loss of shipping business."

As the incident of USRC Harriet Lane and USMS Nashville, April 11, 1861 demonstrated, changing flags as needed was a quick & simple matter.

USRC Harriet Lane and USMC Nashville, April 11, 1861:

DiogenesLamp: "3. Loss of Southern market for their goods."

I believe this is a significant "other consideration" why Jefferson Davis needed to start war at Forts Sumter and/or Pickens -- to stop the $200+million per year in, ahem, "money flows" from the South to the North.
Compared to those huge money flows, minor issues like tariff differences were simply insignificant.

"There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations."
--Davis to Bragg, April 3, 1861

DiogenesLamp: "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."

Complete nonsense -- it would take about two days to put customs agents in place at critical points, for examples, railroad crossings between Confederacy & Union.
BTW, Confederate agents would be at those same border crossings to make certain Union exports to the South also paid their tariffs!

1860 US railroads, note crossing points from Confederate to Union:

DiogenesLamp: "5. Capitalization of competing industries in the South from the increased profits obtained by dumping Northern protectionist policies."

But there could be no capitalization or increased profits from supplying the needs of just 2.5 million or 5.5 million Southern whites, and there'd be no exports to the Union without also paying Union tariffs.

DiogenesLamp: "6. Other states joining the economic sphere of the confederacy, and eventually joining it politically."

There is no way Union states would ever join the Confederate slave empire, so long as they had a choice.
And they could chose because Northern railroads, rivers, canals & Great Lakes shipping made up for the loss of Mississippi transportation to New Orleans, albeit at somewhat higher transportation costs.
However, Civil War selling prices also soared, so Northern producers were not completely unhappy.

Map of US canals, rivers, roads & Great Lakes shipping.
Note ease of heavy transport West to East.

DiogenesLamp: "7. Having to pay for the upkeep of the Federal government themselves, rather than allowing the South to pay for the bulk of it."

A pure myth quickly dispelled by any look at reality in, say, 1860 or after.

[BroJoeK]

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

Sorry, FRiend, but all the "deliberate deceit" on these threads comes from our Lost Cause mythologizers, Democrat propagandists and Marxist dialecticians… but I repeat myself.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "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."

The data I've found says otherwise.
Comparing 1846 Walker to 1857 Tariff to 1861 Morrill
With the notable exception of wool, Morrill simply returned rates to their 1846 levels.

Further, my point here is that such minor differences in individual rates were irrelevant compared to the overwhelming fact that international imports & exports would require tariffs be paid twice, for example once when goods landed at New Orleans to Confederates and again when sold in St. Louis in the Union.
Going the other way, raw wool would be tariffed first when imported to Boston then again when wool clothing sold in, say, Charleston.

rustbucket: "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."

I've seen nothing to support your 1/3 number.
Numbers I have seen easily support 20% which is also the Confederate white population and estimated GDP.
And I'd happily allow that some of the difference between 20% and 1/3 amounts to consumption in Union slave-states & regions.

But for anything more I'd need to see specifics.

rustbucket: " found a non-Debow analysis of 1859 that put the figure at 71% [of the value of the entire export of the United States]..."

I'd say 71% is a manipulation & distortion of actual numbers.
It both exaggerates the value of "Southern Products" by including exports from Union states & regions and understates Union exports.
A more honest number is 50% = cotton exports.

rustbucket: " 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."

Only remotely if "Southern" includes Union states and not even then, by far:

• Direct imports through Confederate ports were about $30 million.
  
• The import value of Northern goods "exported" to the South was roughly $40 million.
  
• Together, $70 million in imports consumed by "Southerners" represented about 20% of total US imports.

rustbucket: "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."

The difference between $200 million and $240 million would not change my conclusions.

"$63,000 in interest & brokerage" is relatively small compared to the circa $300 million in total debts to Union banks repudiated by Confederates in 1861.

[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.

19th attempt.

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

[BroJoeK]

I'm a big Jimmy Stewart fan -- Western Pennsylvania born & raised he played a western senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Both of Stewart's grandfathers served the Union army in the Civil War and Stewart was himself a patriot, rising to Brigadier General in the Air Force in 1959.

In your piece here Stewart refers to the Lost Cause of brotherly love, which is hardly what Confederates tried to hold on some 4 million of African ancestry.

[DiogenesLamp]

A pure myth quickly dispelled by any look at reality in, say, 1860 or after.

This is why I don't bother with you. You know this map gives a completely contradictory view of what is happening, and that is precisely why I keep pointing it out, but what do you do?

You put forth this map as if it accurately represents the truth regarding who is paying the taxes. What this map shows is that *NEW YORK* is collecting the taxes. What it doesn't show is that the *SOUTH* was both directly and indirectly PAYING almost all of those taxes.

So what point is there to discussing history with someone who is willing to be deliberately dishonest?

This is why I generally avoid paying any attention to anything you write. You have no interest in the objective truth, you are just trying to sell your fake version of events as the truth.

[jeffersondem]

“In your piece here Stewart refers to the Lost Cause of brotherly love, which is hardly what Confederates tried to hold on some 4 million of African ancestry.”

So you are going back to the old saw about “Lincoln fought to free the slaves.”

Both the United States and the Confederate States were fighting to defend pro-slavery constitutions.

[FLT-bird]

The PC Revisionists cannot accept the obvious facts. Both sides had slavery. Both sides were massively racist and cared little about the lives of non White people. Both sides were highly sexist by our modern standards. The EP was highly unpopular in the Union army. Trying to apply modern standards of morality exclusively to one side while giving the other a free pass....so as to support your current Leftist politics is a staple of the PC Revisionists.

[FLT-bird]

This is why its not worth wasting your time with him. He is not intellectually honest and is utterly obsessed with pushing his Leftist PC Revisionist ideology.

He’s only marginally better than rocks-in-his-head.

[jeffersondem]

“Trying to apply modern standards of morality exclusively to one side while giving the other a free pass....so as to support your current Leftist politics is a staple of the PC Revisionists.”

One day soon I expect to wake up to headlines that read: “Lincoln fought to set $15.00 per hour minimum wage.”

I think it has already been argued Lincoln opposed limiting marriage to one man and one woman.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "This is why I don't bother with you."

Because you can't deal with the truth or facts, only with your own lies & myths, right?

DiogenesLamp: "You know this map gives a completely contradictory view of what is happening,"

So far as I know, that map is a 100% accurate & truthful portrayal of where US tariffs were paid in 1859.
It should end all Lost Cause claims that Fort Sumter had something to do with collecting taxes.
Especially claims from Confederate Col. John Baldwin in 1866 the Lincoln believed $50+ million in revenues was at stake at Fort Sumter.
Not even Illinoisan Lincoln, barely a month on the job, could think such a thing.

So, naturally, when one argument doesn't work, you just move the goal posts, that's how it's done -- sure, you say, tariffs were paid in New York, but not by New Yorkers, by other people, directly or indirectly, especially Southerners.

And your evidence for this is?....

{crickets}

Right, you have none except to claim that, what?, 75% of US exports were "Southern products" and therefore magically 75% of import tariffs were "paid for" by Southerners.
Of course you ignore the fact that for every dollar of Southern exports, Southerners "imported" a dollar in products from the North.
Therefore the real value of Southern tariffs was just the 8% of imports directly to Confederate state ports, plus the imported raw materials in Northern "exports" to the South.
Those look like another 10% or so making the total value of foreign imports to the South circa 20%.

20% corresponds pretty nicely with both the Confederates' population and GDP estimates, so has the ring of truth to me.

DiogenesLamp: "What it doesn't show is that the *SOUTH* was both directly and indirectly PAYING almost all of those taxes. "

Sure, that's your claim, constantly repeated, but there's no hard evidence to support it, never was.

DiogenesLamp: "So what point is there to discussing history with someone who is willing to be deliberately dishonest? "

Speaking of yourself, of course.

DiogenesLamp: "You I have no interest in the objective truth, "You are I am just trying to sell your my fake version of events as the truth."

Written straight from your heart, I'm sure.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "So you are going back to the old saw about 'Lincoln fought to free the slaves.' "

No, I'd say for the vast majority of Confederates it was "all about slavery" -- either keeping African-American in slavery or keeping themselves out of it, or both.

In any case it had nothing to do with the brotherly love of Jimmy Stewart-Mr. Smith's lost cause.

[BroJoeK]

FLT-bird: "Both sides had slavery."

But slaves were not allowed in the Union army as slaves.
And freed blacks did not serve the Confederate army as soldiers.
So there was a difference.

FLT-bird: "Both sides were massively racist and cared little about the lives of non White people."

Well... Confederates insisted they took good care of their slave "property".
The Union insisted on paying its freed workers & soldiers fairly.
So I'd guess it's arguable which side "cared" more.

FLT-bird: "The EP was highly unpopular in the Union army."

Maybe in a few units, but most agreed with the popular new marching song:

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel
"As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal"
Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel
Since God is marching on...

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free
While God is marching on"

"Pretext" or not, those words & feelings were real.
Still are.

FLT-bird: "Trying to apply modern standards of morality exclusively to one side while giving the other a free pass....so as to support your current Leftist politics is a staple of the PC Revisionists."

Nobody here applies anyone's standards except those of the Civil War itself.

• In 1860 Republicans were the party of abolitionists, Democrats the party of slavery, very similar to the way the parties line up on abortion today.

• In 1860 the Deep South began declaring secession, they said then, primarily to protect slavery against "Black Republicans".

• In 1861 Jefferson Davis ordered military assault on Fort Sumter... to protect slavery? Noooo.
  To prevent tariffs being collected? Noooo…
  Rather Davis thought Confederate "integrity" was "assailed" plus "other considerations".

• For four years Union laws, proclamations and armies freed hundreds of thousands of slaves, eventually millions even before the 13th amendment was ratified.

• For four years Confederates fought on to ultimate Unconditional Surrender -- was that about slavery?
  You bet it was!
  It was about keeping 4 million slaves in bondage and keeping 5.5 million Confederate whites out of bondage to the Union.

  Every Confederate, without exception, thought one or the other or both worth fighting & dying for.
  And unlike our modern Lost Causers they weren't ashamed to say so.

[jeffersondem]

“In 1860 Republicans were the party of abolitionists, Democrats the party of slavery, very similar to the way the parties line up on abortion today.”

That is an interesting comment.

Can you cite an example where in 1860 the head of the Republican Party (Abraham Lincoln) identified himself as an abolitionist?