Replies

Seriously, can you even be honest about this topic?****

Can you?

If you could be honest, you’d confess the truth which is that slave ownership varied from very small and declining percentages in Border South states to much higher and growing percentages in Deep South states.****

Growing percentages? I’d need to see evidence of that.

What were those percentages, exactly?
Well, that depends on how you count, but if you figure even a modest sized average slaveholding family, then some Deep South states came in at just under 50% slaveholders.****

the evidence does not support that. Look at the US Census data.

Sure, you want us to believe that some families had more than one slaveholder, that’s fine, but there were many others — i.e., singles or young married couples getting started — who fully intended to purchase slaves as soon as they could afford them.
In other words, they were just as committed to the slavocracy as any large plantation owner.****

Pure speculation on your part. What we have is the Census data which shows the state with the highest percentage of the total free population owning slaves was South Carolina at 8.82%. Even Deep South states such as Alabama, Florida and Georgia had fewer than 7% slave ownership among the total free population as of the 1860 US census.

The rough estimate of 25% came first from Confederate soldiers themselves as to how many of their fellow soldiers came from slaveholding families.****

That may have been true in a few areas but is certainly a high estimate in others.

Some scholars have studied collections of Civil War soldiers’ letters and found that many discuss slavery.
None discussed tariffs.****

LOL! McPherson’s own book on the subject says otherwise...this is chief PC Revisionist James McPherson.

In his book What They Fought For, 1861-1865, historian James McPherson reported on his reading of more than 25,000 letters and more than 100 diaries of soldiers who fought on both sides of the War for Southern Independence and concluded that Confederate soldiers “fought for liberty and independence from what they regarded as a tyrannical government.” The letters and diaries of many Confederate soldiers “bristled with the rhetoric of liberty and self government,” writes McPherson, and spoke of a fear of being “subjugated” and “enslaved” by a tyrannical federal government. Sound familiar?

Further, your total economic argument about “Southern taxes paid for Northern benefits” is contradicted by both common sense and the facts of history.****

Au contraire

Common sense: Democrats ruled Washington and Southerners ruled Democrats, so no spending or taxes passed without Southern approval.****

Pure BS. A fantasy constructed in your own mind. If Southerners controlled Washington as you claim, tariffs would have been much lower, expenditures far more balanced between the regions and the federal govenrment would not have usurped all kinds of powers the states never delegated to it in the constitution.

Facts of history: Actual Federal spending summarized by category and Free States vs. slave states.

The historical fact is that Southerners did not pay more than their “fair share” and did not receive less than their “fair share” from Washington, DC, regardless what Fire Eater propagandists like Robert Rhett claimed.****

Here you are being dishonest again.

“The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north ... The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue,” John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question,” March 4, 1850

“This question of tariffs and taxation, and not the negro question, keeps our country divided....the men of New York were called upon to keep out the Southern members because if they were admitted they would uphold [ie hold up or obstruct] our commercial greatness.” Governor of New York Horatio Seymour on not readmitting Southern representatives to Congress 1866

” If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived … The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union. So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle. Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.” – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862

“Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern Heart’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation North American Review (Boston October 1862)

“The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism.” Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election

“They [the South] know that it is their import trade that draws from the people’s pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union.” The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

I can go on and on posting similar quotes. By the way...this is exactly the kind of quotes, facts, sources, etc you claim I have not posted.

Once again, here is that graphic showing which cities paid how much to Federal Revenues:****

ROTFLMAO! Repeating McPherson’s economic illiteracy and showing your own economic illiteracy. The cities paid those tariffs to the federal government did they? They just dipped into their own pockets out of the goodness of the hearts and coughed up the money right?

Or did somebody else pay those tariffs. Gosh...who do you think that might have been?

Hint: Where the ship unloads its cargo is irrelevant.

FLT-bird on % of slaveholder families: "Growing percentages?
I’d need to see evidence of that."

Thanks for making my point, your request for evidence here is legit and should not be met with me just blowing smoke at you, right?
Even if I've posted it before, there's nothing non-kosher about you asking for it again, right?
How about if you keep that thought in mind?

So take the example of Mississippi.
From 1820 to 1860 its white population multiplied 8 times, from 42,000 to 360,000.
At the same time its slave population multiplied 13 times, from 33,000 to 436,000.
So slaves grew from 44% of the population in 1820 to 55% in 1860.

That suggests, not only was the number of slaves growing, but also the percentage of slaves and very likely too, the percentage of slaveholders.
Certainly nothing in the numbers suggests falling numbers of slaveholders.

FLT-bird: "the evidence does not support that. Look at the US Census data."

Any reasonable estimate of average slaveholder family size (big families) and average number of slaveholders per family (probably just 1 or 1.1) leads to conclusions along the line of nearly half of some Deep South states families owning slaves.

FLT-bird: "Pure speculation on your part.
What we have is the Census data which shows the state with the highest percentage of the total free population owning slaves was South Carolina at 8.82%. "

Not just speculation, simple common sense.
And yet you wish us to believe none of those 9% of slaveholders had wives & children, or that if Dad owned slaves, so did all of them?
Sounds unrealistic to me.
More realistic would be average slaveholder family of, say, 5 means 45% of white South Carolinians lived in slaveholding households.

Is there evidence to support any other conclusion?

FLT-bird on 25% of Confederate soldiers slaveholders: "That may have been true in a few areas but is certainly a high estimate in others."

Well... you might say that since slave ownership was much less in Upper South and Border States, those units would have fewer slaveholders.
However, those states also contributed fewer soldiers to the Confederacy and more to the Union army, so there was a self-selection action at work.
In regions with fewer slaveholders -- i.e., Eastern Tennessee -- more soldiers served the Union and only slaveholding troops served as Confederates.

In other words, because of self-selection, that 25% estimate was likely to remain constant across most units.

FLT-bird: "Au contraire"

Now there's a powerful argument, no doubt, since it's in French, how can anybody defeat it?

FLT-bird: "Pure BS.
A fantasy constructed in your own mind.
If Southerners controlled Washington as you claim, tariffs would have been much lower, expenditures far more balanced between the regions and the federal govenrment would not have usurped all kinds of powers the states never delegated to it in the constitution."

Look, I "get" that you are in the grip of your Lost Cause myth, a fact free, common sense-free zone, but don't you wonder, once in a while, what truth might look like?

"...tariffs would have been much lower,"

Tariffs were much lower in 1860 than in, say, 1830, by a factor of half to third.
That's because Democrats ruled in Washington and Southerners ruled Democrats.

"...expenditures far more balanced between the regions."

Expenditures were perfectly balanced between the regions as this link shows, Fire Eater propaganda not withstanding.

"...federal govenrment would not have usurped all kinds of powers the states never delegated to it in the constitution"

The only power "usurped" by 1860 was Federal responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws, something slave states insisted on.

Or do you wish to include President Jefferson's Louisiana Purchase and support for the National Road?
And Jefferson was from which Northern state, did you say?

FLT-bird quoting: " 'The north has adopted a system of revenue and disbursements, in which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed on the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the north …
The South as the great exporting portion of the Union has, in reality, paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue,' John C Calhoun Speech on the Slavery Question,” March 4, 1850"

Well... if Calhoun said it, it must be true, no arguing that, right?
But the fact is that Calhoun was wrong on both sides of his equation.
First of all Calhoun's Deep South exported only one commodity of significance, cotton, which represented roughly 50% of total exports, not the 75% number we often see.
Of course 50% is a lot, but it still means the US had plenty of other exports, including gold & silver.

But a key point Calhoun doesn't realize is that for every dollar the South exported, they also imported a dollar's worth of goods produced in the US North & West, so their export earnings quickly made their way to other parts of the country,

And what Calhoun calls "Federal revenue disbursements" were not, in fact skewed towards the North, unless you include as "North" all states "North" of South Carolina!

In fact, data shows Federal revenues were disbursed pretty evenly between slave and non-slave states.

Enough for now, more later...

FLT-bird quoting: "...Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North.
The love of money is the root of this as of many other evils … the quarrel between North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.” – Charles Dickens, as editor of All the Year Round, a British periodical in 1862"

Dickens hated slavery, but hated Northerners more because he thought them only interested in cheating him out of money.
So it was a very small leap to universalize his own experiences onto the Union as a whole.

But I think it's fair to say that in his travels in America before 1867, Dickens never met a Republican.
His critique here, similar to our own Lost Causers, is of the Democrats who cheated him.
Regarding Dickens last 1867 trip to the US:

"During his travels, he saw a change in the people and the circumstances of America.
His final appearance was at a banquet the American Press held in his honour at Delmonico's on 18 April [1868], when he promised never to denounce America again. "

It appears obvious to me that in 1867 Dickens finally met some Republicans.

FLT-bird quoting: "Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....
Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, ‘to fire the Southern Heart’ and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....
Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation." -- North American Review (Boston October 1862)

Sure, Boston Democrats can be expected to see everything through their own economic prisms, and ignore the importance of slavery to Southerners.
But one man's "pretext" is another's "sincere reason" and visa versa.
The fact is, as this editorial reports, that the majority of average Southerners were unmoved by issues like tariffs, or "Northeastern power brokers" or "Money flows from Europe", but were vitally concerned about any attacks on slavery.

FLT-bird quoting: "The real causes of dissatisfaction in the South with the North, are in the unjust taxation and expenditure of the taxes by the Government of the United States, and in the revolution the North has effected in this government from a confederated republic, to a national sectional despotism.” -- Charleston Mercury 2 days before the November 1860 election"

This is a similar theme that Fire Eater Robert Rhett expressed in his December 1860 "Address to the Slaveholding States":

"The one great evil from which all other evils have flowed, is the overthrow of the Constitution of the United States.
The Government of the United States is no longer the government of a confederate republic, but of a consolidated democracy."

But remember, this was after 60 years of nearly continuous Democrat rule in Washington, DC, during which years Southerners were more than happy with conditions they controlled.
So what both Rhett and the Charleston Mercury are telling us is that, like all Democrats, they cannot stand to be governed by the same rules they applied while in power.

FLT-bird quoting: "They [the South] know that it is their import [sic] trade that draws from the people’s pockets sixty or seventy millions of dollars per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North, and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests....
These are the reasons why these people [the North] do not wish the South to secede from the Union.” The New Orleans Daily Crescent 21 January 1861

That was a lie in 1861 and is still a lie today.
In fact, virtually everything Southerners "imported" they imported from the North.
That's where Northerners got the money to purchase foreign imports, tariffs on which supplied Federal revenues.

And what exactly were those foreign imports producing Federal revenues?
The top items were woolens, brown sugar, cotton, silks, iron & coffee.
About 85% of these imports went to Northern ports, especially New York, about 15% to Southern ports.

That's the truth of this matter, regardless of Fire Eater propaganda.

FLT-bird: "I can go on and on posting similar quotes.
By the way...this is exactly the kind of quotes, facts, sources, etc you claim I have not posted."

No problem, your quotes make your points.
They can also make my points.

FLT-bird: "...did somebody else pay those tariffs.
Gosh...who do you think that might have been?
Hint: Where the ship unloads its cargo is irrelevant."

Tariffs were paid at the point of ships unloading and warehousing.
But our Lost Causer claims that they were really "paid for" by "Southern exports" are totally bogus.
At most, cotton would "pay for" half of imports.
But in reality, virtually all cotton export earnings went to pay for imports from the North and very little left over for foreign imports.

So, that map is a valid representation of Federal tariff revenue sources.