Replies

FLT-bird: "By the 1850s it was clear there was a power struggle between the two sides."

Consider, in 1787, when Thomas Jefferson proposed, and Congress enacted, abolition in the Northwest Territories there was no major Southern opposition.
In 1820 Congress again addressed the Territories issue with the Missouri Compromise, about which Virginia Congressman John Randolph famously coined the term "Doughfaced Northerners" meaning Northerners who were happy to do what Southerners demanded.
Democrat President Buchanan (1857-1861) was arguably the last of the Northern Doughfaces.

Northern Doughfaces were a major reason there were not "two sides", and another major reason was pro-tariff Andrew Jackson Democrats.
Rather there were always multiple allied or conflicting interests.

FLT-bird: "No, it was not that slavery was doomed.
They surely had to see it was doomed in every place that industrialized anyway as Britain and France had. "

And you can easily prove or disprove your own claims here simply by finding examples of Southern Democrat Fire Eaters who publicly admitted Southern slavery was doomed and therefore should be gradually, peacefully & lawfully abolished.

When should we expect to see such quotes from you?

FLT-bird: "What was doomed if they did not keep pace with seats in the Senate was their ability to protect themselves from even more rapacious trade and tax policies being pushed through by Northern special interests."

In 1860 Republicans proposed to increase protective tariffs back, essentially, to their 1846 rates, and that Morrill tariff proposal was defeated by Democrats in 1860, and not mentioned by any of the earliest "Reasons for Secession" documents.
So alleged "rapacious trade and tax policies" was purely a Lost Cause lie, concocted after the fact attempting to explain the otherwise inexplicable and justify the unjustifiable.

FLT-bird: "No question there was a power struggle between the two sides.
Trying to portray the North/Republicans of that time as lily white/pure of heart etc is a complete joke.
They were as greedy as any people in history.
They had been sucking money out of the South for generations and were trying to pass federal legislation that would allow them to dip their paws even deeper into Southern wallets."

And those are yet more of the essential Lost Cause Big Lies.
The real truth is: all of that alleged greed & corruption came from slaveholders' Northern Democrat allies, not Republicans, which never existed before ~1856 and whose Whig predecessors were just as often Northern Doughfaces as not.

The Lost Cause Big Lie is always to conflate Republicans with Northern Big City Doughfaced Democrats.
They were not the same people.

FLT-bird: "Their [Republicans'] interests were in jobs in industry and public works projects (paid for mostly by taxes paid by Southerners).
People have always been willing to vote themselves other people's money."

So several facts need to be pointed out here:

Unlike today, when governments at all levels spend upwards of 30% of US GDP, in 1860 that number was about 2%, meaning something like 98% of US economic activity & jobs (especially Republicans') were unrelated to government spending.
Then as now the vast majority of Republican voters lived on farms, in small & medium sized towns or suburbs, held jobs in agriculture, small business, manufacturing, professions & other such "middle class" occupations.
Then as now Republicans were usually the minority opposition party.
Then as now Democrats were an alliance of Big Business (slaveholders), globalist financial interests (of King Cotton) and Big City immigrant bosses (i.e., NY's Tammany Hall).
And Southern Democrats effectively ruled over Washington, DC, almost continuously from the election of 1800 until secession in 1861.
Lost Causer gross exaggerations notwithstanding, the "Southern economy" represented roughly 15% of the US total GDP of $4.4 billion in 1860.
In 1861 that Southern economy was deleted from the US totals and the result was roughly 15% loss of Federal tariff revenues.
So all claims that Southerners somehow paid the majority of Federal taxes are pure 100% bovine excrement.
Even claims that "Southern exports" somehow "paid for" ~75% of US imports (and so tariffs) are pure nonsense, since the main thing "Southern exports" paid for was "imports" of manufactured goods from the North -- i.e., woolen & cotton clothing, shoes, hats, iron products (i.e., stoves, farm implements, railroad iron, nails, etc.), paper, soap & candles.
There may also have been Midwestern food & livestock that were not captured in these statistics.
Finally, studies of Federal spending before 1860 show that it was roughly equally distributed North vs. South unless by "the North" you mean every state North of South Carolina!
Again, it's all just more Democrat bovine excrement intended to bedazzle & obscure the real facts.

No, before the 1856 presidential election there were never "two sides" because there was never an anti-slavery party. All the parties -- Democrats, Federalists, Whigs, "Know Nothings", etc. -- included voters & representatives from the Deep South to the Northeast. For examples, three of four Whig presidents -- Harrison, Tyler & Taylor were Southern born slaveholders. No major party before 1856 expressly opposed slavery. Consider, in 1787, when Thomas Jefferson proposed, and Congress enacted, abolition in the Northwest Territories there was no major Southern opposition. In 1820 Congress again addressed the Territories issue with the Missouri Compromise, about which Virginia Congressman Northern Doughfaces were a major reason there were not "two sides", and another major reason was pro-tariff Andrew Jackson Democrats. Rather there were always multiple allied or conflicting interests.

No, there had long been large sectional differences especially in tariff and trade policy, the size and scope of the federal government, the existence of a central bank, corporate subsidies, etc etc. The Tariff of Abominations and Nullification Crisis happened in the 1820s and 1830s. The letter from Jefferson I cited complaining about Northerners "draining our (ie the South's) substance" was a direct reference to the rapacious tariff policy that was proving economically ruinous to the South but which benefitted Northern special interests greatly.

Why limit it to "fire eaters"? Seems like somebody is trying to stack the deck here. There were plenty of prominent Southerners who felt slavery's days were numbered. Those included Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, The Chairman of the Confederate House Ways and Means committee Duncan Kenner, prominent cabinet secretary Judah Benjamin and others. They could see it happening in their lifetimes. The British Empire got rid of slavery in 1838. The Northern states were gradually banning slavery. The percentage of Blacks who were freedmen had steadily risen in the areas of the South that were industrializing first (ie 50% in Maryland and 25% in Virginia). The percentage of White families which did own slaves declined in both between 1850 and 1860. There were plenty of people who could see what was happening.

That is pure bovine excrement, and you well know it! The real truth of the tariff issue is that many Southerners, from Madison & Monroe to Clay, Jackson and even (for a time) Calhoun supported protective tariffs, in the latter cases even the so-called "1828 Tariff of Abominations". In 1846 most Southerners were happy to support the new Walker tariff rates which were then further reduced in 1857. In 1860 Republicans proposed to increase protective tariffs back, essentially, to their 1846 rates, and that Morrill tariff proposal was defeated by Democrats in 1860, and not mentioned by any of the earliest "Reasons for Secession" documents. So alleged "rapacious trade and tax policies" was purely a Lost Cause lie, concocted after the fact attempting to explain the otherwise inexplicable and justify the unjustifiable.

Now you're just outright lying. Southerners complained bitterly about the Tariff of Abominations. That's what caused the Nullification Crisis. The compromise solution was to get rid of those rapacious tariffs. It was only a matter of time before Northern special interests would be back to try again. Aside from the fact that Lincoln was a huge supporter of massively high tariffs, the Morrill Tariff had already passed the House in 1860 and was sure to pass the Senate given they only needed to pick off one or two Senators and that could easily be done with good ole' log rolling. Y'know like Nebraska getting an opt out to get one Senator to vote for Obamacare. They'd have thrown in a few sweeteners and gotten one more Senator on board and it was sure to pass - and everybody knew it.

As for claims that Southerners did not mention it or complain about it bitterly and repeatedly before - that's the most laughable lie. I've posted newspaper articles, statements from the declarations of causes of secession as well as the statements of numerous Southern politicians showing what a lie it is you're trying to spread here. Anybody who reads this thread can see it for himself.

And those are yet more of the essential Lost Cause Big Lies. The real truth is: all of that alleged greed & corruption came from slaveholders' Northern Democrat allies, not Republicans, which never existed before ~1856 and whose Whig predecessors were just as often Northern Doughfaces as not.

The denial of it is another of the big PC Revisionist Lies. The real truth is the North was replete with greed and corruption. Its how the whole society worked. Note I did not say "Republicans". I said the North - especially New England.....Y'know the guys who sold all those slaves in the first place.

The Lost Cause Big Lie is always to conflate Republicans with Northern Big City Doughfaced Democrats. They were not the same people.

The PC Revisionist Big Lie is to try to push the Myth of the Virtuous North. That is, to pretend the North was motivated by some deep and abiding sense of morality and that their finely tuned morals were just so offended by the existence of slavery in the Southern states. Let's just forget that it existed in the North for a very long time and that they had sold those slaves in the first place and that they were continuing to profit quite handsomely from the existence of slavery via the cash crops their labor helped to produce.

So several facts need to be pointed out here: Unlike today, when governments at all levels spend upwards of 30% of US GDP, in 1860 that number was about 2%, meaning something like 98% of US economic activity & jobs (especially Republicans') were unrelated to government spending. Then as now the vast majority of Republican voters lived on farms, in small & medium sized towns or suburbs, held jobs in agriculture, small business, manufacturing, professions & other such "middle class" occupations. Then as now Republicans were usually the minority opposition party.

Firstly I did not say "Republican". You falsely assumed that's what I was saying. I was talking about Northerners in general - including ones who were not corporate fatcats. Even average workers there benefitted enormously from the exports the South generated which they serviced - ie shipbuilding, warehousing, insurance, lawyers, bankers, etc. They also benefitted from the subsidies the federal government gave (paid overwhelmingly by Southerners) to the building of railroads, canals, etc. As well as corporate subsidies which went overwhelmingly to the North.

Then as now Democrats were an alliance of Big Business (slaveholders), globalist financial interests (of King Cotton) and Big City immigrant bosses (i.e., NY's Tammany Hall).

This is mostly false. It was the Whigs and later Republicans who were backed by big business. Lincoln was the chief counsel and lobbyist for the huge Illinois Central Railroad after all. The corporate fatcats knew exactly who they were nominating. They knew Lincoln was their man. He told audiences that massive tariffs and government subsidies were his #1 priority.

And Southern Democrats effectively ruled over Washington, DC, almost continuously from the election of 1800 until secession in 1861.

This is again false. The South had been outvoted in the House of Representatives from day one. They never had the population the North did. Its true Virginia had a run of presidents. Then again, Virginia had been the cradle of the War of Independence. It had provided Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Patrick Henry, George Mason, etc.

Lost Causer gross exaggerations notwithstanding, the "Southern economy" represented roughly 15% of the US total GDP of $4.4 billion in 1860.

PC Revisionists seem to gloss over the fact that at the time the Constitution was ratified it was the South that was by far the richest part of the country. Being much poorer, the North claimed it needed massive subsidies to get its infant industries on their feet. The South agreed in the name of national unity but once those no longer infant industries got on their feet, the North decided it liked getting a steady flow of Southern cash every year and did not want to give it up. Instead it clamored for even more. After a couple generations of this, Southerners got fed up.

In 1861 that Southern economy was deleted from the US totals and the result was roughly 15% loss of Federal tariff revenues. So all claims that Southerners somehow paid the majority of Federal taxes are pure 100% bovine excrement.

This is yet another PC Revisionist outright lie.

In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote: The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.

The U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Morrill tariff in the 1859-1860 session, and the Senate passed it on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration. President James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian who owed much of his own political success to Pennsylvania protectionists, signed it into law. The bill immediately raised the average tariff rate from about 15 percent (according to Frank Taussig in Tariff History of the United States) to 37.5 percent, but with a greatly expanded list of covered items. The tax burden would about triple. Soon thereafter, a second tariff increase would increase the average rate to 47.06 percent, Taussig writes.

So, Lincoln owed everything--his nomination and election--to Northern protectionists, especially the ones in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. He was expected to be the enforcer of the Morrill tariff. Understanding all too well that the South Carolina tariff nullifiers had foiled the last attempt to impose a draconian protectionist tariff on the nation by voting in political convention not to collect the 1828 "Tariff of Abominations," Lincoln literally promised in his first inaugural address a military invasion if the new, tripled tariff rate was not collected.

At the time, Taussig says, the import-dependent South was paying as much as 80 percent of the tariff, while complaining bitterly that most of the revenues were being spent in the North. The South was being plundered by the tax system and wanted no more of it. https://mises.org/library/lincolns-tariff-war

"Next to the demands for safety and equality, the secessionist leaders emphasized familiar economic complaints. South Carolinians in particular were convinced of the general truth of Rhett's and Hammond's much publicized figures upon Southern tribute to Northern interests." (Allan Nevins, The Emergence of Lincoln, Ordeal of the Union, Volume 2, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1950, p. 332)

South Carolina Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett had estimated that of the $927,000,000 collected in duties between 1791 and 1845, the South had paid $711,200,000, and the North $216,000,000. South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties. In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000. When in the Course of Human Events: Charles Adams

As Adams notes, the South paid an undue proportion of federal revenues derived from tariffs, and these were expended by the federal government more in the North than the South: in 1840, the South paid 84% of the tariffs, rising to 87% in 1860. They paid 83% of the $13 million federal fishing bounties paid to New England fishermen, and also paid $35 million to Northern shipping interests which had a monopoly on shipping from Southern ports. The South, in effect, was paying tribute to the North.

"What were the causes of the Southern independence movement in 1860? . . . Northern commercial and manufacturing interests had forced through Congress taxes that oppressed Southern planters and made Northern manufacturers rich . . . the South paid about three-quarters of all federal taxes, most of which were spent in the North." - Charles Adams, "For Good and Evil. The impact of taxes on the course of civilization," 1993, Madison Books, Lanham, USA, pp. 325-327

Even claims that "Southern exports" somehow "paid for" ~75% of US imports (and so tariffs) are pure nonsense, since the main thing "Southern exports" paid for was "imports" of manufactured goods from the North -- i.e., woolen & cotton clothing, shoes, hats, iron products (i.e., stoves, farm implements, railroad iron, nails, etc.), paper, soap & candles. There may also have been Midwestern food & livestock that were not captured in these statistics. Finally, studies of Federal spending before 1860 show that it was roughly equally distributed North vs. South unless by "the North" you mean every state North of South Carolina! Again, it's all just more Democrat bovine excrement intended to bedazzle & obscure the real facts.

The usual PC Revisionist lies. This is what NORTHERN newspapers said at the time:

On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."

The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. WE WERE DIVIDED AND CONFUSED UNTIL OUR POCKETS WERE TOUCHED." New York Times March 30, 1861

"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861

That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports." New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article "What Shall be Done for a Revenue?"

On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.

[demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] "a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls." The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861

December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: "In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow."Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860

"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually." - Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860

As usual BroJoeK is a joke.