Posted on 02/17/2003 10:41:15 AM PST by stainlessbanner
Where do you get off demanding a statement from me? How about I demand that you immediately criticize Abraham Lincoln for his terrible racist beliefs and contempt for the U.S. Constitution? Let's here it. You have not heard one word from me that would indicate I have a racist bone in my body yet you imply that by your cheap shot. Stick to your obsessive cutting and pasting. I grew up with, played ball with, fought against, fought alongside, worked for, managed, went to weddings of and funerals of descendents of slaves all my life. Some were the finest people I knew. Others were much like you: obsessed.
Slavery is an abhorrent institution but in the 1800's was widely practiced all over the world. Dinesh D'Souza made the case that the Southern slave had a higher standard of living than the majority of people on the planet at the time.
My parents and grandparents are dying off. This was a generation of Southerners who still used black servants in the household. In some cases that would be a cleaning woman coming in once a week, in other cases it would be a full time housekeeper who had equal leeway in raising the children. There was a mutual respect that I recognized from the time I was a small child. Granted that generation did not bend over backwards to bring about the civil rights era, etc. and that was their failing. But they remembered their servants in their wills, helped send their kids to school, made sure they had good cars to drive, etc.
So stick to what you know and let alone that which you don't. On second thought: just stick a fork in it.
I don't know. I knew I wouldn't get it so it was a wasted effort.
How about I demand that you immediately criticize Abraham Lincoln for his terrible racist beliefs and contempt for the U.S. Constitution?
I'm not the one criticizing President Lincoln and calling him racist and accusing him of abusing the Constitution while at the same time remaining silent on Jefferson Davis.
You have not heard one word from me that would indicate I have a racist bone in my body yet you imply that by your cheap shot.
I have not accused you of being racist. I don't know you well enough to make that decision. I'm accusing you of being a hypocrite. There's a difference.
Dinesh D'Souza made the case that the Southern slave had a higher standard of living than the majority of people on the planet at the time.
They still would have a higher standard of living than most people on this planet but that isn't a reason to bring it back. It was wrong. Human beings bought and sold like cattle to the benefit of others simply because of the color of their skin is an abomination. If you can't see that the moral repugnance of such an institution transcends simple economics then nothing I can say will change that. And respecting an individual while seeing nothing wrong with discriminating against them as a race is wrong, too, regardless of how it is suger-coated.
At the Republican National Convention in Chicago, the protectionist tariff was a key plank. As Luthin writes, when the protectionist tariff plank was voted in, "The Pennsylvania and New Jersey delegations were terrific in their applause over the tariff resolution, and their hilarity was contagious, finally pervading the whole vast auditorium." Lincoln received "the support of almost the entire Pennsylvania delegation" writes Luthin, "partly through the efforts of doctrinaire protectionists such as Morton McMichael . . . publisher of Philadelphia’s bible of protectionism, the North American newspaper."
Returning victorious to his home of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln attended a Republican Party rally that included "an immense wagon" bearing a gigantic sign reading "Protection for Home Industry." Lincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) economic guru, Pennsylvania steel industry publicist/lobbyist Henry C. Carey, declared that without a high protectionist tariff, "Mr. Lincoln’s administration will be dead before the day of inauguration."
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. Then along comes Lincoln and the Republicans, tripling (!) the rate of tariff taxation (before the war was an issue). Lincoln then threw down the gauntlet in his first inaugural: "The power confided in me," he said, "will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion--no using force against, or among the people anywhere" (emphasis added).
"We are going to make tax slaves out of you," Lincoln was effectively saying, "and if you resist, there will be an invasion." That was on March 4. Five weeks later, on April 12, Fort Sumter, a tariff collection point in Charleston Harbor, was bombarded by the Confederates. No one was hurt or killed, and Lincoln later revealed that he manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot, which helped generate war fever in the North.
If 80 percent of the tariff was paid by the south then why was 95% of the tariff collected in three Northern ports? If the south consumed so much of the total imports then wouldn't it make more sense to send those imports to Charleston and Mobile and New Orleans where the buyers were? Instead they went to New York and Boston and Philadelphia where you say only 20% of the demand was. Why was that?
Nearly every reputable historian agrees that Lincoln freed the slaves as a war measure. It was a brilliant tactical move. Having been badly battered during the first 2 years of the war, and fearing British and/or French intervention on the side of the Confederacy, he issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which just about guaranteed that the Europeans would not intervene. The Emancipation Proclamation and the loss of Jackson were the twin blows in the first 6 months of 1863 from which the Confederacy never recovered.
The Confederate political leadership, overruling the recommendations of its generals (including Lee and Patrick Cleburne in the West, among others), would not support a plan to emancipate the slaves who fought for the South. They only adopted such a plan in 1865 when it was too late. Tragically, from the southern perspective, Cleburne was denied further promotions as punishment for advancing this plan in 1862, in spite of his sterling battlefield record.
U.S. sugar prices are almost three times higher than on world markets, in part because imports of raw sugar are limited by law to 1.4 million short tons, including 151,885 tons from Mexico. That benefits sugar cane and sugar beet farmers in states like Louisiana, Florida and Minnesota, but boosts raw material prices for sugar-consuming companies like Coca-Cola Co. and Mars Inc.
Sounds like a southern protective tariff to me.
I am neither dishonest or putting MY spin on anything. I should have posted the entire article. It can be found here : http://www.mises.org/fullarticle.asp?control=952
Look around you, and despite the lies about the benefits of diversity, the only places on earth that are really building, are those where there is a sense of cultural integrity--a sense of heritage and descent, a building generation by generation."
Well worth repeating...
Moreover, the anti-America/Christian-hating left's modus operandi of discrediting and invalidated ALL vestiges of America's true heritage and tradition MUST be maintained to complete it's ultimate agenda of destroying 'E Pluribus Unum.'
One correction. Even then the southern congress could not bring itself to freeing the slaves. If you read the legislation, here , which was submitted for debate in February 1865 it calls for the enlistment of 200,000 black troops and promises nothing in return.
The failure of the Confederate government to embrace emancipation says more about their political ineptitude than their moral inferiority. By the way, your analogy about the Nazis and incineration is really a hoot. Where did you get that one, the editorial page of "The Nation."? LOL
If this was that big a worry, the economics of slavery would have killed it in a couple of decades with everyone realizing that it was more cost effective to pay them than to keep them slave.
Get a grip. Taking the confederate flag off the courthouse wall and the statehouse spire isn't the end of the world. There's plenty of southern heritage to go around after the rebellion's battle flag is finally put away. Unless by this comment you are suggesting that the only true americans are southern, in which case good luck in DU.
It's easy to say that looking back over the last 140 years. But in 1861 there wasn't a single southern leader who believed that slavery was dying or didn't believe that their children and grandchildren would still be enjoying it.
Secondly, the death of slavery would have required societal changes as much as economic changes, maybe even more than economic changes. The majority of slave owners owned less than 5 slaves, and a large percentage of those were middle-class whites living in cities and towns who used the slaves for domestic help and not as plantation labor. Economics would have affected them less, they just wanted their maids or cooks or gardeners or grooms. Their view of slavery as an institution would have to have changed.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.