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To: Non-Sequitur
Nonsense.

Not at all. The north enjoyed lesser losses due to the tariff than the south because they regained some of the consumer surplus through the protected industries. The south did not have those same industries and therefore suffered from a greater loss. Add to that the fact that the Morrill bill virtually killed off all American trade with Europe, and the southern export economy would have been ruined.

They grew wealthy through their exports and there was nothing that the tariff did to hinder that.

Your economic ignorance is showing. Trade is a circular process - goods come in and goods go out. In a roundabout way, they essentially pay for each other. Stick a barrier in that circle of trade and the whole process will grind to a halt. That is exactly what happened after 1861's Morrill Act and virtually every other similar protectionist tariff hike in American history.

They bragged that their lack of manufacturing and industry and finance protected them from the economic downturns of the time.

Insofar as the business cycle is concerned, perfectly competitive sectors do exhibit some qualities that ease natural downturns. The same does not apply though when those downturns are artificially created by the government, as is the case with a tariff.

328 posted on 02/21/2003 10:22:29 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
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To: GOPcapitalist; groanup; sweetliberty
A little on Tariffs

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.

344 posted on 02/22/2003 7:53:26 AM PST by SCDogPapa (In Dixie Land I'll take my stand to live and die in Dixie)
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