Posted on 06/11/2013 4:48:08 AM PDT by iowamark
Civil War buffs have long speculated about how different the war might have been if only the Confederacy had won formal recognition from Britain. But few recognize how close that came to happening — and how much pro-Southern sympathy in Britain was built on a lie...
Early British support for the South was further buttressed by something as mundane as a protective tariff — the Morrill Tariff — approved by Congress on March 2, 1861. This new tariff, passed to protect American infant industries, also unwittingly gave rise to a troublesome myth of mounting trans-Atlantic proportions.
The tariff had been opposed by many Southern legislators, which is why it passed so easily once their states seceded. But this coincidence of timing fed a mistaken inversion of causation among the sympathetic British public – secession allowed the tariff to pass, but many in Britain thought that the tariff had come first, and so incensed the Southern states that they left the union.
Nor was this a simple misunderstanding. Pro-Southern business interests and journalists fed the myth that the war was over trade, not slavery – the better to win over people who might be appalled at siding with slave owners against the forces of abolition...
Why was England so susceptible to this fiction? For one thing, the Union did not immediately declare itself on a crusade for abolition at the war’s outset. Instead, Northern politicians cited vague notions of “union” – which could easily sound like an effort to put a noble gloss on a crass commercial dispute.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
You don’t understand, for most Southerners the war was just to get away from the New England Yankee puritans. We just plain don’t like you. Get it? Slavery was as good a reason as any. Killing Yankees with a free rifle and ammo was really appealing to a lot of people back then, still is to a lot of folks.
Yeah but now you have football.
I bet you’re just a barrel of laughs at Tupperware parties ;-)
The war was about shooting Yankees, simple as that. I don’t understand what the blue bellies were risking their life for, that is the mystery here.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 'stopped' nothing.
Michigan Personal Freedom Acts , was approved on February 13, 1855. A Massachusetts Act called for the removal of any state official who aided in the return of runaway slaves and disbarment of attorneys assisting in fugitive slave rendition. Another section authorized impeachment of state judges who accepted federal commissioner positions authorizing them to prosecuted fugitive slaves. Ohio passed An Act to Prevent Kidnapping in 1857.
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The US military could and did drag those poor people looking for freedom back to the Dixie Hell Hole you so admire.
By what authority? Please show me the part of the Constitution that authorizes the use of force in order to insure compliance with the Compact.
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What's your next lame excuse?
LOL! It has nothing to do with excuses, but everything to do with facts.
While I enjoy a spirited discussion (and decidedly fall on the unpopular side of the argument), please do not confuse my defense of Constitutional Law as permission to be used as your personal whipping post.
Thank you.
All four volumes of his letters and uncounted essays.
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Accusing others of cherry-picking quotes is a bit hypocritical on your part. IMHO.
You’re certainly entitled to your opinion, but I believe anyone who looks at my posts for themselves can see I typically post a healthy section of text each time AND have enough courtesy to provide a link for their perusal, so its not like I'm tossing out a short blurb with nothing to support it.
Kinda hard to 'cherry-pick' when you show someone the whole orchard.
Of course you wouldn’t.
And don't care.
Of course you don’t. You are the reason why it is so difficult for anyone to build any sympathy for your position.
Not really trying for that. Just explaining the reality of the situation and exposing the reconstructed lies..
You’re failing miserably.
The South ended up paying higher prices for goods they didn’t produce. It also affected Britain’s ability to pay for cotton from the South.
AND they wanted to punish all Southerners for it. Hence came Reconstruction.
Nope. FDR is on record complaining about the Jews who kept “bothering” him about the conditions of their fellow Jews in Europe.
Can you provide an example of this “record”?
True, my mistake, it was a decision from New York. Being listed under the federal Constitutional provision at the source caused my confusion. Unlike some people though, you won’t come across me making the same assertion again.
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And as for Webster, he was speaking in the abstract and not making accusations.
Politicians tend to talk that way.
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Earlier in the speech he said,
The next sentence after your quote:
This is indeed to be understood with some qualification,
so obviously it wasn’t a carte blanch statement.
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So did the South have the right to decide on their own that the compact was broken? Webster answered that, too
He’s speaking of STATE law in your exerpt, not federal law
…. if the constitutionality of the state law…. is supposed to be violated by a state law,
The remarks concerning federal authority is further down:
But what I mean to say is, that if the public men of a large portion of the country, and especially their representatives in Congress, labor to prevent, and do permanently prevent, the passage of laws necessary to carry into effect a provision of the Constitution, particularly intended for the benefit of another part of the country, and which is of the highest importance to it, it cannot be expected that that part of the country will long continue to observe other constitutional pro-visions made in favor of the rest of the country; because, gentlemen, a disregard of constitutional duty, in such a case, cannot be brought within the corrective authority of the judicial power.
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Madison's provisions still stand, and were not met by the South in 1860.
LOL! It was a letter. Trying to insinuate it was a ‘provision’ as if it had some force in Constitutional law is, well, pretty lame….IMHO.
The 'joke' was on them, since it wasn't just the South that got *reconstructed*.
:-)
But we can agree that the Northern consumer paid the same inflated price for his tariff-protected good as the Southern consumer did. So why should it matter to him if the manufacturer who was shafting him was across town or across the country?
It also affected Britain’s ability to pay for cotton from the South.
No it didn't.
You mean like the writings of Daniel Webster or St. George Tucker?
Webster was a Senator at the time in question. As far as Tucker is concerned:
St. George Tucker was in the Revolutionary War and rose to the rank of Colonel. He communicated regularly with members of Congress, a fact proven by doing a search here:
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/hlawquery.htmlfor the exact phrase St. George Tucker, brings multiple returns.
His Annotated version of Blackstone's Commentaries on the Laws of England [of which the View of the Constitution is a part] was one of the reasons President Madison appointed him a Judge of the Virginia District Court, and his annotated Blackstone volumes are among the leather bound tomes found behind every practicing lawyer’s desk in the country.
More from the William and Mary Law Review The Legacy of St George Tucker
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Before you get TOO smarmy, TUCKER is the reason the federal government even acknowledges the plain language of the 2nd Amendment today:
St. George Tucker, Northwestern University Law Review Largely forgotten today, Tucker returned to some legal prominence last Term, when the majority in District of Columbia v. Heller cited his annotated Blackstone’s Commentaries as proof that the Second Amendment had originally been understood as an individual right to arms.
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