Posted on 11/11/2002 1:23:27 PM PST by l8pilot
Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions Evidence Builds for DiLorenzo’s Lincoln by Paul Craig Roberts
In an excellent piece of historical research and economic exposition, two economics professors, Robert A. McGuire of the University of Akron and T. Norman Van Cott of Ball State University, have provided independent evidence for Thomas J. Dilorenzo’s thesis that tariffs played a bigger role in causing the Civil War than slavery.
In The Real Lincoln, DiLorenzo argues that President Lincoln invaded the secessionist South in order to hold on to the tariff revenues with which to subsidize Northern industry and build an American Empire. In "The Confederate Constitution, Tariffs, and the Laffer Relationship" (Economic Inquiry, Vol. 40, No. 3, July 2002), McGuire and Van Cott show that the Confederate Constitution explicitly prohibits tariff revenues from being used "to promote or foster any branch of industry." By prohibiting subsidies to industries and tariffs high enough to be protective, the Confederates located their tax on the lower end of the "Laffer curve."
The Confederate Constitution reflected the argument of John C. Calhoun against the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. Calhoun argued that the U.S. Constitution granted the tariff "as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue – a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties."
McGuire and Van Cott conclude that the tariff issue was a major factor in North-South tensions. Higher tariffs were "a key plank in the August 1860 Republican party platform. . . . northern politicians overall wanted dramatically higher tariff rates; Southern politicians did not."
"The handwriting was on the wall for the South," which clearly understood that remaining in the union meant certain tax exploitation for the benefit of the north.
October 16, 2002
Dr. Roberts [send him mail] is John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. He is a former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal and a former assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury. He is the co-author of The Tyranny of Good Intentions
Beats me, but the North didn't launch a rebellion to end slavery. You should be asking how many southerners saw the election of Lincoln as a threat to their institution of slavery. The answer to that would be just about all of them. That's why they rebelled.
You're not supposed to point out that out. Don't mention that the first rounds fired at Ft. Sumter were Confederate either, or that several states seceded even before Lincoln was inaugurated (so how was he able to do all those evil things justifying it if he wasn't even in office, eh?).
Hmmmmmmm. Interesting detour.
Actually the war of Northern aggression started because someone in Dixie picked up the phone and called Washington and said “We quit!”
Wait. If someone had not ordered the phone the week before then no one would have been able to call Washington and trigger hostilities.
So there you have it, the definitive conclusion: The telephone installer caused the Civil War.
Not as long as there's a buck to be made. Shoot, for one thing, long after your grandkids have grown up there'll still be books in the fiction section with swastikas on them.
Good grief, these Lost Cause Myths are like the Energize Bunny --- they just keep going and going.
The slave states made out like bandits on the tariff, which was the primary source of federal revenues in the days before the income tax.
Over 75% of tariff revenue was collected in the North while the south accounted for 50% of federal spending. Northern taxpayers subsidized the south, not the other way around.
Roberts should take some time to look at original sources and not just rely on the propaganda turned out by kooks like DiLorenzo and the LouRockwell fanatics. He could start with Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens.
The Civil War had one and only one cause --- S-L-A-V-E-R-Y
More Little Aleck:
"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that... Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question?"
The Georgia secession document even mentions "the free trade environment now prevailing" or words to that effect.
The slave power tried to duck out to protect their property in slaves.
But thanks 18Pilot for starting another thread that blasts everything you ever thought you knew about history.
Walt
"In point of fact, the long-standing Federal sugar import tariff imposed to protect Louisiana sugar growers was extensively debated at the Montgomery Convention and, in spite the highly-touted Confederate devotion to free trade principles, was retained in the Confederacy through out the ACW. Additionally,the Confederacy placed tariffs on exports, including a duty on exported cotton. I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs! They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, as goes the modern formula for hypocrisy.It is humorous to note that the prewar Federal iron import tariff, so despised by Secessionist firebrands, was continued by the Confederacy after some of the realities of fiscal and industrial policy set in. On 16 February 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress blithely passed a bill providing for free import of railway iron. A month later, however, fiscal realities set in and an ad valorem import tax was imposed on such goods at the rate of 15%--- a rate confirmed in the Confederate Tariff Act of 21 May 1861. For furtherdetails, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill,NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."
-- From the AOL ACW area.
"...these problems , indeed, were so grave and pointed so surely towards final defeat that one is faced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom they were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who who were familiar with valor, the classics and heroric atttitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it....Essentially, this was the reliance of a group that knew little of the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran exactly parallel to Mr. Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy--the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.
The trouble was it did matter. It mattered enormously."
the Coming Fury, p. 438-439
In other words, as Rhett Butler said: "it's going to make a great deal of difference toa great many gentlemen."
Ignorance, as usual, is bliss for the neo-rebs.
Walt
LOL. Make that 'manufactured the data' and I'll agree with you. He basically did the same kind of 'research' that the anti-gun nut down at Emory got canned for. Mis-quotes, out-of-context snip of words, leaps of logic, and totally ignoring primary sources that prove his "thesis" to be silly.
There were few people in the mid-18th century America who didn't favor an American empire. But the distorted, fragile slave based economy of the south was not going to be a big help in securing it.
The great bulk of the tariff money was collected in the north.
Here is the inaugural speech of Governor Pickens of South Carolina of 12/18/60. See anything about tariffs?
"Gentlemen of the House of Representatives: --
You have called me to preside as Chief Magistrate of South Carolina at a critical juncture in our public affairs. I deeply feel the responsibilities of the position I am about to assume. For seventy-three years this State has been connected by a Federal compact with co-states under a bond of Union, for great national objects common to all. In recent years there has been a powerful party organized upon principles of ambition and fanaticism, whose undisguised purpose is to divest the Federal Government from external, and turn its power upon the internal interests and domestic institutions of these States. They have thus combined a party exclusively in the Northern States, whose avowed objects, not only endanger the peace, but the very existence of near one-half the States of this Confederacy. And in the recent election for President and Vice-President of these States, they have carried the election upon principles that make it no longer safe for us to rely upon the powers of the Federal Government or the guarantees of the Federal compact. This is the great overt act of the people of in the Northern States at the ballot box, in the exercise of their sovereign power at the polls, from which there is no higher appeal recognized under our system of government in its ordinary and habitual operations. They thus propose to inaugurate a Chief Magistrate at the head of the Army and Navy with vast powers, not to preside over the common interests and destinies of all the States alike, but upon issues of malignant hostility and uncompromising war to be urged upon the rights, the interests and the peace of half the States of this Union.
In the Southern States there are two entirely distinct and separate races, and one has been held in subjection to the other by peaceful inheritance from worthy and patriotic ancestors, and all who know the races, well know that it is the only form of government that can preserve both and administer the blessings of civilization with order and in harmony. Any thing tending to change or weaken this government and the subordination between the races not only endangers the peace, but the very existence of our society itself. We have for years warned the Northern people of the dangers they were producing by their wanton and lawless course. We have often appealed to our sister States of the South to act with us in concert upon some firm and moderate system by which we might be able to save the Federal Constitution, and yet feel safe under the general compact of union; but we could obtain no fair hearing from the North, nor could we see any concerted plan, proposed by any of our co-States of the South, calculated to make us feel safe and secure. Under all these circumstances, we now have no alternative left but to interpose our sovereign power as an independent State, to protect the rights and ancient privileges of the people of South Carolina. This State was one of the original parties to the Federal compact of union. We agreed to it, as a State, under peculiar circumstances; when we were surrounded with great external pressure, for purposes of national protection and to advance the interests and general welfare of all the States equally and Alike; and when it ceased to do this, it is no longer a perpetual union. It would be an absurdity to suppose it was a perpetual union for our ruin. The Constitution is a compact between co-States and not with the Federal Government. On questions vital, and involving the peace and safety of the parties to the compact, from the very nature of the instrument each State must judge of the mode and measure of protection necessary for her peace and the preservation of her local and domestic institutions, South Carolina will therefore decide for herself, and will, as she has a right to do, assume her original powers of government as an Independent State, and as such, will negotiate with other powers, such treaties, leagues or covenants, as she may deem proper.
I think I am not assuming too much when I say that our interests will lead her to open her ports free to the tonnage and trade of all nations, reserving to herself the right to discriminate only against those who may be our public enemies. She has fine harbors, accessible to foreign commerce, and she is in the centre of those extensive agricultural productions, that enter so largely into the foreign trade and commerce of the world; and from the basis of those comforts in food and clothing so essential to the artizans and mechanic laborers in higher latitudes, and which are so essential to the prosperity and success of manufacturing capital in the North and in Europe. I therefore may safely say it is for the benefit of all who may be interested in commerce, in manufactories, and in the comforts of artizans and mechanic labor everywhere, to make such speedy and peaceful arrangements with us as may advance the interests and happiness of all concerned.
There is one thing certain, and I think it due to the country to say so in advance, that South Carolina is resolved to assert her separate independence; and, as she acceded separately to the compact of union, so she will, most assuredly, secede separately and alone, be the consequences what they may. And I think it right to say, with no unkind feelings whatever, that, on this point, there can be no compromise, let it be offered from where it may. The issues are too grave and too momentous to admit of any counsel that looks to anything but direct and straightforward independence. In the present emergency, the firmest and most decided measures are the safest and wisest.
To our sister States, who are identified with us in interest and in feeling, we will cordially and kindly look for co-operation and for a future union, but it must be after we have asserted and resumed our original and inalienable rights and powers of sovereignty and independence. We can then form a government with them, having a common interest with peoples of homogeneous feelings, united together by all the ties that can bind States in one common destiny. From the position we may occupy towards the Northern States, as well as from our own internal structure of society, the government may, from necessity, become strongly military in its organization.
When we look back upon the inheritance that we, as a State, have had in the common glories and triumphant power of this wonderful confederacy, no language can express the feelings of the human heart, as we turn from the contemplation and sternly look to the great future that opens before us. It is our sincere desire to separate from the States of the North in peace, and leave them to develop their own civilization to their own sense of duty and of interest. But if, under the guide of ambition and fanaticism, they decide otherwise, then be it so. We are prepared for any event, and, in humble reliance upon that Providence who presides over the destinies of men and nations, we will endeavor to do our duty faithfully, bravely, and honestly. I am now ready to take the oath of office and swear undivided allegiance to South Carolina."
There's not a word about tariffs there. Tariffs were just not an irritant in the pre-ACW era.
Walt
I think people during this era where much more knowledgeable about economic matters than we are today. I read an article a few weeks back (sorry can't provide url) about how ordinary people used to debate the gold standard (when we had one) and I assume they knew about tariffs and their effects. Classical liberal political and economic theory was much much wipespread in those days. IMHO. I think we both suffer and benefit from the effects of a intellectual division of labor; i.e., why should I bother to think for myself, when I can just line up a few experts who confirm my prejudices. Course, one could argue that that has allways been the case. IMHO, real economic understanding among real folks is saddly lacking. Most folks have a dim idea that the markets should being rising and if not the Feds need to do something, etc.
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.