Posted on 03/17/2012 4:12:31 AM PDT by BroJoeK
They are fascinating articles.
They are especially interesting when trying to assess the oddball attempt to equate the Confederacy with Marxism.
Compare this review of Marx and Engel's Civil War writings with the claim that there was something 'Marxist' about South:
The Civil War opened the road for the final triumph of the bourgeois-democratic revolution in the United States. During the fight to the death with the slavocracy, Marx and Engels in their capacity as revolutionary labor leaders correctly stressed the positive, democratic, progressive and revolutionary significance of the struggle waged by the bourgeois republic. They based their practical political policy on the fact that the struggle of the working class for its own emancipation would be promoted by the victory of the North and thrown back by the triumph of the Confederacy. At the same time they never proclaimed their political confidence in the Republican bourgeoisie, freely criticized their conduct of the war, and maintained their independence vis-à-vis their temporary allies.
Well I suppose that it's possible that Marx and Engels simply weren't aware of what Marxism is, and so championed the North when they should have been cheering on the Confederate 'slavocracy'. Either that or the revisionists who are making the Confederacy = Marxism argument are fools.
Sanctimony? So is it that going to be your latest accusation, only to be abandoned when you get asked to put up the evidence?
Okay I’ll play along. Let’s see you produce an example of sanctimony in my posting.
“Noun 1. sanctimony - the quality of being hypocritically devout
sanctimoniousness hypocrisy - insincerity by virtue of pretending to have qualities or beliefs that you do not really have”
Funny how often your posts are some form of attempted insult rather than any kind of reasoned argument. But then I guess you stick with what you do best.
More that might be of interest. The Revolutionaries of 1848 are an often overlooked influence on the American Civil War. The 48ers fled Europe after their failed revolutions (Marx and Engels going to England). Many went to the United States, and a number went on the be Union Army Generals: Wedemeyer, Dana, Schurz, Sigel, Willich being a few of them.
“Marx and Engels backed the Republican Party and its candidate Lincoln. Although it’s hard to fathom today, in 1860 the Republican Party had socialists, abolitionists, and other radicals in its membership. It was a new party that had emerged from the conflict in the Kansas territory prior to the Civil War. The Republican Party was perceived as a threat to the slave-owners and their allies. Abolitionists and other radicals debated joining the Republican Party. Could its leadership be trusted? Were the more prominent members of the party really serious in ending slavery? Many came to the conclusion that the party was at least moving, or could be moved, towards that end. European revolutionaries, political refugees from the failed 1848 revolutions, joined the Republican Party. These revolutionaries also took up arms and fought for the Union.”
“Revolutionaries such as former Prussian officer August Willich, Engels commander in 1849, exemplified this. Willich was also a leader of the Communist League with Karl Marx, until a falling out with Marx over Willich’s idea of sending an armed force back into the German lands to restart the revolution. Marx argued that this wild plan would fail. Willich later gave up his scheme and moved to the United States. He eventually resided in the large German émigré community of Cincinnati, where he edited a radical newspaper. He would train the all-German Ninth Ohio Infantry regiment, whose volunteer soldiers had belonged to the radical Turnverein in Germany. Before the war, many members of the Ninth Ohio fought against the anti-immigrant chauvinism of the Know Nothing movement of the 1850s. They came to the conclusion that fighting for the Union was participating in a revolutionary war. Gustav Kammerling, a colonel in the Ninth, had been elected in 1848 as leader of a revolutionary militia. He also later fought alongside Engels and Willich in the Palatinate. The Ninth Ohio’s regimental history, Die Neuner, contains many interesting anecdotes illustrating how the soldiers viewed the Civil War as a continuation of the 1848 Revolution. The Ninth and other German regiments would sing revolutionary songs into battle, demanded that they be allowed to speak in their native German, and also successfully fought against General Sherman’s ban on alcohol. They got to keep their kegs of beer.”
http://www.isreview.org/issues/80/feat-civilwar.shtml
It is accurate but your assertions are incorrect.
Your error was in quoting what you believed to be tariff income from column 3 which is clearly marked Federal Receipts.
Column 3 or total federal receipts from that year, was the sum total of tariff collections, income from the sale of public lands, and other sources of income for the government.
The tariff revenue by year is in column 1, and is, as you can see, less than the total revenue.
Unfortunately that makes all of your assertions and conclusions invalid.
I will note that the tariff income is described as a percent, but that is a percent of the imported item, itself given an arbitrary value that imperfectly matches its real value.
It may be instructive to compare federal receipts for a few years to nominal estimates of the GDP.V
http://www.measuringworth.com/datasets/usgdp/result.php
Just to be completely arbitrary, lets pick 1800, 1825 and 1850. GDP and tariff dollars in then year nominal millions of dollars.
year____GDP_est._____tariff_____Percent
1800_____476_________9.1______1.9%
1825_____814________20.1______2.5%
1850____2556________39.7______1.6%
It is important to realize that tariff incomes were minimal, and the US federal government was much closer to the libertarian ideal than we can imagine today. This puts the lie to the pretense that the tariff rates in the above years were fit cause for major whining.
Sure the Republican party had socialists then, just as it has socialists now. It is a mistake to think they had much influence.
Most of the new Republican party were Whigs, like Lincoln. The Speaker of the House was a Whig-Republican. The Republicans were a majority party in the nation, as shown by their dominance in the House. The number of socialists elected was small to non-existent.
I always figured that modern communism looked at the antebellum south as its model.
With the Party members living in the “Big House”, and the rest of the proles given enough to live on as long as they were productive. Oh, how hard the party members have to think to justify their life of ease in the “Big House”.
And of course the proles were relieved of all that thinking stuff, in return for their ration of red pottage.
“I always figured that modern communism looked at the antebellum south as its model.”
Well it figures that you would figure that, judging from your posts.
Of course there is zero evidence supporting your imaginary history, whereas the actual historical evidence that we do have is that Marx and Engels despised the Confederate ‘slavocracy’ and were enthusiastic cheerleaders for Lincoln and the Union war effort.
It’s all through their writings on the American Civil War and available to anyone who bothers to read what they wrote. Evidently that doesn’t include you, or ‘Glenn Beck’s favorite historian’ for that matter, which could explain some of Beck’s goofier ideas.
“The Republicans were a majority party in the nation, as shown by their dominance in the House. The number of socialists elected was small to non-existent.”
Of course the Republicans weren’t “a majority party” at all, having won the 1860 election with less that 40% of the vote in a four way race.
It was a purely sectional party and didn’t receive a single electoral vote below the Mason-Dixon Line.
The socialists in American politics at the time of the Civil War were the 48’ers who had fled Germany after their failed revolution in 1848. Carl Schurz is a prime example, and he was an early and active member of the Republican Party from the time of its founding as were many of his fellow 48ers. The socialism of the 48ers still echoes on in American politics today in the leftism of regions like Wisconsin were the 48ers settled:
http://comminfo.rutgers.edu/~dalbello/FLVA/activists/48contribs.html
You can also read his thoughts during the nullification crisis.
You use the term “true liberty” which implies that your thinking process produces some abstract other than liberty. You also are failing to recognize the difference between liberty and egalitarianism, which you continue to use interchangeably in order to advance your arguments. Your acting out frustration is contrived I think, but with your errors in understanding, it may simply be just cognitive dissonance.
It is evident that you are not a student of either the issue of liberty or the republican form of government.
You can continue to try to argue with me and become increasingly frustrated in your efforts to establish a false premise, or beg off. Whatever.
Marx despised southern slavocracy for the same reason that National Socialists disliked Soviet Socialists.
Competition, from which it was difficult to distinguish their message.
Please provide a source for that quote.
Also, you may be aware that as of 1854 with the introduction of the warehousing act, goods were received by a buyer in a federal warehouse with tariffs being charged on the actual purchase price. Those later transshipped to Southern ports were charged a tariff at that location. In your table you list the tariff rates as:
1800 _____9.1 percent
1825 _____20.1 "
1850 _____39.7 "
According to the BroJoe's tables he presented, the rates were:
1800 _____10.7
1825 _____22.3
1850 _____22.9
I am unsure as to what leads you to using words such as "minimal" or "libertarian" since those are political, not economic terms, and in no way is mathematically defined.
If you are inclined to make comments on Souther reaction, then include data for the Morrill Tariff, which was the issue, and not data from 30 years before.
Keeping in mind that increases of percentages in the range of 3-4% were inflationary, reduced the market for Southern goods not only in Europe but also Central and South America, and resulted in devaluation of the next year's production when tariffs increased.
But,the point is that you are changing the premise of the discussion to cover Brojoe's mistaken post. Whatever.
Who was the speaker of the House in 1860? From what party was he?
James Lawrence Orr, from New Jersey, Republican.
Representing a majority of the people, elected by a majority of the people’s House.
Oops, my bad. James Lawrence Orr from SC was a Democrat, but was the predecessor to the Speaker in 1860.
William Pennington was the Speaker in 1860, a Republican from New Jersey.
"White working men, almost all women, and all other people of color were denied the franchise.
"At the time of the American Civil War, most white men were allowed to vote, whether or not they owned property, but literacy tests, poll taxes, and even religious tests were used in various places, and most white women, people of color, and Native Americans still could not vote.”
source Wiki
This is in response to this comment from you: "Glad you agree that your previous position that the Federal constitution barred classes of people from the vote was false."
Of course the Morril tariff was not the issue, it not being passed at the time that the southern states pretended to secession.
If they had merely voted against it, it would have not passed.
Of course that would have required courage, virtue, loyalty to their oaths, and was accordingly beyond them.
yes, people were denied the right to vote.
The federal constitution was silent on it at that time.
It is incorrect to blame the federal union for the acts of states.
North Carolina was (interesting to me) a state that had a large number of freedmen who could vote until 1835 when their right to vote was revoked.
The word “minimal” refers to the taxes gathered as a ratio of the GDP.
When the tax rate overall is less than 2% that seems pretty honestly described as minimal. The radical growth in GDP seems to indicate the phenomenal success of the “American System”.
Let’s see:
A misrepresentation, a lie, and an insult....all in one post.
Keep up the good work.
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