Posted on 03/17/2012 4:12:31 AM PDT by BroJoeK
;-)
John C. Calhoun to Percy Walker, October 23, 1847, in Robert L. Meriwether, et.al., ed., The Papers of John C. Calhoun, 25 vols. (Columbia: USC Press, 1959), 24:617. During the debate over the Wilmot Proviso, Calhoun said "I go farther [than merely insisting on national protection of slave property] and hold that if we have a right to hold our slaves, we have the right to hold them in peace and quiet and that the toleration in the non-slaveholding States of the establishment of societies and presses, and the delivery of lectures, with the express intention of calling into question our right to our slaves [and enticing runaways and abolition are] not only a violation of [my interjection here: AHEM!] international laws but also the Federal compact."
Now, for a moment, just consider this breath-taking order of events---that the great Calhoun, defender of the Constitution, Neo-Confederates would have him be, appeals FIRST to international law, then to the "federal compact"!!! Second, there is no wiggle room in this statement. Calhoun makes it absolutely and totally clear that not only is slavery to be protected in its practice, but it must be shielded from any and all public criticism or utterance, including newspapers and speeches. Here is that great defender of "liberty," which of course we really know means the liberty of a white man to hold a black man as property, insisting that to protect slavery requires enslaving whites to his speech codes. Sounds like communism and liberalism to me.
Moreover, if you would but substitute "homosexual marriage" for "slavery," I think you would see clearly what Calhoun had in mind: the public ban on any criticism of an institution that some (many? most?) find utterly immoral and deplorable.
Finally, while I don't expect you to take my word for anything, I'd advise that you stop running to Wikipedia or online Liberty Fund (which I have spoken to and written for many times) sources but do some real historical research. If you had bothered to consult any of the sources sources I've posted here throughout this debate---which apparently few have done (and I'll refresh your memories: Loewenberg's "Freedom's Despots," my own "Brothers in Chains" article, James Huston's "Calculating the Value of the Union,") you'd find a non-Hofstadterian interpretation of Calhoun and Fitzhugh that is internally consistent.
You and others keep wanting to somehow deflect from Fitzhugh and Calhoun the reality of their socialist, pro-slavery (same thing) positions on the grounds that either someone else (Marx) held them later, or someone else (Filmer) may have held them earlier. When evaluating them in historical context, this is appropriate. When evaluating their ideas as "philosophers" or theorists, it is totally inappropriate and misleading.
For example, one can evaluate Hitler's race hatred in historical context of the 1920s Weimar Republic---a reasonable thing to do---but it does not in any way change or exculpate his actual disgusting theories, which he continued to stand by. So when Fitzhugh says (to which none of you have a denial) that slavery is the ultimate form of socialism, or when Calhoun says that we must not only have guarantees that protect the ownership of slaves in principle but which PROHIBIT all criticism of slavery as an institution, then we have to take those as political/economic principles and evaluate them on their face.
Pelham: "It is part of a lengthy discussion about the unfairness of the tariff to agricultural States.
There is no mention of slavery at all:"
donmeaker (from post #160): "The tariff amounts paid by the south were not exorbitant."
In fact, Calhoun's views, especially regarding slavery are well known.
"Improper meddling" would be Calhoun's response to any Federal actions against slavery.
For those not 100% familiar with Calhoun, here are the basics:
Calhoun began his political career as a nationalist, modernizer, and proponent of a strong national government and protective tariffs.
After 1840 he switched to states' rights, limited government, nullification and free trade.
He is best known for his intense and original defense of slavery as something positive, for his inventing the theory of minority rights in a democracy, and for pointing the South toward secession from the Union.
Devoted to the principle of liberty (though not for slaves) and fearful of corruption, Calhoun built his reputation as a political theorist by his redefinition of republicanism to include approval of slavery and minority rights—with the white South the minority in question.
To protect minority rights against majority rule he called for a "concurrent majority" whereby the minority could sometimes block offensive proposals.
Increasingly distrustful of democracy, he minimized the role of the Second Party System in South Carolina.
Calhoun's defense of slavery became defunct, but his concept of concurrent majority, whereby a minority has the right to object to or even veto hostile legislation directed against it, has been incorporated into the American value system.[1]
Calhoun asserted that Southern whites, outnumbered in the United States by voters of the more densely-populated Northern states were one such "minority" deserving special protection in the legislature."
On Tariffs:
The key points to remember are that tariff's were the Federal government's major income source, and rates went up and down over the years.
The following comes from this link:
For examples:
So the take-away here is that a lot of political philosophising over the "injustice" of high tariffs did not correspond to the actual tariffs then in effect.
Maybe it's the other way around. Instead of a Wallace or a Thurmond, someone with deep Southern roots, Southern states are going for guys from Pennsylvania (though both have Southern ties).
Newt Gingrich or Rick Santorum as a spokesman for "Southern conservative principles" may be an indication of how much things have changed in fifty years or so. Of course, the fact that these guys are a lot less likely to carry states like Pennsylvania does tend to cloud things.
“The tariff amounts paid by the south were not exorbitant. In fact the amount of tariff paid in southern ports was a small fraction of the amount paid in northern ports.”
You have it exactly backwards.
The industrial north wasn’t importing manufactured goods, they were producing them. Their industries were protected from lower priced European competition by the tariff. Their wages and profits benefited from the tariff.
The agricultural south purchased its manufactured goods from outside the south. The tariff raised the cost to them of imported European manufactures, or if they bought from the north required them to pay the higher prices that northern industries could command due to the protection rendered by the tariff.
Go try to sell your tariff theory to some libertarians, they’ll give you a lesson in how tariffs work.
“That’s not the quotation.”
Not the quotation? Who are you kidding? The quotation I posted comes from directly from Marco Bassani’s Arator article:
““improper intermeddling of the Government with the private pursuits of individuals, who must understand their own interests better than the Government”
and he footnotes his source:
Calhoun’s “South Carolina Exposition, Rough Draft”.
That’s not the Wilmot Proviso debate, which is completely irrelevant to Calhoun’s ‘Exposition’.
It’s not that tough to check footnotes. I’ll bet even the Liberty Fund knows how to look up footnotes, which seems to be difficult for some of their critics.
What you are doing is “asserting the premise”.
Your premise is that Calhoun and Fitzhugh were socialists or marxists. But rather than making a case for this premise you simply write as if this were established fact. You assemble a series of facts where Calhoun and Fitzhugh appear to be in concord with Marxist belief and run with it.
In order to do so you ignore other sources of political thought that were known to influence these men (Filmer in Fitzhugh’s particular case), and you likewise ignore how their own positions contradict the positions of socialism. You ignore the fact that Marxism sees capitalism as a phase leading to socialism, while Fitzhugh was a critic of industrial capitalism entirely. The socialists weren’t trying to hold on to the pre-capitalist world of the ante-bellum South. Fitzhugh was.
Where do you find Marx or any other socialist of the 19th century defending slavery? You don’t. Not only that, but Marx was demonstrably a fan of Abraham Lincoln and the Union side in the Civil War. He was the author of that fan mail letter the First International sent to Lincoln.
Now I suppose it’s possible to cherry-pick Lincoln in order to show that Lincoln was a “Communist” at heart. Lincoln shut down newspapers in the North to control political thought, and jailed a few thousand political opponents without trial.
Like Marx he was a promoter of centralized, consolidated government. Marx advocated the income tax and Lincoln implemented one. Lincoln’s war against southern secession prefigured the Brezhnev Doctrine, once in you’re in you can’t get out. He waged a terrible war on his own country, something highly typical of the communist world.
So it’s not so hard to play this game. Look for the apparent similarities, ignore the inconvenient differences. The trouble is Lincoln never joined a socialist movement. Neither did Calhoun or Fitzhugh.
I find Marx’ articles on the American Civil War fascinating! They were written for the New York Tribune and the Vienna Presse. He wrote private letters on the topic as well. Absolutely remarkable!
It’s not a game. It’s an easy adage. If it walks like a marxist and quacks labor theory of value like a marxist, it’s a marxist-—whenever it occured.
And as for checking footnotes, you appear to have some difficulty staying on topic, which isn't surprising as the subject is not favorable to your perspective.
So, enjoy your neo-Confederate romance with the marxist/socialist Calhoun, the slave owner who would BAN all free speech to protect his black property. If you think that in any way aligns you with the cause of liberty, you are deluded to the max and clearly above my reason. You are in the old "spam" basket from here on out. Feel free to post your "oh yeah?" I won't be reading any more of your posts.
We were addressing Calhoun's powerful 1848 speech that called for legislative action underpinned by the Constitution and the concept of liberty instead of the misinterpreted notions of egalitarianism.
Remember Calhoun's words: ....(The issue) Has the northern States the power which they claim, to exclude the southern from emigrating freely, with their property, into Territories belonging to the United States, and to monopolize them for their exclusive benefit?....
If he (historians studying the failure of the Constitution) should possess a philosophical turn of mind, and be disposed to look at more remote and recondite causes, he will trace it to a proposition which originated in a hypothetical truism, but which, as now expressed and now understood, is the most false and dangerous of all political error.
The proposition to which I allude has become an axiom in the minds of a vast majority on both sides of the Atlantic, and is repeated daily, from tongue to tongue, as an established and incontrovertible truth; it is, that “all men are born free and equal.” I am not afraid to attack error, however deeply it may be intrenched, or however widely extended, whenever it becomes my duty to do so, as I believe it to be on this subject and occasion.
“Up to the states”...........and that was the fundamental concept that guided the development of the Constitution, and especially the Bill of Rights.
It was also the fundamental underpinning of the Confederate Constitution.
“...thus enslaving poor whites to support the rich.”
Any source for that notion?
Who did you kill to become the judge of what's relevant and what's not?
You are one of those annoying people who keep posting quotes that they can't or won't discuss or analyze or defend.
If someone claims to defend liberty by attacking the idea that all people have liberties from birth or nature and advocates the idea that some people have liberties and others don't, that person is no true friend of liberty.
Or do you really think that denying some whole class of people basic civil and human rights somehow furthers the cause of freedom? Because that's what's at stake here.
Could you deal with that point? Try to engage it in some way -- agree, disagree, analyze -- or stop making asinine posts to me.
Lesson not needed. The southern slaves were not much into luxury goods, or much into the manufactured products that were converted from imported raw materials.
The smaller southern population, and the even smaller share of people who consumed manufactured products at a high rate means that tariffs were paid mostly by the people of the north.
Glad you agree that your previous position that the Federal constitution barred classes of people from the vote was false.
http://www.questia.com/googleScholar.qst?docId=5000634299
has a good reference on the slave patrol system.
Well someone here may not know how to check footnotes, but it isn’t me.
I read Bassani’s footnote and then looked up the original Calhoun source it referred to. You should try doing that sometime.
The fact that your reply to me quoted some of Calhoun’s words, and then tried to pass them off as coming from a wholly unrelated work is a lesson for anyone curious about the quality of your scholarship.
It’s apparent that you are willing to play fast and loose with your sources, if that furthers the hobbyhorse you are currently riding.
” You are in the old “spam” basket from here on out. Feel free to post your “oh yeah?” I won’t be reading any more of your posts.”
How will I ever endure such a fate?!
But I congratulate you on having such a policy. It keeps you from having to answer critics who poke holes in your goofier revisionist theories.
My guess is with your usual sanctimony...
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