Posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:37 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
An interesting argument, but also one with a very severe and glaring flaw. That speech was in January 1860. In between then and December when secession started, the Republican Party formally adopted protectionism as a central platform plank and nominated a well known protectionist as their presidential candidate. Therefore, while it is true that in January 1860 the Republican Party did not subscribe to protectionism, that changed in the summer when they enthusiastically endorsed it as a central plank.
And are you saying that Major Anderson and his 65 men laid seige to the 7,000 rebel troops in Charleston?....Walt
A coastal artillery fort has only one military purpose and that is to deny passage to ships passing within the range of it's guns.
A traditional siege entails an attempt to cut off all routes into the besieged city or fortress with the ultimate purpose of forcing a surrender. Fort Sumter had no power to "besiege" Charleston or anything else.
Whoever controlled Fort Sumter, however, had the power to either "defend" Charleston from a seaborne attack by enemy warships or to establish a maritime "blockade" of Charleston by denying passage to merchant shipping.
Major Anderson and his 85 men (not 65) had no power to "besiege" Charleston but they did have the power to establish a maritime "blockade" of Charleston if they so desired.
As Anderson had made no attempt to establish such a blockade, the prudent Confederate course of action would have been to swallow a little bit (or a lot - depending on your point of view) of territorial pride and do nothing until such a blockade was actually attempted.
It says that they didn't expect the confederates to stoop to murder. They were wrong.
Too, after completion of the Erie Canal, one needn't rely only on coastwise traffic. There was the option of transport west to the Allegheny River, and down the Ohio. Water almost all the way -- fast and cheap.
But the logic falls apart in light of the claims that the south paid anywhere between 80 and 90 percent of the tariffs. If that percentage of the imports was destined for southern consumers then why stop in New York to sort things out when just about all your cargo is going to the south to begin with? Would it not make more sense to go to Charleston to sort things out and then tranship the small amount destined for the North from there? And why would intercontinental ships want to resupply in New York if the were going to pick up their cotton in New Orleans or Mobile?
A silver dollar contained exactly 3/4 troy oz. of silver, minted at .900 fine. This down from pre-1838 standard, which IIRC would have been .925 fine (sterling), and equal to the Austrian thaler/Polish talara/Spanish dollar of .77~ troy oz.
A British sovereign (one pound in gold coin) was worth US$6.00 even. Therefore the dollar was worth 40d. in British coin, or 3s. 4d. A U.S. nickel was worth tuppence. But you're right, British or French or Austrian money -- not "currency" -- would have been the reserve standard. British currency circulated freely for several years after the Revolution, and Spanish currency ("bits") for some time after that.
Well, yes, since so much was destined for the south anyway and comparatively little was destined for the North. Or so the sothron economic giants like GOPConservative assure us. And one possible reason why the Yankees won the war was that they were familiar with the prevailing wind patterns of the Atlantic. Prevailing winds run clockwise around the North Atlantic so that the prevailing westerly winds are in the south and the prevailing easterly winds are in the north. So ships bound for the United States would tend to swing a bit south anyway rather than go on a direct line from England to New York. I guess that's why the southern planters stayed away from the shipping business, the fools would be trying to go west in the teeth of the eastern prevailing winds. Not very successful.
The statement might hold up if the bulk of the imports consisted of high value-added equipment used only in the south. For instance, the Texas Archeological Society is aware of a number of locations where heavyweight English steam engines and boilers used in the production of molasses and cane sugar are still present on the premises of former cane plantations such as those that dotted the "peach bottoms" of the Texas coastal rivers.
Sure, ship them up the interstate. The Feds can't cover all of them, can they? </sarcasm>
Looking at a map of the railway system in the U.S. around 1860 would indicate that there weren't that many lines connecting the North and the south. Make them two countries and it wouldn't be hard for the government to limit the available crossing points and slap a tariff on the goods as the came across.
If buyers up north knew they could get goods without a tariff by going to Charleston, economic law dictates they would go to Charleston. If they knew they could get the same at New Orleans, they'd go to New Orleans.
But if the buyers up North knew that the goods would be hit with a tariff as soon as they brought it up North then why would they want to pay the confederate tariff, the U.S. tariff, and all the associated transportation costs?
Unless Lincoln established inland customs houses all up the Mississippi and at every road and railway across the border from Virginia and Arkansas, goods could enter the south, paying only the low southern tariff, then be transfered up north by inland means without any further taxation.
Every road? How much travelled by road in those days? You're talking railroad and river only, and it wouldn't be hard to limit those crossing points and add the tariff to goods coming across.
And your arrogance is showing again. If the southern planter sells his cotton to a broker then where do tariffs come into play? The broker pays no tariff on the exports and the planter has his money to spend locally.
If I give my cotton to a buyer in Britain, I do so only because he is giving me something in return for that cotton. It may be a payment in money that he gives me.
And if I sell my cotton to a New York buyer then what do I care how he gets rid of it? You seem to be insisting that the southern planter was deeply involved with purchasing the goods in Europe for import. I believe that it was PeaRidge who offered the charming picture of thousands of southern planters riding their cotton bales across the pond to go on their shopping spree in Europe only to be gouged on their return by that evil tariff. A more likely scenario is that the southern planter played no part in the cycle other than selling his produce to someone who would then export it. It would stand to reason that the planter would want to limit his risk as much as he could. Selling it right out of the gin meant that he didn't have to run the risk of losing the goods in a shipwreck or be at the mercy of international trade variables. He had his cash in hand to spend as he wanted, on what he wanted.
As Clingman pointed out, goods can come in anywhere by sea on the North American continent.
And as Simmons pointed out the small amount of tariff money collected in the south indicates that there was little southern demand for the goods. Why should I accept Clingman's statistics over Simmons? Clingman offers nothing to back up his $150 million figure.
If New York has a tariff blocking goods from entering and Charleston does not have such a tariff, the foreign shippers will go to Charleston to avoid paying that tariff and the good is delivered.
If there was that much of a demand down south then the goods would have gone there directly, not through New York. They did not, so obviously demand was much greater up North than down south. The imports would have continued to go to the customer regardless of tariff because they would have done the New York merchant no good sitting on the dock in Charleston.
What a hoot. Wonder how this became the wealthiest, most powerful nation on earth?
Walt
Are we going to do this again? Seward misled the rebels, Lincoln never did. The Lincoln administration followed the same policies as the Buchanan administration as from when Buchanan purged Floyd and the other traitors along about New Years, 1861.
Walt
Lincoln was nominated because he was a moderate. No one gave a fig about tariffs; that's a smoke screen adopted by apologists in order to hold the slave power blameless.
Walt
To the contrary and you are practicing marxian labor reductionism when you suggest as much.
Well, that's nonsense blue smoke and mirrors.
The rebels had machinery stolen from the federal government that could produce 300 rifles a day. But they only had skilled labor to produce 100 rifles a day. At this same time the federal government was producing 5,000 rifles a day in 44 different factories. The rebels had no ability to either repair or build railroad engines, spikes, rails or cars anywhere in the insurgent area. As Bruce Catton said:
"As the nation's need for an adequate transportation increased, the system would grow weaker and weaker, and there was no earthly help for it....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."
The south failed in its bid for revolution because it couldn't operate as a modern economy. They downplayed and denigrated free labor. That meant they couldn't guarantee their borders. Nothing else matters.
Walt
Old Glory was raised at Fort Sumter on 12 April, 1865.
It's still there.
Walt
"[The chief obstacle to reconciliation] is the absoulute impossibility of revolutionizing Northern opinion in relation to slavery. Without a change of heart, radical and thorough, all guarantees which might be offered are not worth the paper on which they are inscribed. As long as slavery is looked upon by the North with abhorrance; as long as the south is regarded as a mere slave-breding and slave-driving community; as long as false and pernicious theories are cherish respecting the inherant equality and rights of every human being, ther can be no satisfactory political union between the two sections."
--New Orleans Bee, December 14, 1860 Quoted in "The Causes of the Civil War" Keneth M. Stampp, ed.
Looks like December, 1860 to me.
All of your rant on every subject is based on your saying that -you- know better than the people of the day. They spoke more truthfully than you do.
Walt
A lie. The South failed in it's bid because a military foe denied it the right to self-government.
A lie. The South failed in it's bid because a military foe denied it the right to self-government.
And sent them to bed without supper -- AND changed the parental code on the Playstation 2.
The south was denied the right to self-government because they agreed to be bound permanently into a perpetual federal Union. And they were denied the right to self government because they couldn't bring the military power to maintain their territorial integrity. That is how the Goths sacked Rome, Rome conquered Carthage, Titus sacked Jerusalem, Napoleon was exiled to Elba, Saddam Hussein was kicked out of Kuwait, and....get the picture? And the south couldn't bring military power because slave labor couldn't produce the power needed to compete with a free labor economy.
Walt
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