Posted on 02/26/2003 1:10:37 PM PST by GOPcapitalist
The South and the Northern Tariff - Speech of Senator Thomas Clingman, North Carolina, March 19, 1861 (Congressional Globe 36-2 p. 1476-77)
CLINGMAN: Mr. President, I admire the closing rhetoric of the Senator form Rhode Island (Simmons); but I want to call his attention to one or two questions which I put to him, and which he does not apprehend, but which I think are practical. The Senator attaches very little weight to the imports that go into the seven States that have seceded. He thinks it a matter of very little moment whether those States remain out or in. I endeavored to show him the error; but perhaps too hurriedly for him to apprehend my meaning; and I beg leave to recapitulate, for I think if there is a practical mind on the floor of the Senate, the Senator?s is one, and I want to see how he will get this Government out of the difficulty. I say to him, that I am as yet a representative of the Government of the United States, and shall faithfully represent what I believe to be in its interests, while I stand here. But let us see how this will affect the revenue. There were made last year about four million six hundred thousand bales of cotton. About two hundred thousand bales of it were made in North Carolina, and I suppose about as much in Tennessee, and about the same amount in Arkansas. There were very nearly four million bales of cotton made in the seven States that have seceded, worth fully $200,000,000. Very little of it was consumed in those States ? not more, perhaps, than three or four millions? worth ? and the rice crop exported exceeded that, and Louisiana made, I believe, about twenty millions? worth of sugar. I do not know what the amount of the sugar crop was last year; it has fluctuated; but it must have been at least that; it has sometimes been more. I think it fair, therefore, to assume that those seven States sent out of their limits from two hundred to two hundred and twenty million dollars? worth of produce. They get back a return in some way. It is not to be supposed it was given away. My friend from Texas suggests to me that they got it in wood-screws. No doubt they did get some of them; and they may have been gotten up in the State of Rhode Island, for aught I know. I was about to say that they must have got back $220,000,000 worth of products in some form. A portion of the money ? not very much ? went for horses and mules; and grain and other agricultural products, but much the larger amount of it went for articles that were dutiable. All of them were not actually imported, as many of them came from New England and elsewhere; but they were dutiable articles, and, but for the duties would have been furnished at a lower rate from abroad. I take it, therefore, that off the dutiable articles there must be twenty or thirty million ? certainly twenty million ? of revenue that would, in the ordinary course, be collected off those States with the tariff which we had last year.
Now, it is idle for the honorable Senator to tell me that the importations at Charleston and Savannah were small. I know that the merchants have gone from those cities to New York, and bought goods there; that goods are imported into New York are bought there, and then are sent down and deposited at Charleston, New Orleans, and other places. But, in point of fact, here is an enormously large consumption of dutiable articles, from one hundred to one hundred and fifty million. These people make their own provisions mainly, and cotton to sell, and do very little in the way of manufactures. Their manufactured goods came from the United States, or from foreign countries. I put the question to the honorable Senator, how much duty does he think this Government is going to lose by the secession of those States, supposing, of course, that they do not pay us any duties; for if New England goods are to pay the same duty with those of Old England, and Belgium, and France, we all know that the New England goods will be excluded, unless they make up their minds to sell much cheaper than they have been heretofore doing? I was curious, the year before last, in going through Europe, to ascertain, as well as I could, the value of labor and the prices of articles, and I was astonished at the rate at which goods may be purchased all over the continent, compared with similar articles here. The reasons they are not furnished as cheap here, is partly due to the circuitous trade. For example: houses in England purchase up articles in Belgium, France, Germany, and even Italy, and make a handsome profit; they then send them to New York, and handsome profits are made there by the wholesale dealers and, finally, they get down south, and in this way they are very high; but the tariff has also operated very largely. That Senator knows, as well as I do, and everybody knows, that if there be direct trade with Europe by these States; if goods are not to go around through New York, and not to pay duties ? and you may be sure they will not go there under his tariff, for nobody will pay a duty of fifty or seventy-five per cent. on what he imports, when he can send the goods to another port for fifteen or nineteen per cent. ? the result will be, that these States certainly will pay this Government no duties at all.
But it does not stop there. Merchants from my own State go down to Charleston, and lay in their goods. This Government, as things now stand, is not going to get any revenue from them. If goods are imported at Charleston at ten, or fifteen, or nineteen per cent. duty, whatever is paid will go into the coffers of the confederate States, and merchants will go down from my State and buy their goods there; and thus you lose a great portion of the North Carolina trade. It will be the same with Tennessee; it will be the same with the Mississippi valley. Now, what revenue are we going to get to support our Government under th epresent condition of things? The honorable Senator is very adroit in parrying questions. I asked him, when he spoke of the free list, if the manufacturers were willing that their chemicals, their dye stuffs, and coarse wool, that has been admitted free, should be taxed; and he replied, ?They are willing to have tea and coffee taxed.?
SIMMONS: The Senator will pardon me. I said, if we wanted money I would tax them, whether they were willing or not.
CLINGMAN: Exactly; but when pressed on that point, he turns it off on the tea and coffee. But, sir, we are legislating here for the United States ? all of us who are here, except by friend from Texas, who is kind enough to stay with us and help us legislate, until he gets official notice of the ordinance of his State. I thank him for his kindness. I think he is doing us a favor to stay here and help the wheels along. It needs the help of Hercules and the wagoner both to get us out of the mud. I want to know of honorable Senators on the other side of the Chamber how this Government is going to support its revenue next year. I think, if you have no custom-house between Louisiana and the Upper Mississippi, merchants up there will come down and buy their goods at New Orleans. If they learn that at New York they can buy goods under a tariff of fifty or seventy-five per cent., and that they can biy them at New Orleans under a tariff of only one third that, they will go down to New Orleans; and the result will be that we shall get very little revenue under the existing system. We may bandy witticisms; we may show our adroitness in debate; but this is a question which we have to look at practically. One of two things must be done: either you must prevent imports into those States, which I do not think you can do ? and I do not suppose there is a Senator on this floor who believes that, under the existing laws, the President has authority to do it ? or you must call Congress together, and invest him with some authority. If you do not do that, you must establish a line of custom houses on the border.
Is it not better for us to meet this question frankly on its merits? My apprehension, as I have already expressed it, is that the Administration intend, (I hope I may be deceived) as soon as they can collect the force to have a war, to begin; and then call Congress suddenly together, and say, ?The honor of the country is concerned; the flag is insulted. You must come up and vote men and money.? That is, I suppose, to be its policy; not to call Congress together just now. There are two reasons, perhaps, for that. In the first place, it would be like a note of alarm down south; and, in the next place, if you call Congress together, and deliberately submit it to them whether they will go to war with the confederate States or not, I do not believe they would agree to do it. Of course, I do not know what is the temper of gentlemen on the other side; but, though they will have a large majority in the next Congress, I take it for granted from what little I have heard, that it will be difficult to get a bill through Congress for the war before the war begins; but it is a different thing after fighting begins at the forts.
The Senator himself says they are going to enforce the laws and carry them out everywhere. I cannot tell what he means. In one part of his speech, I understood him to say that he was willing to let the seceded States alone; but towards the close of it, he spoke of enforcing the laws, and collecting the revenue everywhere. There is a very wide difference between these lines of policy. If you intend to let the confederate States stand where they now do, and collect their own revenues, and possess the forts, we shall get nothing, or very little, under the existing system. If on the other hand, you intend to resort to coercive measures, and to oblige them to pay duties under our tariff, which they do not admit that they are liable to pay, and to take back the forts, we shall be precipitated into war; and then, I suppose, we shall have a proclamation calling Congress together, and demanding that the honor of the United States shall be maintained, and that men and money shall be voted. I would rather the country should ace into this matter.
I shall not detain the Senate with a discussion about the tariff. I take it that we understand it, and I presume that the intelligent minds of the country understand its situation, and how much we shall get under it. The Senator form Rhode Island alluded to a remark which the Senator from New Hampshire made, that Rome lasted seven hundred years, and that, therefore, this Government must last seven hundred years; and he gave us some witty remarks about the sun not going down before breakfast. Mr. President, it is unfortunate that these analogies do not always run out; they will not hold good. I have read that Methuselah lived until he was more than nine hundred years of age. If a man who was something above ninety were told by his physicians that he was in very great danger of dying, that his constitution was worn out, and disease was preying on him, if he were to refer to the case of Methuselah, and say, ?I have not lived one tenth as long as he did; and, according to his life, I am now just before the breakfast of life,? it might be a very satisfactory argument, perhaps, to the man who used it, but I doubt whether anybody else would be consoled by it; I doubt very much whether his physicians would leave him under the idea that he had certainly eight hundred years to live. I am very much afraid that my friend from Rhode Island, when he rests on this declaration of the Senator from New Hampshire is resting on an unsubstantial basis, when he assumed that this Government must, of necessity, live as long as the Roman republic, and that the comparison of the sun does not hold good. However, I see the Senator from New Hampshire near me, and as he understands these things so much better than I do, I yield the floor.
Where there is a will, there is a way. From the link I provided in Post #150:
On May 21, 1861, the Confederate Congress prohibited the sale of cotton to the North. Yet an illicit trade across military lines flourished between Southern cotton farmers and Northern traders.
WhiskeyPapa: Are we going to do this again? Seward misled the rebels, Lincoln never did.
Seward was not part of the Lincoln Administration?
Nonsense. The word "perpetual" does not appear in the Constitution, nor does permanent or any other derivation of the word/meaning. The founders DROPPED the word "perpetual" from the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union [which appeared FIVE times] in their move to make a more perfect union, which required less consent than did the UNANIMOUS consent required by the Articles. Additionally, there is no prohibition against secession, and the Tenth Amendment still exists, and federal laws are subservient to the Constitution (see the tagline). Their does exist a requirement in the Full Faith & Credit Clause that the State Acts be recognized, but the union reneged on that one as well.
And the south couldn't bring military power because slave labor couldn't produce the power needed to compete with a free labor economy.
Nonsense. Remove the union military blockade, and have the union forces conduct civilized warfare - not against civilians and civilian property, and the South easily would have survived. The South was starved into submission, not defeated honourably on the battlefield.
ROTFL. The Spanish first observed the Gulf Stream, and its effect on sea traffic and that of the accompanying winds were known among mariners before it was made public knowledge by Benjamin Franklin.
Since the Yankees killed their sea trade with the Morrill tariff, what difference did knowledge of the effect of currents and winds on trans-Atlantic transit times make?
Very good point! Cost, just like sewage, runs down hill.
Good grief GOPCap, the fact that he doesn't understand macro-economics, tariffs and international economic theory, and the Constitution shouldn't hold him back. </sarcasm>
And how did that kill their sea trade? It continued on throughout the war and afterwards.
he wouldn't know what a tax was/is unless he can figure out how to cut and paste something off-topic he found on the worldwidewierd with 5 or less keystrokes. that's his speed.
he VOTED for wee willie klintoon AND al gore too.
free dixie,sw
Simply calling it names doesn't make it so, Walt. One would think you'd have learned that concept by now.
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.
So in other words, your measure of their economy is its war production abilities in that very same war that The Lincoln thrust upon it by invading them?
Your false god said otherwise:
"I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not since changed my views." - Lincoln, October 11, 1859
"In 1844 I was on the Clay electoral ticket in this State (i.e., Illinois) and, to the best of my ability, sustained, together, the tariff of 1842 and the tariff plank of the Clay platform . This could be proven by hundreds---perhaps thousands---of living witnesses; still it is not in print, except by inference. The Whig papers of those years all show that I was upon the electoral ticket; even though I made speeches, among other things about the tariff, but they do not show what I said about it. The papers show that I was one of a committee which reported, among others, a resolution in these words: ``That we are in favor of an adequate revenue on duties from imports so levied as to afford ample protection to American industry.'' But, after all, was it really any more than the tariff plank of our present platform? And does not my acceptance pledge me to that?" - Lincoln, October 2, 1860
"[I]f the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff . And if I have any recommendation to make, it will be that every man who is called upon to serve the people in a representative capacity, should study this whole subject thoroughly, as I intend to do myself, looking to all the varied interests of our common country, so that when the time for action arrives adequate protection can be extended to the coal and iron of Pennsylvania, the corn of Illinois, and the ``reapers of Chicago.'" - Lincoln, February 15, 1861
Better start repenting before he gets mad, Walt!
Since when is it arrogant to point out that you are consistently acting in an ignorant manner on a subject where your ignorance has been made known to you previously, though evidently to no avail?
If the southern planter sells his cotton to a broker then where do tariffs come into play?
At the price.
The broker pays no tariff on the exports and the planter has his money to spend locally.
Not so. If trade stops and the foreign buyers are lost, the prices in agricultural market die too. The broker is only an intermediary, just like the commodities markets of today are intermediaries for farmers. Therefore much of the burden is transfered through to the seller himself.
And if I sell my cotton to a New York buyer then what do I care how he gets rid of it?
So long as he is paying market value, you shouldn't. But the number of New Yorkers who are willing to pay market price for cotton is not unlimited, nor is Europe's unlimited. If Europe is cut out of trade by a tariff and ceases buying American cotton, there is no guarantee that the cotton that used to go to Europe will all be absorbed by New York buyers at the same price. Rather, the market will be flooded with all that surplus cotton that isn't traded any more, causing the price to bottom out.
You seem to be insisting that the southern planter was deeply involved with purchasing the goods in Europe for import.
Only insofar as the southern planters provided 75% of the nation's exports. Trade is a circular pattern, Non-Seq. If America exports something, it expects to get something in return, which means either imports or monetary credit. So in that sense, by being the nation's exporters, yes - southerners were deeply involved in European imports because their exports made those imports happen.
It would stand to reason that the planter would want to limit his risk as much as he could.
Not necessarily. Profit maximization tends to be the primary goal of most producers, especially in free perfectly competitive markets. Therefore he sells it at the market price, be the recipient a European or a yankee.
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.
Your theory is irrational and yet again demonstrates your economic ignorance. It makes about as much sense as Wal-Mart imposing a rule that it will only permit customers who live in a 10 mile radius of the store, because people beyond that have to drive further and therefore run a greater risk of getting in a car wreck on the way home.
He had his cash in hand to spend as he wanted, on what he wanted.
...and since the question of the tariff determines how much cash that will be that he has on hand, and how much purchasing power that cash has when he goes to spend it, surely you can now see why the south had such an interest in tariff policy.
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.
Aside from failing to respond to the fact that goods may enter anywhere on the North American continent, your fallacy is again noted. By that same reason, Tennessee must not recieve any goods or pay any tariffs because none are collected there. If there was that much of a demand down south then the goods would have gone there directly, not through New York.
You are missing the concept entirely. It is a matter of demand for North America itself. If a barrier blocks the entry of goods into one port but not another, goods from abroad will enter where the barrier does not exist then distribute accordingly within the continent.
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.
Nonsense. To get the goods, the New York merchant need only transfer them internally from Charleston, or up the Mississippi from New Orleans and so forth. Barring the logistically impossible establishment of custom houses at every road, railway, waterway, and river across the north-south border between Virginia and Arkansas, he could do so without paying a single tariff.
Nonsense. The word "perpetual" does not appear in the Constitution, nor does permanent or any other derivation of the word/meaning.
It's been perpetual so far.
You're telling a big 'un any way, as the Preamble surely states that the Union is to be made more perfect. And what could be more permanent than a petpetual Union made more perfect?
That's what the Chief Justice of the United States thought, any way. And what about:
"The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forebearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for 'perpetual union' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession."
Robert E. Lee, January 23, 1861
Walt
Barring a customs house at every road, railway, and river across the border stretching from Virginia to Arkansas, then no. They couldn't cover them all.
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.
But there was one great big line of another sorts. It was called the Mississippi River.
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.
Not really. That would have required controlling every crossing of the border all the way from Virginia to Arkansas. Discount that fact as you may, but it simply wasn't possible. For example we can't even control a border today with all our modern technology - not even with the help of a large river running along it and the fact that 90% of it is out in the middle of a desert to nowhere. What makes you think Abe Lincoln could have done the same across the north-south border from Virginia to Arkansas in 1861?
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?
Because it was logistically possible to transport those same goods up north while avoiding the tariff.
Every road? How much travelled by road in those days?
All it takes to get it across the border is a couple of miles, so you tell me.
Lincoln didn't say he wouldn't reclaim federal property in his inaugural address, but he wisely dropped a threat to do so from his first presidential speech to give his new administration time to get organized before tipping his hand to the rebels.
The South, who truly believed they had the constitutional right to secede, could probably argue that actions by Lincoln to reclaim forts located within their states and enforce US duties at their ports were acts of war.
The Confederates could take any ridiculous position they wanted and often did, but the rebels were the ones who initiated the Civil War by seceding and attacking federal forts, not Lincoln.
It looks like your understanding of maritime currents is about as sound as your understanding of economics...that is to say, both are severely lacking.
The fastest transatlantic crossing achieved at the time was about 12 days from Britain to New York. They achieved it in the 1840's. The achieved it by steam and sail together. By 1860, steam was a norm in maritime vessles. Ships tended to have screws by then or, if not that, were at least side wheelers.
Your logic does not follow. Nothing about the phrase "more perfect" even remotely hints at the term "perpetual." The leap between the two is an arbitrary one of your own construction.
Back to your books, GOP. Intercoastal commerce used steam as did many passenger packets, but transatlantic cargo still moved primarily by sail. Sail ships would continue to move a lot of cargo almost until the 20th century
So how much moved by road those days?
Your false god said otherwise:
"I was an old Henry Clay tariff whig. In old times I made more speeches on that subject, than on any other. I have not since changed my views." - Lincoln, October 11, 1859
Old times there -are- forgotten.
"From 1854 to his nomination for the presidency in 1860, as James McPherson noted in his DRAWN WITH THE SWORD, "the dominant, unifying theme of Lincoln's career was opposition to the expansion of slavery as a vital first step toward placing it in the course of ultimate extinction." In those years he gave approximately 175 political speeches. McPherson notes that the "central message of these speeches showed Lincoln to be a "one-issue" man - the issue being slavery." Thus, Lincoln's nomination to the presidency was based on a principled opposition to slavery on moral grounds, and that position was clear to voters both in the South and the North.
In his early speeches and actions as president-elect and president, he was clear in his opinion that he had no legal authority to interfere with slavery in the slave states. However, he was persistent and consistent in his efforts to encourage and aid voluntary emancipation in the loyal Border States, territories and the District of Columbia. These efforts predated his publication of the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation."
- from the AOL ACW forum
Lincoln worked on the EP, not an adjustment of tariffs, to help end the fighting.
The slave power needs a lot of apologizing, and you are willing to provide it. But that doesn't change the facts.
Walt
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.