Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
No. When I read you flatulence laden posts I get more determined to refute your mythological interpretation of these events.
He cites a federal law that has been most ably disproven to not apply to the case at hand. I've refuted this point, and most recently, nolu chan has utterly destroyed Grier's reasoning. The Act of 1807 did not apply, which was why Grier had to resort to international law. If ANY US law applied, and then only if PURSUANT to the Constitution, then Grier would never have had to resort to international law. Grier had a habit of redacting certain passages to create the illusion of legality.
Grier does point out that the two parties were independednt nations.
Gee Wally, by McPhernut's reasoning, Lincoln was a fool for instigating war.
Thank you ma'am, you are too kind. Walt would never admit defeat, but he ridicules us for not doing so.
Nothing. It's not illegal now nor was it then. Can you post the federal law prohibiting it? Or a section of the Constitution stating that secession is illegal?
The account of J. H. Wilson, Brevet Major-General, contained in the Official Records: Series 1, Vol XLIX, Part 1, pp. 515-516 does not contain the reference to any unusual clothing, neither do the reports of several others present at the incident.
Captain James H. Parker
I don't for an instant think Davis was wearing women's clothing.
I do think the odds facing the rebellion were not formidible. Davis played a big part in fumbling away a chance of consumating the revolution -- he and Lee.
Walt
The Militia Act makes unilateral state secession impossible.
Walt
He cites a federal law that has been most ably disproven to not apply to the case at hand.
In your opinion.
Walt
Where?
Here's what I see:
"Those two parties, therefore, must necessarily be considered as constituting, at least for a time, two separate bodies, two distinct societies."
Walt
I would think that if the allegations were true, the officers present would have documented such, and the articles of clothing confiscated, Neither were done as the above eyewitness attests. I think it was simply the actions of men attempting to cover up the multitude of Union deaths that occured as they were searching for the gold that the party was allegedly carrying.
Lincoln attempted to wipe out the entire cabinet - Davis' and Lee's only failure was that of failing to seize Washington.
Grier wrote 'Foreign nations acknowledge it as war by a declaration of neutrality. The condition of neutrality cannot exist unless there be two belligerent parties.' He then cited an earlier US Supreme Court case, The Santissima Trinidad, 7 Wheat. 283 (1822), in which the court held that with the US declaration of neutrality 'each party is therefore deemed by us a belligerent nation.' [That's one Supreme court decision which recognizes the Confederacy as a nation]
Grier noted 'on the 13th of May, 1861, the Queen of England issued her proclamation of neutrality, recognizing hostilities as existing between the Government of the United States of America and certain States styling themselves the Confederate States of America.' To which Grier, in the Prize Cases, wrote the 'parties belligerent in a public war are independent nations.' [That's the second Supreme Court case recognizing the Confederacy as a nation].
Federal laws must be pursuant to the Constitution. Please cite the revelant section of the Constituion prohibiting secession.
Federal laws must be pursuant to the Constitution. Please cite the revelant section of the Constituion prohibiting secession.
All of it.
[used with permission]
"I am immediately reminded of a detective story where the murder victim was found lying on the ground next to a house without any marks showing foul play. Everyone was stumped, of course, by the lack of a criminal means to perpetrate the killing. Then (of course) the sleuth solved the means of the killing by saying something to the effect of, "Of course you cannot see the murder weapon; it is too big to be seen. For, you see, he was killed by hitting the Earth."
The Constitution is a "compact" ordained by "the People of the United States, and not by the States in their sovereign capactities. Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 14 U.S. 304, 324-325 (1816); and see also Shively v. Bowlby, 152 U.S. 1, 34 (1894), and Cantwell v. Connecticut, 310 U.S. 296, 307 (1940) (referring to it as the "federal compact"). Madison referred to it as such in the previously mentioned letter to Daniel Webster. Even secessionist leaders of the late war of rebellion admitted that it was a compact, and argued a "breach of compact" as a ground for secession.
Admitting, as one must, that the Constitution is a "compact," this fact has legal ramifications all its own. The terms "compact" and "contract" are synonymous. 3 Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States, § 1390. By its very nature, a compact creates rights as well as obligations. See Green v. Biddle, 21 U.S. 1, 92-93 (1821). The Constitution speaks to the binding nature of the compact entered into when it prescribes that all executive, legislative, and judicial officers of the federal government and the States "shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution . . . ." See Art. VI. It is not simply that they must take an oath, but that they are bound to support the Constitution.
This returns, of course, to the nature of compacts and contracts, and the manner in which they may be rescinded. It is universally accepted that a compact cannot be rescinded without cause, and without making reparation for the loss caused to the other party or parties to the compact which have been expended on their behalf in contemplation of their rights and duties. If the same were not true of governments, we could have no binding relations between people or governments, nor might we expect any regular or permanent rights or duties. The existence of binding obligations and rights is necessary to the very existence of any government. See Kennett v. Chambers, 55 U.S. 38, 50 (1852).
Therefore, it is a violation of the Constitution AS A WHOLE, to attempt to withdraw from the binding compact without some just cause. It is in this sense, if in no other, that the right of secession without cause cannot be a right reserved by the States. They have already given up this right by entering into the Constitution and pledging to support it. Since this is the case, it takes no explicit withdrawal of the right to secede without cause to prohibit the exercise of that right. The Constitution is, itself, the ground upon which the right to seceded without cause was killed.
I hope this addresses the question to your satisfaction."
Walt
Too thin.
Where did Grier say that two -nations- existed?
That's what you claimed.
Walt
Where?
Walt
Too thin ;o)
[used with permission]
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae.
The rset can be a total mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.
Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe.
Amzanig huh?
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