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.
Attack my opinion to your heart's content. It does not alter the fact that Rehnquist is wrong on the habeas corpus issue.
Because that is what the Constitution says: powers granted in Article I belong to the legislature.
Where does it say that the writ can only be suspended through an act of legislation? Article I, Section 9 by way of Article I, Section 1.
The germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constituion of the federal judiciary; an irresponsible body, (for impeachment is scarcely a scare-crow) working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped from the States, and the government of all be consolidated into one. Thomas Jefferson
Refusing or not refusing to execute a law to stamp it with its final character...makes the Judiciary department paramount in fact to the Legislature, which was never intended and can never be proper. James Madison
[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. Thomas Jefferson
The Constitution...is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary which they may twist and shape into any form they please. Thomas Jefferson
A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone, is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government. Thomas Jefferson
i tried to find out a definitive answer to this question about a year ago, at the request of another FReeper. there are simply no records as the jayhawkers destroyed the records (by burning the building in which they were stored), during one of their many raids.
free dixie,sw
The same expression, "shall be vested," occurs in other parts of the Constitution in defining the powers of the other coordinate branches of the Government. The first article declares that "all legislative powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States." Will it be contended that the legislative power is not absolutely vested? that the words merely refer to some future act, and mean only that the legislative power may hereafter be vested? The second article declares that "the executive power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America." Could Congress vest it in any other person, or is it to await their good pleasure whether it is to vest at all? It is apparent that such a construction, in either case, would be utterly inadmissible."
Justice Jay, Martin v. Hunter's Lessee, 1 Wheat. 304, (1816)
free dixie,sw
Including those in Section 10? Did anyone tell the states that? The simple fact is that not everything in Article I pertians only to Congress.
So if a law be in opposition to the constitution; if both the law and the constitution apply to a particular case, so that the court must either decide that case conformably to the law, disregarding the constitution; or conformably to the constitution, disregarding the law; the court must determine which of these conflicting rules governs the case. This is of the very essence of judicial duty." -- Chief Justice John Marshall, 1803
The courts have no business legislating (e.g. Sodomy, racial quotas, etc.). Scalia's dissent clearly stated that Lawrence decision was legislating - CONSTITUTIONAL TABOO!. So, it's okay for the courts to legislate, but the Congress exercising its oath to the Constitution is verboten? I smell a double standard.
Yes it is per the unanimous assertions of every founding father who ever wrote on this issue and per its placement in Article I.
2. Not a single founding father thought that the Union was frangible either.
False. Jefferson indisputably did as his 1803 letter on the Louisiana Purchase indicates. He is by far the most prominent to hold this belief but by no means the only. It is also true that when the founders drafted the habeas corpus clause they all recognized the possibility of events that some would call a rebellion. Some, such as Luther Martin, openly anticipated a day when some states would get into a war with the federal government. Despite this knowledge they did not alter so much as one word of their habeas corpus policy, which remained with the legislature and legislature alone.
The absurdity of your position will be manfest to anyone who can think.
The only absurdity here, Walt, is your belief that the Constitution gives the habeas corpus power to anybody other that Congress despite the fact that it explicitly places it within the congressional powers. To believe your position one must completely disregard the unanimous writings of the founding fathers themselves, the rulings of two well respected chief justices (Marshall and Taney), the legal scholarship of four well respected early American jurists, two of them also members of the supreme court itself (Tucker, Rawle, Story, and Curtis), and the common straight forward words of the Constitution itself. Such nonsense is the same process by which the meaning of "is" comes into dispute and by which a horse chestnut becomes a chestnut horse. You know this to be the case, Walt, because how could you not after all the tortured legal leaps, bounds, and bizarre word gymnastics you must by necessity play in order to even express your position let alone defend it!
Under your interpretation, the Writ could only be suspended when Cnngress was in session.
Exactly, and it is that way for a reason: to make the president call Congress into session during cases that merit the suspension of habeas corpus.
That doesn't make him any less wrong. Besides, he could not have better known the exigencies of the situation than either Justice Taney or Justice Curtis, both of whom lived through it and both of whom emphatically rejected Lincoln's argument for unilateral suspension.
The two legal authorities who saw the case first hand think Rehnquist's line, much with Lincoln's, is a load of nonsense. The overwhelming position of legal scholarship before them says they are right. Live with it.
Typo. I meant to say that that doesn't mean that they aren't valid decisions.
Ba-lo-ney! The rules OUTSIDE the scope of the U.S. Constitution! How can a ruling that sanctions murder not exceed authority? Your argument is silly on its face. Is that what the founders intended? The first abortion laws were passed around the time of the ratification of the Bill of Rights!
And where does it say that you are the judge of when they rule outside the Constitution? Who vested such an awsome power in you and GOP?
Section 10 contains restrictions imposed on the states, all three of which are explicitly for the purpose of preventing infringement upon the powers of Congress. It does not grant any powers to the states and thus cannot be construed to violate Article I, Section 1's caveat.
Quite right. Note that Article I Section 9 contains limitations on the legislative powers of Congress (Congress's right to suspend habeas corpus being limited to where in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety requires such suspension.) And it immediately follows Article I Sectio0n 8, on the positive extent of the legislative powers of Congress.
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