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.
What mob rule? The seceding states voted in convention to leave.
Exactly where in he Constitution does it state that elections results mandate a state remaining in the union?
Perhaps the strategy was to use economic weapons to crush the south's unfair edge in the marketplace -- slave labor.
And Howard Dean is that Candidate!
Is that so? Then you should be able to name any given one of these "many people" who believed this, excluding of course the Lincoln administration itself, which invented the "power" for obvious reasons.
Why, Congress, of course.
When they refunded Andrew Jackson's $1,000 fine with interest. Heck, he wasn't even president when he suspended the Writ.
Now, you're going to explain how Jackson was going to get in touch with Congress and get them to suspend the Writ--- there being no telegraph of course --- in time to forestall the British forces on the door step of New Orleans?
Walt
They proclaimed the actions of the president lawful under the Militia Act.
Walt
Main Entry: reb·el
Pronunciation: 're-b&l
Function: adjective
Etymology: Middle English, from Old French rebelle, from Latin rebellis, from re- + bellum war, from Old Latin duellum
Date: 14th century
1 a : opposing or taking arms against a government or ruler b : of or relating to rebels
2 : DISOBEDIENT, REBELLIOUS
Jefferson Davis took up arms against the lawful government.
Just pondering.
Let's alert the Supreme Court, shall we? Maybe they'll get the Circuit Court to rename the decision.
Where does it say that habeas corpus may be suspended only through legislation?
Would that Lincoln could have obeyed the judge like Andrew Jackson eventually did. On paying the fine in New Orleans for having suspended to writ illegally, Jackson said:
Considering obedience to the laws, even when we think them unjustly applied, is the first duty of the citizen, and I do not hesitate to comply with the sentence you have heard pronounced; and I entreat you to remember the example I have given you of respectful submission to the administration of justice.
Didn't Congress remit Jackson's fine when he was about to become president a decade or more after he paid the fine?
That is an interesting comment.
IIRC Secretary of State Seward also wanted to gin up a conflict with Great Britain as a means of preserving the Union. So by following Seward's advice there would have been a war, just not a civil war.
Legislative acts of Congress do not overturn judicial decisions.
Good. Even the Supreme Court could only invent a decision based upon this being a "more perfect union" - they could not find any provision preventing secession. The founders, every single one in the federal and state conventions that voted to ratify, was a secessionist.
Alexander Hamilton opined during the debates that even a monarchy was "republician" if voted to that position. In Federalist no. 78 he wrote that it is the 'fundamental principle of republican government, which admits the right of the people to alter or abolish the established Constitution, whenever they find it inconsistent with their happiness.' Hamilton was a New Yorker, and agreed with his state regarding the resumption of powers.
Article I, Section 1. More specifically, it says that it may only be suspended by Congress, which implied by necessity an act of legislation.
Give the names and provide the quote where they said somebody else could suspend it.
When they refunded Andrew Jackson's $1,000 fine with interest.
Jackson wasn't president and a simple refund of his fine does not make his act legal after the fact.
That makes for a fancy excuse, but not economic sense. The yankee protectionists in 1860 said not a word about using economics to defeat slavery, nor did they likely even understand that much. Their entire message was nothing more than the following: we need government to help us overcome competition from abroad.
As for the south's alleged "unfair edge," it was becoming anything but that. In 1860 slavery was becoming increasingly less viable in an economic sense. Wage labor costs were going down and slave labor costs were going up - a trend that had been occurring for at least a decade. When prices on an economic input continually rise entrepreneurs eventually substitute it with a cheaper alternative.
WHAT THE SUPREME COURT SAID:
THE QUESTION:Mr. Justice GRIER.
There are certain propositions of law which must necessarily affect the ultimate decision of these cases, and many others, which it will be proper to discuss and decide before we notice the special facts peculiar to each.
They are, 1st. Had the President a right to institute a blockade of ports in possession of persons in armed rebellion against the Government, on the principles of international law, as known and acknowledged among civilized States?
THE SUPREME COURT RULING ON THAT QUESTION:
On this first question therefore we are of the opinion that the President had a right, jure belli, to institute a blockade of ports in possession of the States in rebellion, which neutrals are bound to regard.
"The president had a right, jure belli...."
The president had a right pursuant to the laws of war....
Stop waving your dicta all over the place. It is unseemly and calls attention to your shortcomings.
Jackson did the right thing. President Lincoln did the right thing.
Walt
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