Posted on 09/30/2014 12:29:23 PM PDT by 11th_VA
One of the fascinating aspects to the Tariff of Abominations story is the critical role that John C. Calhoun played in it’s passage.
Now wait a second! one would say, Calhoun was a southern partisan - why would he help pass legislation that was perceived to be damaging to the south? Well, the answer is that he was too clever - by a half.
Calhoun’s plan was to weight down the proposed legislation with poison pills that would discourage northerners from voting favorably, and then encourage its passage employing some sort of “reverse psychology”. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the states recognized that Britain was dumping, a practice where they were selling goods for less than it cost to manufacture in order to skew the market. The rest of the states chose the tariffs to level the playing field.
Calhoun, horrified at the backfire blunder penned (anonymously of course) a pamphlet which urged South Carolinian’s to simply ignore the new tariff through the constitutionally dubious act of nullification. That didn’t work out the way he wanted either as he succeeded only in creating a crisis that almost resulted in the federal invasion of the state of South Carolina, but failed at enacting nullification.
It all must have been vexing for Calhoun, who was a protectionist who favored tariffs before he flip-flopped and became an anti-protectionist who was opposed to them.
Actually posession was settled by the Treaty of Paris. Out of that came the agreement of who owned what. What the Confederates did was just seize what they could get their hands on and try to force the surrender of anything they couldn't. And when starvation didn't work they resorted to bombardment. That's not a peaceful solution for anything.
Lincoln was trying to negotiate peace. He was persuaded to break it off and use Fort Sumter to force a confrontation. To SC, this was a foreign fortress in the middle of their most important harbor. Sumter could have been evacuated but that was not put on the table.
I think you've got that a bit muddled up. Lincoln did want a peaceful solution but he wasn't willing to accept the legality of the Southern secession. The South wasn't willing to settle for anything less. So right at the beginning there wasn't anything to talk about. Lincoln tried to maintain the status quo; not reclaiming anyting already taken by the Confederacy but not giving up anything more either. The Confederacy wasn't willing to do even that. So they resorted to war to get what they wanted.
I will agree we can’t know if Lincoln’s post-war policies would have been implemented despite Radical Republican opposition. I can only go by his stated intentions and give him the benefit of the doubt that he was being honest.
I agree Lincoln's intentions were clear - "Let 'em up easy". But faced with fanatics like Stevens and Sumner he would have had a hard time accomplishing that. He may well have gotten part of what he wanted, which would have been better than Johnson who got nothing.
The victor always rewrites history to make his cause look just and the enemy deserving of every punishment inflicted.
The loser always rewrites their history to make their cause a just one and their defeat due to anything other than their own actions.
The US did acquiesce to the British maintaining military facilities in the US.
People really don’t get what’s at work here.
Liberals are trying to co-opt EVERYTHING to promote THEIR agenda. Which is rooted in the race/gender/class/orientation emphasis of marxist theory.
So they make it hard, if not impossible, to produce something like a historical movie or book without incorporating something that supports their agenda. Regardless of whether it is actually relevant to the story or plot.
Remember, the Libs never really get “outraged”. It’s always done on purpose, feigned to support their agenda and views.
The US did not acquiesce. It was settled by treaty and the British left. How could you possibly call that acquiescing?
The argument broke down on price, not possession. Sumter was a convenience for northern hawks and provided the excuse they wanted for war. SC behaved stupidly and should have been more patient. That would have made war a hard sell in the north (except in MA).
As for the losers rewriting history, of course they do. Some where between the winners version and the losers version, we have to pick through what can be proven factually to determine what happened, and then make our value judgments.
In his January 1861 speech to the Georgia Secession Convention, Alexander Stephens said that 75% of the business done abroad, imports and exports, were done by Northerners. Government figures from the 1859-1860 period show that most import tariffs were paid in Northern ports by Northern consumers. In his speech Stephens also details how Southern postal deliveries were subsidized to the tune of over $6 million by the North. I think the claims that the South paid most of the taxes and received a disproportionately low amount of federal spending is just not supported by the facts.
Off topic, but I find it interesting. A quick and dirty estimate using your figures shows some interesting facts:
Army expenditures:
Army proper + Armories, Arsenals and Munitions of War - total expenditures approx. $11.5 million.
Navy expenditures:
Navy proper + Marine Corps - total approx. $10 million
Total military expenditures approx. $21.5 million
Postal expenditures:
Ocean mail steamer service - approx. $2 million
General mail transportation - approx. $6 million
Compensation of postmasters - approx. $2 million
Compensation of P.O clerks - approx. $1 million
Total Postal related expenditures - approx. $11 million
Total military + postal expenditures $32.5 million
Total government expenditures - $63.6 million
Over half of all tax dollars in 1856 went to postal or military expenditures, expenses which are in fact constitutionally justified. It’s a shame we got away from that type of government.
The Radical Republicans did pass most of their Reconstruction program by overriding the Presidential veto of Andrew Johnson, so the numbers were indeed there. The real question is whether Lincoln could have convinced the Radicals to go along with his program rather than push their own. As you say, we will never know the answer to that.
I suspect that the real reason that the Radicals had the power that they did is that the prevailing sentiment in the population of the North was to punish the seceding states. I’m not a historian, so I could be wrong about that, but I don’t think you’d have so many Radical Republicans elected in the House without such a widespread sentiment.
Lincoln also had the advantage of not only being a Repulican (Johnson was a Democrat) but also being a much better politician who was able to get along with just about anyone. Those two alone would have given him influence over Congress that Johnson never had.
I suspect that the real reason that the Radicals had the power that they did is that the prevailing sentiment in the population of the North was to punish the seceding states.
I think you are right in that there was a strong sentiment for vengeance, but was that the prevailing sentiment? I tend to doubt that. If it were I think that the rest of the country would not have been so quick to accept the South back into government on an equal footing as quickly as they did.
the idea of ‘’rules of warfare’’ is a joke. By your logic the bombing campaign bt the Allies in WW2 would be a ‘’war crime’’ of the highest order. You destroy not only your enemy but his ability to wage war by destroying his factories, his centers of command and control, his lines of communication , his roads, railroads, bridges and you kill the people who work in those armament factories, who drive the trains and or trucks which bring troops and weapons to the front. And that means you kill civilians. War is a brutal ugly, horrific thing and the idea of ‘’rules’’ and ‘’civilized warfare’’ is so much bs.
I have never heard any mention of Southern post being subsidized by the North. Please provide a link. :-)
How many times have I said I am not really talking about the bombings, either civil war, or WWII. I am talking about the behavior of troops on the ground!!!! Why do you keep ignoring this point? Do you really think it is fine for troops to randomly shoot civilians, burn houses and rape women? Because it really sounds like you do.
Btw, if the South had perpetrated such things while in northern territory that US troops did while in the South, there would have been no end to the cries of “atrocity”!
There was no Southern industry to speak of.
By 1857 the South legislators had fought to achieve a lower tariff rate of about 15-18%, but as soon as the south left the Union the Northern legislators took the first opportunity to pass the Morrill tariff, which raised tariff rates once again.
Had the South stayed the tariff wouldn't have passed in the Senate.
I have never heard any mention of Southern post being subsidized by the North. Please provide a link. :-)
It was in Alexander Stephens's January 1861 speech to the Georgia secession convention - Link
How does one respond to accepted facts and self-evident conclusions that combined are pointless? That means this thread has been exhausted, but I will watch that movie and reserve judgment about any bias or syrup until I see it.
Yes, if the South had stayed, they might have been able to vote down the Morrill tariff, but with a rise in the number of radical republicans, who were notorious in their desire to raise taxes and tariffs, it is difficult to say what the long term result would have been.
Thanks for the link. I can see now why you didn't post any direct quotes from it...the spelling is awful. btw, it seems that the 3/4 thing that Stevens was talking about was not that the North was in on 3/4 of all foreign trade, only having a majority in trade that demanded diplomatic agents abroad. And even then, not all foreign imports entering Northern ports were destined for Northern consumers, many were shipped South.
And yet we’re constantly assured by the Lost Causers that the majority of federal spending was in the north.
Considering that the treaty that finally got them to leave was Jay's Treaty, signed in 1795, I'd say we acquiesced to British troops for quite a while after the war.
https://www.google.com/?gws_rd=ssl#q=acquiesce
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