House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[ColdOne]

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket quoting:
rustbucket: 'Let’s look at cotton mills in the North, The city of Lowell, Massachusetts had many cotton mills. From Wikipedia:'

[BroJoeK]: 'Sure, but similar could be said of other wars, wars we don't usually blame on Marxist class warfare reasoning.'<.I>

rustbucket: "I'm sorry, you absolutely lost me there.
Marx supported the North in this war [Link].
If cotton supplies became limited during the war, wouldn't you look to see if there was an effect on the cotton mills that Appleton's said there was?
But instead you see Marxest class warfare rather than a confirmation that Appleton's was right?

You fellows are all hiding behind the skirts of your mother Marx's dialectical materialism, instead of standing up and confessing basic historical facts.
Remember, Marx was the one who eliminated all idealistic or spiritual motives in history, replacing them with materialistic class warfare as the be-all & end-all of reasons.
And that's just what you do here.

Certainly you demand that Northern motives can have nothing but crass economic class warfare reasons.
At the same time you claim that Confederate motives had nothing, "nothing I tell you", to do with protecting slavery, but rather Confederates were inspired only by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, especially the part where, "all men are created equal".

So, in you minds, it's Marxism for the North, liberty & constitution for the Confederacy, and I'm saying: that's pure ahistorical fantasy.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket quoting a British paper: "We therefore confidently assert that the question of slavery is not the real bone of contention between the Northern and the Southern States.br> The question at issue is that of free-trade, or protection..."

Sure, from some British perspectives, trade was all that mattered and therefore must be the "real reasons".
Indeed, if that particular perspective had dominated in the UK, Britain might well have supported the Confederacy militarily, and then things could have turned out quite different.

But in fact, the vast majority of Brits fully understood that slavery was the root cause and real reason, and since Brits also hated slavery, they would do nothing to support their natural economic allies in the South.

So, rusty, you've again quoted a minority opinion when the majority fully understood what was really going on.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It has occurred to me that we might see how deep your cognitive dissonance goes...."

None here, but if DiogenesLamp had even an ounce of intellectual honesty, then "cognitive dissonance" would be screaming inside your head.

The fact is that none of the "agreements" -- zero, zip, nada "agreements" -- dictated by Confederates to Union troops in Forts Sumter & Pickens, none of those were legitimate or valid.
Rather such "agreements" represented Confederate acts of rebellion & war on the United States and simply temporarily delayed the moment Confederates would initiate violence.

Jefferson Davis' decision to start war at Sumter rather than Pickens was doubtless based on tactical & strategic factors, but it was his own decision, nobody else's.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "Staff in most executive departments could not draw their salaries that January. Members of Congress had gone unpaid since the start of the session the previous December. Worse yet..."

These were all serious problems requiring attention from Congress, which soon enough took the actions necessary to correct them.
So in the end the US government did what it must to pay its bills and also win the Civil War.

[PeaRidge]

Forgot to mark my last post as a summary of a Jane Flaherty article from Civil War times.

The author seems to advocate that national debt caused Morrill and that Morrill caused secession; and that collapse of tariff revenue causing a US Treasury failure forced Lincoln to invade.

Here is more from that article.

“To understand the measures to be submitted to [the Thirty-seventh] Congress, it is necessary to have a clear conception of the condition of the Treasury at that time, and of the established financial policy of the government immediately before the war,” asserted John Sherman (R-Ohio).

Yet historians rarely include the state of the prewar Treasury in their assessment of the Civil War financial legislation. Most studies of Civil War finances offer only a brief mention of the “unsatisfactory condition of the Treasury in 1860,” then proceed with an analysis of the wartime legislation. Little consideration is given to the problems inherited by the new Republican administration or the government's financial structure (before) the outbreak of the war.

In fact, one noted scholar has declared that “the modern state's inheritance from the antebellum period was nil".

Contrary to this precedent, it should be argued that the state of the Treasury in early 1861 greatly influenced the development of wartime financial policy.

Four difficulties in particular challenged the Republicans.

First, the spendthrift policies of the Buchanan administration critically reduced the balance in the Treasury and forced them to rely on deficit financing. By 1860, the “Buchaneers” had created the largest debt ever accumulated by an administration without engaging in war. When the fighting began, the Republican Treasury secretary, Salmon P. Chase, found a reluctant and therefore expensive market for wartime securities. Because the Union started the war with an exhausted Treasury and poor credit, they had few resources available to deal with the setbacks of late 1861 that resulted from the contingencies of war.(Another way of saying secession...my comment.)

Second, this necessitated the introduction of the high interest rate seven-thirties; when this loan faltered, the Republicans had to turn to more controversial financing strategies. These measures resulted directly from the “poverty of the Treasury” at the onset of the war.

Third, in an effort to address the deficiencies in the Treasury, the Thirty-sixth Congress passed legislation to increase government revenue. Congress passed this bill, known now as the Morrill tariff, at the urging of President Buchanan, to address the “exhausted condition of the Treasury.”

This point has not been emphasized enough. Indeed the established literature suggests that the tariff adjustment occurred as the “first statement of a new protectionism peculiar to the Republicans.

However, Buchanan signed the Morrill tariff into law on March 2, 1861, during the last days of the Thirty-sixth Congress and two days before Abraham Lincoln's inauguration. Rather than initiate the advent of a new brand of protectionism, the impetus for revising the tariff arose as an attempt to augment revenue, stave off “ruin,” and address the accumulating debt.

Finally, the “fiscal federalism” that emerged in the United States during the antebellum era placed severe constraints on the options open to the Treasury when the war began. Expected to operate with economy, and relying overwhelmingly on tariff revenue as the primary source of income, the national government had few ready options available in the...

End of article.

With crowds of businessmen, bankers, and politicians filling the halls of the White House, demanding that Lincoln do something to stop the financial crisis, and Treasury Secretary Chase warning that bonds were only selling sporadically and at ridiculously high interest rates, Lincoln knew the problem.

> Lincoln to Baldwin, "But what about my tariff"?

Just days later he instructed junior officers to set out for Charleston and Pensacola with orders to land troops.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge quoting: "...spendthrift policies of the Buchanan administration critically reduced the balance in the Treasury and forced them to rely on deficit financing.
By 1860, the 'Buchaneers' had created the largest debt ever accumulated by an administration without engaging in war."

Like everything else in this report, an exaggeration, not true.
Here are the real facts:

1. The first seven presidents (Washington - Jackson) all inherited larger war-related debts which they reduced significantly until President Jackson paid it off in 1835.

2. After Jackson nearly every president added significantly to the debt.

3. Democrat Van Buren increased the debt from essentially zero to $15 million (.6% of GDP) in 1839.
   
4. Whigs Harrison & Tyler increased it to $33 million (2.1% of GDP) in 1843.
   
5. Democrat Polk increased it to $63 million (2.6% of GDP) in 1849, after the Mexican war was over.
   
6. Whigs Taylor & Fillmore increased it to $68 million (2.5%) in 1851.
   
7. Democrat Pierce reduced it to $28 million (.7% of GDP) in 1857.
   
8. Then Democrat Buchanan increased it back to $68 million (1.5% of GDP) in 1860.

Of course, all of these national debt numbers are miniscule compared to what we've seen since the 1930s New Deal.
The greatest of these antebellum debts under Whig Presidents Taylor & Fillmore reached only 2.5% of GDP.
Even Democrat Buchanan's national debt never exceeded 1.5% of GDP.

By stark contrast, President Zero's debt rose from roughly 70% to 100% of GDP in eight short years.

[rustbucket]

You fellows are all hiding behind the skirts of your mother Marx's dialectical materialism, instead of standing up and confessing basic historical facts.
Remember, Marx was the one who eliminated all idealistic or spiritual motives in history, replacing them with materialistic class warfare as the be-all & end-all of reasons.
And that's just what you do here.

Northern newspapers were talking about how their Northern economy would be ruined by the Morrill Tariff that the North passed after much of the South had left. Which side was the materialistic one exactly? The North wanted protection for their industries and increased revenue extracted from Southerners. That isn't "materialistic class warfare" to use your own words? And by the way, despite your flame war style slur, Marx isn't my philosophical mother.

Certainly you demand that Northern motives can have nothing but crass economic class warfare reasons.

Where did I say something like that? I believe that Lincoln plotted to instigate war because without a war, he had no Constitutional power or justification for blockading Southern ports to prevent the Northern economy from being ruined. Similarly, without a war he would have insufficient tariff revenue to run his government.

It was Lincoln in his first inaugural address who said, "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so." But in that speech he also said he would use his designated power "to collect the duties and imposts ..." In other words, he wouldn't do anything about slavery, but he would collect the duties. So, no high moral principles there in Lincoln's speech; he was after the loot to run his government.

It was Seward, I think, that talked Lincoln into emphasizing the preservation of the Union, rather than emphasizing slavery. I believe that Lincoln did have the ultimate intention of freeing the slaves and that many Republican politicians wanted to do away with slavery in the country too.

Remember, of course, that this was the same Lincoln who believed that a Fugitive Slave Law was required by the Constitution, and when he was when in the House of Representatives in the 1840s wrote his own fugitive slave law into his proposed bill outlawing slavery in Washington, D.C.

At the same time you claim that Confederate motives had nothing, "nothing I tell you", to do with protecting slavery, but rather Confederates were inspired only by Jefferson's Declaration of Independence, especially the part where, "all men are created equal".

Where did I "claim" that Confederate motives had "nothing" to do with protecting slavery? I have argued on these threads that slavery was the primary issue (but not the only issue) that prompted the South to secede. IMO, slavery was a more effective issue for motivating the Southern people and Southern states to secede than the inequities of the tariff. Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to invade the South was enough to prompt four more states to secede. Don't forget that as a cause for secession.

I have noted that, in seceding, the South was also protecting their economy, just as Lincoln was protecting the Northern economy. Were they both being Marxists in your opinion or only the South? (/sarc) I don't think either were Marxist; both sides were both working in their own self interests.

With respect to the Declaration of Independence, I prefer the words in Jefferson's original rough draft [Link] to the final version. Here are Jefferson's words about King George III's offenses that did not make it to the final version of the DOI:

"He has incited treasonable insurrections of our fellow-citizens, with the allurements of forfeiture & confiscation of our property.

He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it's most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobium of INFIDEL Powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

Jefferson's words above were not included in the final version, but the committee charged with writing the Declaration changed them to:

"He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions."

That changed version dropped Jefferson's "fellow citizens." The changed version refers to Lord Dunmore's Proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and Negroes who were willing to fight for the British cause against the rebels.

And I hereby further declare all indented servants, Negroes, or others (appertaining to Rebels) free, that are able and willing to bear arms, they joining His Majesty's Troops, as soon as may be, for the more speedily reducing the Colony to a proper sense of their duty, to this Majesty's crown and dignity. [Source: Lord Dunmore's Proclamation as British Governor of Virginia, November 14, 1775]

Didn't Lincoln do something similar in the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the opposition's slaves, but not the North's?

So, in you minds, it's Marxism for the North, liberty & constitution for the Confederacy, and I'm saying: that's pure ahistorical fantasy.

I didn't know I had more than one mind. The South certainly had the more accurate understanding of the Constitution.

Why are you flinging unfounded accusations against me about Marx? It is stunts like that that make you unworthy of a response. Are you trolling for a flame war? You won't get it from me.

My only reason for mentioning Marx in my immediate posts to you above was in response to your strange argument trying to tie the arguments of the Southern posters here to Marxism. Marx was in favor of freeing the slaves. Freeing the slaves was the only good thing that came out of the war. I don't think Marx's praise of Lincoln and/or the North makes the North or Lincoln Marxist.

[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Northern [anti-Republican, Democrat] newspapers were talking about how their Northern economy would be ruined by the Morrill Tariff that the North passed after much of the South had left."

Right, Democrat papers.
Remember, as recently as the election of 1856 the vast majority of Northerners were Democrat allies of Southern Democrats:

1856 Presidential election by county (blue = Democrat):

rustbucket: "Which side was the materialistic one exactly?
The North wanted protection for their industries and increased revenue extracted from Southerners.
That isn't "materialistic class warfare" to use your own words?"

First of all, "protectionism" protected all industries, North, South or West.
Yes, in 1860 most manufacturing was Northern, but Southern & Western producers also received protection from US tariffs.

Second, Deep South exports of cotton & rice did earn enough to pay for roughly half of US imports.
But the 1861 Morrill tariff rates meant that when those exports disappeared, US tariff revenues fell only 26%.

Third, pure economics alone do not drive Americans to war, and your suggestions otherwise are pure Marxist analyses.
The truth is that no Republican paper ever called for war against the Confederacy based strictly on economics.
Those Democrats who claimed Lincoln was driven by such economic motives were simply using those ideas to mock & belittle Republicans.
They were no more accurate than claiming Bush's Iraq war was "all about the oil".
It wasn't.

rustbucket6: "And by the way, despite your flame war style slur, Marx isn't my philosophical mother."

Of course not, not regarding your Confederates' motives and reasons -- those in your own mind were all of the highest possible idealism.
But you degrade Northern thinking, and permit no other considerations, to the level of Marxist materialistic class warfare.
It is simply your own method of mocking and scorning Unionists.
And, of course, it's totally wrong.

rustbucket: "Where did I say something like that?"

In your very next sentences, for one:

rustbucket: "I believe that Lincoln plotted to instigate war because without a war, he had no Constitutional power or justification for blockading Southern ports to prevent the Northern economy from being ruined.
Similarly, without a war he would have insufficient tariff revenue to run his government."

Total rubbish, and you well know it, but keep repeating it anyway.
The facts are:

1. Only Jefferson Davis plotted, prepared and ordered instigating war at Fort Sumter.
   Lincoln merely sent ships to resupply his troops there.
   War was Davis' decision, confirmed on May 6, 1861 with a formal declaration against the United States.

2. Blockading Southern ports, aka Scott's "Anaconda Plan", was prepared many years earlier, likely while Davis was Secretary of War, as a normal response to rebellion.
   When Jefferson Davis ordered his rebellion to begin, then the Anaconda Plan went into effect.
   But remember this: blockade prevented both exports and imports from the Confederacy, so it necessarily ended the possibility of collecting tariffs from Southern ports.

3. Therefore your materialistic class-warfare analysis of Lincoln's motives has no basis in facts or reason and is, instead, just laughable propaganda.

rustbucket: "In other words, he wouldn't do anything about slavery, but he would collect the duties.
So, no high moral principles there in Lincoln's speech; he was after the loot to run his government."

Total nonsense.
In fact, Lincoln's guiding principle was his oath of office to the US Constitution.
Protecting the Constitution at that time meant defending slavery where it already existed and collecting revenues lawfully established by Congress.

rustbucket: "It was Seward, I think, that talked Lincoln into emphasizing the preservation of the Union, rather than emphasizing slavery.
I believe that Lincoln did have the ultimate intention of freeing the slaves and that many Republican politicians wanted to do away with slavery in the country too."

Seward opposed anything which might lead to war, including resupplying Fort Sumter.
But when war came anyway, on April 12, 1861, Seward & Lincoln both knew the issue was not slavery, but enforcing the Constitution in states then in rebellion against it.
That is the essence of Lincoln's first call for troops on April 15.
Slavery only became an issue months later when the question of what to do with "contrabands" escaping to Union Army lines came up.

rustbucket: "...this was the same Lincoln who believed that a Fugitive Slave Law was required by the Constitution, and when he was when in the House of Representatives in the 1840s wrote his own fugitive slave law..."

As required by the Constitution of that time.

Lincoln in 1859:

"We must not disturb slavery in the states where it exists, because the Constitution, and the peace of the country both forbid us —
We must not withhold an efficient fugitive slave law, because the constitution demands it —

But we must, by a national policy, prevent the spread of slavery into new territories, or free states, because the constitution does not forbid us, and the general welfare does demand such prevention..."

rustbucket: "Where did I "claim" that Confederate motives had "nothing" to do with protecting slavery?
I have argued on these threads that slavery was the primary issue (but not the only issue) that prompted the South to secede."

Then you are the only pro-Confederate on these threads I've seen who will confess to such a thing.
Without exception I can think of, the rest of you all claim secession was about something vastly more highly principled than merely protecting slavery.

rustbucket: "...slavery was a more effective issue for motivating the Southern people and Southern states to secede than the inequities of the tariff.
Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops to invade the South was enough to prompt four more states to secede.
Don't forget that as a cause for secession. "

Now you are repeating my arguments for me. Thanks.

rustbucket: "I have noted that, in seceding, the South was also protecting their economy, just as Lincoln was protecting the Northern economy.
Were they both being Marxists in your opinion or only the South? (/sarc) I don't think either were Marxist; both sides were both working in their own self interests."

Remember, FRiend, Marxist philosophy requires that we exclude all non-economic, non-class warfare motives for historical actions.
So you are purely Marxist when you emphasize economics to the exclusion of other ideals.
As soon as you allow for higher motives, then you step out from behind the philosophical skirts of "mother Marx" and become a grown-up human being.

rustbucket: "The changed version refers to Lord Dunmore's Proclamation that promised freedom to indentured servants and Negroes who were willing to fight for the British cause against the rebels....
Didn't Lincoln do something similar in the Civil War with the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the opposition's slaves, but not the North's?"

Yes, but there were other precedents in US history since Lord Dunmore.
The one which comes to mind was the US military operations in Florida, after the War of 1812, when Spanish-owned slaves were declared "contraband" and freed by US Army forces.
But when the US Army began declaring slaves "contraband" in 1861, Lincoln at first did not support it, because that implied, as with Spanish Florida, the Confederacy was a recognized foreign power.
In due time he got over that objection.

rustbucket: "Why are you flinging unfounded accusations against me about Marx?
It is stunts like that that make you unworthy of a response.
Are you trolling for a flame war?
You won't get it from me."

No, it's simply because you use Marxist analyses to mock & ridicule Unionists, while reserving only the highest of motives for your own Confederates.
Marxism is your weapon against the Union, and I'm simply pointing out what's obvious.

rustbucket: "Marx was in favor of freeing the slaves.
Freeing the slaves was the only good thing that came out of the war.
I don't think Marx's praise of Lincoln and/or the North makes the North or Lincoln Marxist."

Then you are unusual amongst pro-Confederates who stretch the truth beyond its breaking point to find connections between Union & socialism / Marxism.
To repeat, I merely point out that your economic class-warfare analyses of Union motives uses Marxism to mock & ridicule Republicans.

It's total rubbish, imho.

[DiogenesLamp]

"Oh good. The world reaches a crossroads, or probably a road off a cliff, just when I want to relax and watch gratuitous violence on the tube. To judge by the rapid drift of events aboard our planetary asylum, the talons of Washington and New York on the world’s throat are fast being pried a-loose. The Global American Imperium is dying. Or so it sure looks anyway."

"I say talons of “New York and Washington” because America’s foreign policy, forged in those two cities, belongs entirely to them. Americans have no influence on it. Further, none of of what the Empire does abroad is of any benefit to Americans. Do you care at all what happens in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, or the South China Sea? Do you want to pay for it? America has been hijacked."

http://fredoneverything.org/the-loosening-grip-a-beginners-guide-to-death-throes/

[DiogenesLamp]

"The idea that the Republicans and Democrats had become two wings of one ruling party is explained in my pamphlet Storming the Castle. The notion that the cultural elites had created an information store of falsehoods that would eventually poison them is laid out in my The War of the Words. Each of these pamphlets predicted the same thing: there was a growing gap not primarily between conservatives and liberals but between official ideology and reality, between the elite and the non-elite. -"

https://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2016/10/26/the-conservatives-at-the-castle-walls/?singlepage=true

[DiogenesLamp]

Rush Limbaugh:

`So let's deal with what we have today. If the polls change dramatically and the other way next week, we'll deal with that if that happens. No+t gonna predict it; I just want to warn you that they will do anything. "They" -- meaning the Democrats and Republicans, the Washington-New York-Boston power corridor -- are not going to just sit by and let this happen. They're going to do everything they can to influence the outcome. They have the power to do so. That's one of the perks of being in the establishment.

You run the American political system.

You run the government. -

http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2016/10/28/it_s_all_on_the_line_for_the_establishment_in_this_election_and_they_ll_do_anything_to_influence_the_outcome

[jmacusa]

Joe, were Northerners who sympathized with the South known as “Jayhawkers’’?

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "Joe, were Northerners who sympathized with the South known as “Jayhawkers’’?"

In antebellum Kansas, Jayhawkers were abolitionists who often clashed with pro-slavery Border Ruffians.
Today Jayhawkers are students & alumni of Kansas University.

Pre-war Northern sympathizers were called "Doughfaces", a mild form of disparagement.
During the Civil War, Northern sympathizers of Confederates were called "copperheads".

There's a long list of colorful nicknames used for various groups of that time, including Fire Eaters & Wide Awakes.

[DiogenesLamp]

How about you give an opinion on the present? Where are our enemies? (assuming you are a conservative)

[DiogenesLamp]

And here is another one for you.

They are the comfortable and well-educated mainstay of our modern Democratic party. They are also the grandees of our national media; the architects of our software; the designers of our streets; the high officials of our banking system; the authors of just about every plan to fix social security or fine-tune the Middle East with precision droning. They are, they think, not a class at all but rather the enlightened ones, the people who must be answered to but who need never explain themselves.

...

There are wonderful things to be found in this treasure trove when you search the gilded words “Davos” or “Tahoe”. But it is when you search “Vineyard” on the WikiLeaks dump that you realize these people truly inhabit a different world from the rest of us. By “vineyard”, of course, they mean Martha’s Vineyard, the ritzy vacation resort island off the coast of Massachusetts where presidents Clinton and Obama spent most of their summer vacations. The Vineyard is a place for the very, very rich to unwind, yes, but as we learn from these emails, it is also a place of high idealism; a land of enlightened liberal commitment far beyond anything ordinary citizens can ever achieve.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/oct/31/the-podesta-emails-show-who-runs-america-and-how-they-do-it

[PeaRidge]

Outstanding post. The word dialectic was used in the post to which you responded, but that was certainly not characteristic of his intent.

Just a few words:

"Northern politicians were ever ready to sacrifice whatever anti-slavery sentiments they had for the sake of a tariff deal. Rumors after the Compromise of 1850 linked it to logrolling for tariff protection. Illinois votes for the Compromise were connected to railroad land grants that Illinois obtained in 1850..."

During this period, Southern politicians and merchants began a movement for Southern economic independence. Advocates supported banking, manufacturing, shipping, and transportation improvements in the South.

The movement to independence filled the merchants of New York with fear, not from worry that the movement would be successful, but that the abolition movement would add impetus to the movement and lead to the dissolution of the Union, thereby achieving much more than commercial conventions, direct trade conventions, and propaganda campaigns could accomplish.

Though the United States had withdrawn from the international slave trade in 1808, the internal slave trade between slaveholding states became a multi-million-dollar industry during the nineteenth century. Between 1830 and 1860 an estimated 300,000 Virginia African Americans were sold further south. Many slaveholding states attempted to regulate this trade, though efforts were poorly enforced and usually short-lived.

In the 1830s, a brisk trade was carried on between Baltimore and Havana in the sale of vessels built along the lines of the speedy and highly maneuverable Chesapeake Bay model “Baltimore clippers” used as privateers during the war of 1812. The clippers were publicly sold to Spanish or Portuguese slavers in Cuba who were willing to pay high prices for the rakish craft. It was almost impossible to convict Americans for selling the vessels because papers could never be found that the vessels were intended to be employed in the slave business.

Commercial ties between legitimate maritime trade and the slave trade further complicated the problem. American merchant ships carried rum, tobacco, flour, and cloth to trade along the bulge of Africa for palm oil, gum copal, ivory, gold dust, and peanuts.

Enoch Ware, trading agent aboard the Salem brig Northumberland, gloated over his arriving on the coast ahead of his competitors:

”Now if no envious competitor present himself the prospect could not be well better—that is if my Sierra Leone tobacco will suit for the slave trade. No! What am I to know for what purpose it is to be sold? I sell for produce or money. The use of it afterwards certainly am not accountable for. . . scarcely a hundred pounds of Tobacco or Powder that is sold but what sooner or later is used for purchasing slaves though it may go through half a dozen hands first.”

Further, the reason for outlawing this trade was far from humanitarian. Slaveholders in the Deep South had a fear of a rapid increase of “unmanageable,” African Americans shipped south. Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana all banned the importation of the enslaved via interstate trade after the 1831 Nat Turner Revolt. However, all three states permitted interstate trade again during the profitable cotton trade of the 1850s.

Most of the industrialists could not rationalize why some Northerners, abolitionists, had begun to quarrel with the manners and customs of the South, and were attempting to force upon them a new system of morality. In doing so, they were driving a wedge between the two sections which neither really desired.

In the beginning, the abolitionists consisted of unscrupulous politicians, clerical agitators, parsons with grandiose ideas, and reprobates of a variety of motivations.

Hence, a vast majority of New York merchants regarded the agitation of the slavery question and the interference with the rights of Southern slaveholders as inexpedient, unjust, and filled with evil.

It was not a question of morality with the merchants, but of millions of dollars in Southern trade, which would be jeopardized. Samuel J. May, a prominent New York abolitionist received this from a New York merchant:

“We cannot afford, Sir, to let you and your associates endeavor to overthrow slavery. It is not a matter of principle with us. It is a matter of business necessity…we mean, Sir, to put you abolitionists down, by fair means if we can, by foul means if we must.”

The coming war did not just spring up overnight, nor was there one simple political or social issue involved.

The seeds were vigorously sown during this period.

Passages from http://www.etymonline.com/cw/economics.htm

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "How about you give an opinion on the present?
Where are our enemies? (assuming you are a conservative)"

I noted your quote from Rush Limbaugh above.
I'm a huge fan of his, so if you listen to Rush long enough you'll know my opinions on pretty much everything.
I also like Mark Levin & Breitbart, not a fan of Glen Beck or Mike Church.
And lots of others I enjoy, at least on occasion -- Hannity, Webb, Wilkow, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Mark Stein... who am I forgetting?
Savage & Batchelor I don't get on my radios any more.

So you ask, who at our political enemies?
Levin calls them "statists" whether Democrats or Repubelicans, but I'd say the vast majority, 90% are in fact Democrats regardless of what they call themselves.
First they get in bed with the government and then make their fortunes off it.
By stark contrast, natural born Republicans are much different -- we are small businesses, family farms, professionals, just about anyone who lives independently of government welfare.

Our basic interests are in protecting the Constitution and traditional values (i.e., the Bible) by keeping the government small & restricted.
In international affairs we want a military strong enough that nobody will mess with us, and if they do that we can defeat them.
We are not interested in slaying every dragon loose in the world, but if necessary we will cut off its head, not just a piece of its tail, metaphorically speaking of course.

Thanks for asking.

[DiogenesLamp]

I noted your quote from Rush Limbaugh above. I'm a huge fan of his, so if you listen to Rush long enough you'll know my opinions on pretty much everything. I also like Mark Levin & Breitbart, not a fan of Glen Beck or Mike Church.
And lots of others I enjoy, at least on occasion -- Hannity, Webb, Wilkow, Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Mark Stein... who am I forgetting? Savage & Batchelor I don't get on my radios any more.

So you ask, who at our political enemies? Levin calls them "statists" whether Democrats or Repubelicans, but I'd say the vast majority, 90% are in fact Democrats regardless of what they call themselves. First they get in bed with the government and then make their fortunes off it. By stark contrast, natural born Republicans are much different -- we are small businesses, family farms, professionals, just about anyone who lives independently of government welfare.

Our basic interests are in protecting the Constitution and traditional values (i.e., the Bible) by keeping the government small & restricted. In international affairs we want a military strong enough that nobody will mess with us, and if they do that we can defeat them.
We are not interested in slaying every dragon loose in the world, but if necessary we will cut off its head, not just a piece of its tail, metaphorically speaking of course.

Thanks for asking.

All of that is exactly right, but it dodges my question. Who are these people? Who are this "shadow government" of which Rush Limbaugh speaks?

Where do they live?

[BroJoeK]

Ask Rush.

[DiogenesLamp]

Ask Rush.

You do not want to answer this question. You do not want to admit that there is a corridor of power between Washington DC and Boston Massachusetts that effectively operates as a "shadow government."

You do not want to answer this question because you know what the follow up question will be.