A monument to SC’s black Confederate soldiers? None fought for the South, experts say

Not in a long time. For every ship that could tie up in Charleston Harbor, 20 could tie up in New York, and 15 in Boston.

What does it matter how many ships can tie up someplace when all the profits are elsewhere? With independence, the vast majority of the potential profits for Europeans would be in Southern ports, regardless of their docking facilities.

What did the Western States need Cotton for.

Why are you so shortsighted as to think that trade with the South would only be about cotton? As the Northern newspapers I have quoted in the past noted, Iron for rails would come from Europe through southern ports. Everything manufactured in Europe would be available for trade with the Western states through the Mississippi river.

Cotton would get Europe trading with the South, but other profits would be made by shipping those European imports up the Mississippi to the west, and at prices cheaper to the buyers than the same products that the Northern power brokers would have sold them at.

If the Western states want rails, locomotives, plows, threshers, or machinery, harness leather, wagons, or single trees they looked to the North.

If they could get them cheaper from the South, they would look to the South. The evidence indicates that the could get them cheaper from the South. Even the Northern Newspapers I had previously quoted said this.

They did not look to the South, because the South could not make them. All the South could offer was cotton

Yeah, about that. How many cheap Chinese made products that we get into this country are made in California?

“Why are you so shortsighted as to think that trade with the South would only be about cotton?” Exactly what could the South trade except agricultural products?

“other profits would be made by shipping those European imports up the Mississippi to the west, and at prices cheaper to the buyers than the same products that the Northern power brokers would have sold them at.”
By 1860 A locomotive and 20 miles of rail manufactured in Cincinnati cost the same to manufacture as a locomotive and 20 miles of rail manufactured in Birmingham Eng. The American manufactured locomotive steams to St. Louis along with the 20 miles of rail and is loaded on a barge, then goes down river to Vicksburg MS. There is the transportation cost and the Confederate tariff on the sale price of the equipment and materials. The English manufactured equipment and materials are loaded on a ship and sailed across the Atlantic Ocean and waits 6 days at anchor to get pier side in New Orleans, is off loaded, then material is reloaded to a barge, then barged up river to Vicksburg MS. The American built equipment and materials will under sell the British made materials. The “Northern
power broker” aka the locomotive and rail manufacturer will get the sale. A McCormick reaper built in Chicago will sell cheaper in Iowa, then one made in England. The South will not be competitive in trade with the Western States. Because of the shipping and poor port facilities.

“If they could get them cheaper from the South, they would look to the South.” They couldn’t get it cheaper from the South, the only thing the South could do is serve as a middleman for English manufacturers in the trade. If they could manufacture the locomotives, rails, steam engines, reapers, they your premise may well be correct. As long as the trade depended on ocean transport and port facilities, the South in no way could compete for the manufacturing needs of the upper mid west states. Goods being manufactured in England and sold in St Louis MO via a Southern merchant, would have to pay both the Confederate tariff and the United States tariffs. An American manufacturer selling equipment in St. Louis would pay no tariffs and would have considerable cheaper shipping costs. Who is going to get the business.

All the Confederacy could offer the Mid West was cheap cotton.

They couldn’t get it cheaper from the South, the only thing the South could do is serve as a middleman for English manufacturers in the trade. If they could manufacture the locomotives, rails, steam engines, reapers, they your premise may well be correct. As long as the trade depended on ocean transport and port facilities, the South in no way could compete for the manufacturing needs of the upper mid west states.

Then why was there a tariff? If the price of goods from England had to be artificially inflated by between 20 and 50 % to make them competitive with American products, that argues strongly that the American products could not have competed without the protectionist tariff imposed.

But in your example, the American locomotive may have won out, but I would expect the British rails would also have won out. At least that is what the Northern Newspapers thought at the time.

Goods being manufactured in England and sold in St Louis MO via a Southern merchant, would have to pay both the Confederate tariff and the United States tariffs.

This is an erroneous assumption, and this was also an issue that worried the Northern newspapers of the time. It would have been virtually impossible to enforce the tariff on such a wide border. They may have had to pay the Confederate tariff to get them into the South, but there is a very good chance they would have been able to avoid the Union tariff when supplying the Western states.

All the Confederacy could offer the Mid West was cheap cotton.

And anything from Europe at better prices than the comparative American products. You aren't getting it. The South's independence was a huge threat to the existing industrialist/power brokers of the Union. That was why they had to stop it. That was why they had to have a war.

Nobody really gave a sh*t about Ft. Sumter, they just needed to stop the possibility of the South cutting into their markets and income.

“This is an erroneous assumption, and this was also an issue that worried the Northern newspapers of the time. It would have been virtually impossible to enforce the tariff on such a wide border.” I don’t think so. Most trade south to north was on the Mississippi river. The U.S. States tariffs would be collected at each port that cargo could be off loaded, North of the Missouri border. In your scenario, I could see a southern overseer, with 150 slaves trying to drag a locomotive and 20 miles of rail across open plains to St Louis MO.to avoid the U.S. tariff. The importer of the locomotive would pay Confederate tariff at the port of New Orleans, then would then have to pay the U.S. Tariff at St Louis. That why your trade scenario with the upper mid West, would not be profitable for the Confederacy.

Nobody really gave a sh*t about Ft. Sumter. Except the 2.5 million Northern men that enlisted in the army to crush the Confederate state. At which they were successful. I doubt seriously if anymore than .05% even knew what a tariff was.

I could see a southern overseer, with 150 slaves trying to drag a locomotive and 20 miles of rail across open plains to St Louis MO.to avoid the U.S. tariff.

You seem to be stuck on thinking that locomotives would have been the primary article of trade between the South and the Western states. I'm thinking that they would have traded pots and pans, shovels, nails, hammers, wagons, food, drinks, musical instruments, finished clothing products as well as cloth, eye glasses, bottles, jars, guns, farm implements, saddles, tobacco, molasses, paint, saws, stoves, pianos, barrels, and anything that the factories or craftsman of Europe could produce, and for which there was a profit.

You want to believe that this trade through the South would not have happened, because you don't want to believe this war was fought by the North to protect the power and money of wealthy interests controlling Abe Lincoln. You recoil from the thought that so many hundreds of thousands died for no better reason than greed and conniving.

I understand. The thought that this war was triggered deliberately by Lincoln and had nothing to do with anything so honorable as "freeing the slaves", shocked me as well when my friend first told me of it. I understand why you are grasping at locomotives to salvage your belief that there would have been no massive trade through the South. Seeing my view of it is quite discomforting.

Nobody really gave a sh*t about Ft. Sumter. Except the 2.5 million Northern men that enlisted in the army to crush the Confederate state.

Ft. Sumter is like a gay wedding cake. It has nothing to do with cake, and everything to do with imposing someones will on someone else. Ft. Sumter was never garrisoned before the war, and it was only garrisoned for a short time after the war to bolster the pretense that it had some value worth killing 750,000 people. They couldn't even keep that up very long, and quietly abandoned it. Ft. Sumter has spent virtually all of it's existence unoccupied, because the purpose for which it had been envisioned in 1810 was to protect the harbor from the British.

Your 2.5 million Union troops did not care about Ft. Sumter. They cared about doing their duty as directed by their government. Nobody cared about Ft. Sumter other than as an excuse to start a war that the financial interests of the North East (same d@mn people who control the government today, and which we now refer to as "the establishment") needed to protect their investments, assets, and power to control the US government.

New York really is the "Empire State". People just don't realize how much of their lives are controlled by New York City and it's power corridor to Washington DC. The media are mostly headquartered there for the reasons that they serve the interests of the "elite" who live there.

DiogenesLamp quoting FH Buckley: "...the thickest network of patronage ever seen in any country, a crony capitalism in which business partners with government and transfers wealth from the poor to the rich."

DiogenesLamp: "Since 1861."

Rubbish, Buckley's quote comes from his new book:

"The Republic of Virtue: How We Tried to Ban Corruption, Failed, and What We Can Do About It "

Nothing in Buckley's book suggests something unique happened in Washington, DC, after 1861 that was not going on before.
Indeed, the problem was addressed by our Founders and only grew to its current extent when Big Government launched under Progressives like Franklin Roosevelt.
Consider:

In 1858 under Democrat President Buchanan Federal government spent 2.6% of GDP.
In 1872 under Republican President Grant Federal government spent 2.5% of GDP, excluding debt payments.
In 1902 under Republican President Teddy Roosevelt Federal government spent 2.4% of GDP excluding debt payments.
In 1933 under Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal, Federal government first spent 14.5% of GDP and has not looked back since.

Sure, I "get" that you desperately wish to blame Republicans for the malfeasance of Democrats, it's what Democrats by their nature must do.
But as in so much else, there are no grounds for it here.

Anyway, I take your quoting Buckley as a recommendation to buy his book.
So I did, and will let you know if Buckley supports any of your anti-Republican nonsense.

Stay tuned.

DiogenesLamp: "You seem to be stuck on thinking that locomotives would have been the primary article of trade between the South and the Western states.
I'm thinking that they would have traded pots and pans, shovels, nails, hammers, wagons, food, drinks, musical instruments, finished clothing products as well as cloth, eye glasses, bottles, jars, guns, farm implements, saddles, tobacco, molasses, paint, saws, stoves, pianos, barrels, and anything that the factories or craftsman of Europe could produce, and for which there was a profit."

There could be no profit in low-value bulk items like nails & hammers due to the very high freight costs.
Local producers would beat expensive imports on low cost items.
Yes, high value technology (i.e., railroad engines) & luxury prestige items (i.e., fine china) could do well, assuming there was enough Union prosperity to pay for them.

But for any import to have done significantly well, it would have to be sold in high volumes which means it needed to be transported by rail or steamboat.
And that means collecting tariffs on those items would not be difficult.

So, just as Bull Snipe said, importers would have to pay both the Confederate tariff and the Union tariff which means there would be no imports -- none, zero, nada imports -- through the Confederacy to Union customers.

None, nothing, no European imports through Confederacy to Union, due to double tariff taxation.

Sorry about that.

DiogenesLamp: "You want to believe that this trade through the South would not have happened, because you don't want to believe this war was fought by the North to protect the power and money of wealthy interests controlling Abe Lincoln.
You recoil from the thought that so many hundreds of thousands died for no better reason than greed and conniving."

No, because that's total rubbish.
The "real reasons" were well expressed by Unionists of that time as: 1) to preserve the Founders' Union and 2) to achieve the Founders' ideals that "all men are created equal".

That money interests were involved is, of course, self-evident, just as in every war.
But countries don't go to war just for money, and indeed the Civil War cost the Union the very economic factors DiogenesLamp claims they feared most: loss of the Southern cotton trade.
And the results were not economic devastation to the Union, just necessary adjustments and continued economic growth.

But like all Democrats, your nature is to accuse Republicans of your own side's malfeasance and in this case the Confederates' economic interests in their slave investments was absolutely first on their minds:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun.
These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.
That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation."

Clearly, economic interests were first & foremost in the minds of 1861 secessionists.
And because Democrats like DiogenesLamp by nature have to accuse Republicans of their own malfeasances, so he wishes to wipe away all other Union motivations to match those of Deep South secessionists -- just economics, nothing else, he says.

How Ape Lincoln and his Black Republicans

You keep putting these words in my mouth even though I have never said anything that resembles them. I've called Lincoln a "Crony Capitalist", but I have never referred to him as "ape", nor have I ever used the term "black Republicans."

Stop projecting your irrational claims onto me.

Nothing in Buckley's book supports DiogenesLamp's often repeated claim that something uniquely corrupt began in 1861 or that such alleged corruption was uniquely Republican.

I doubt it is the point of Buckley's book to explore when all of this began. More like it is the intent to just make people aware that this is the situation we are in NOW.

We obviously had the situation in the era of Teddy Roosevelt, because he built his name on fighting cronyism and corruption/influence back in the 1900s.

The Corruption/influence was rampant only 35 years after the civil war ended, and therefore it is safe to assume it originated prior to 1900. If you follow the trail of corruption, it always seems to lead back to the aftermath of the Civil War.

Sorry, I had a long appointment with a Spotted or Herbaceous Backson... ;-)

DiogenesLamp re: "Ape Lincoln and his Black Republicans": "You keep putting these words in my mouth even though I have never said anything that resembles them."

Sure, but the people you so vigorously defend did & still do use those terms.
The words express perfectly the feelings of secessionists towards Republicans generally & Lincoln especially.
So long as you defend their cause, their words are yours as well, FRiend.

DiogenesLamp: "I doubt it is the point of Buckley's book to explore when all of this began."

No, that is exactly the point of his book, to show us that it all began not in 1861 but in 1787 when our Founders attempted to outlaw political corruption as they knew it but were unable to outlaw other forms they did not so clearly understand.

DiogenesLamp: "The Corruption/influence was rampant only 35 years after the civil war ended, and therefore it is safe to assume it originated prior to 1900.
If you follow the trail of corruption, it always seems to lead back to the aftermath of the Civil War."

But that is merely your unproved hypothesis, it's not even theory much less observed fact.
Indeed, there are no statistical facts to support it.
What statistics do show is the US economy between 1830 and 1918 doubled in GDP about every 15 years, on average, and Federal spending remained relatively constant at 2.5% of GDP excluding debt payments.

So, if we were to say, for example, that Federal grift & graft doubled every 15 years, on average, it would mean corruption did nothing more than remain a constant percent of GDP.
That is hardly an "explosion" of corruption.

But no such numbers exist and I'd suggest something very different was in fact happening when, for example, we learn about supposedly great corruption in the US Grant administration.
What I think happened was the Democrats who ruled Washington, DC, from about 1800 until secession in 1861, those Democrats were long accustomed to reaping the Federal graft, and when it began going to others under the Republican Grant administration, Democrats both knew where it went and were highly p*ssed-off they no longer got their cut!

So Democrat papers of that day, just as today, caterwauled endlessly about Republican corruption, then fell strangely silent when their own people were back in the saddle again.

It was politics as usual, nothing more.

As for Trust-buster Teddy Roosevelt, that was a very different situation in, say, 1904 than under Lincoln in the 1860s.
None of the monopoly trusts Roosevelt busted up existed as such under Lincoln's administration, and so cannot reasonably be blamed on him.

Nor were any of the trusts TR busted the products of Federal "crony capitalism".
Instead, they were corporations who used the law to accomplish goals the law was not intended to support, monopolies, for example.

Those can no more be blamed on President Lincoln than on, say, a Jackson or Jefferson.

Indeed, I just don't "get" why you feel so compelled to blame Lincoln for every known or imagined problem, especially when you consider that root causes, in many cases, lead directly to Democrats.

Sure, but the people you so vigorously defend did & still do use those terms. The words express perfectly the feelings of secessionists towards Republicans generally & Lincoln especially.So long as you defend their cause, their words are yours as well, FRiend.

I defend the cause of Independence based on this principle of "consent of the governed" as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the concept of which was derived from natural law.

I advocate natural law. That some people used emotionally charged language and derogatory comments does not deprive them of their natural law right to be independent.

Just as a lawyer defends the rights of a criminal, the fact that a man may be a criminal does not deprive him of his rights. You cannot reasonably hold the lawyer responsible for the criminal's acts.

No, that is exactly the point of his book, to show us that it all began not in 1861 but in 1787 when our Founders attempted to outlaw political corruption as they knew it but were unable to outlaw other forms they did not so clearly understand.

This concept of Republican self government was new to everyone back then, and no one knew how the system would be manipulated to promote and protect the interests of the elite who would evolve to take advantage of the system. (New York power barons.)

But that is merely your unproved hypothesis, it's not even theory much less observed fact.

Not so much an unproven hypothesis. If you ask anyone who knows American history, you will generally get an objective answer that the post civil war era was the most corrupt period in this nation's history.

DiogenesLamp: "I defend the cause of Independence based on this principle of 'consent of the governed' as outlined in the Declaration of Independence, the concept of which was derived from natural law."

But in 1860 "the governed" had long since constitutionally consented to a limited Federal republic.
"The governed" never, ever, consented to unilateral declarations of secession at pleasure.
Nor did "the governed" ever consent to turning over Federal properties to self-proclaimed Confederates.
Neither did "the governed" consent to tolerate Confederate military actions in Union states.

DiogenesLamp: "I advocate natural law."

No, you advocate lawlessness disguised as something else.
If every property owner is free to declare his property an independent nation, that is anarchy, the opposite of "natural law".

DiogenesLamp: "Just as a lawyer defends the rights of a criminal, the fact that a man may be a criminal does not deprive him of his rights.
You cannot reasonably hold the lawyer responsible for the criminal's acts."

But if you work pro-bono and, in effect, marry into your client's family, then you are far from a disinterested legal council and instead become his propaganda minister.

DiogenesLamp: "This concept of Republican self government was new to everyone back then, and no one knew how the system would be manipulated to promote and protect the interests of the elite who would evolve to take advantage of the system.
(New York power barons.)"

Your obsession with alleged "New York power barons" would appear more seemly if you'd ever acknowledge that from almost Day One, they were Democrats allied to your clients, the Southern slave power.
After Civil War they quickly re-allied with the Jim Crow South, removing Reconstruction in 1877 and electing Democrat presidents in 1884, 1892, 1912 and 1932 (New Deal), etc.

DiogenesLamp: "If you ask anyone who knows American history, you will generally get an objective answer that the post civil war era was the most corrupt period in this nation's history."

Regardless of how often you repeat it, that remains an unproved hypothesis because there are no statistics to support it.
There are only politically motivated anecdotes, similar in nature to our current insane media's mantra of Russia, Russia, Russia, collusion, collusion, collusion.
Even if the media marches to the mountain-top and sets up prayer-wheels to multiply their incantations of Russia, Russia, Russia, collusion, collusion, collusion, without facts or data, it's still just fantasy.
Just like your allegedly super-corrupt Republican New York power barons.

Let me give you an example of what was really going on, in those days: from time immemorial children worked alongside their parents on farms, then considered a normal, natural & essential part of growing up.
From it they learned both skills & work ethic.
Children helping out was never considered bad, morally or legally.
Likewise, in towns a cobbler's son worked beside him making shoes, etc.

Now, in due time, the cobbler expands his business, buys a machine and hires his neighbors' children to help run it.
So at what point did he cross over some moral line?
It's still 150+ years ago and a cobbler can still train his own son, but what about his nephews, are they OK to hire?
What about his cousins and their children or in-laws?

Point is: what was once considered perfectly normal & lawful, over time came to be viewed as far less so.
Does that mean the country suddenly became more corrupt, or simply that our standards for what is or is not wrong changed dramatically?

That's my point regarding your so-called Gilded Age -- with economy growing rapidly, many people of modest means became wealthy and at the same time the bar for what was acceptable behavior got raised, leaving more than usual falling short of the standard.

That's not exploding corruption, just the opposite.

DiogenesLamp: "Which only means it was valid until consent was withdrawn.
Once consent was withdrawn, the government no longer had any moral authority to rule."

But consent was never withdrawn in a constitutionally recognized method, such as a convention of the states.
That made secessionist claims of legitimacy dubious, at best.

Still, Confederates could have made a successful go of it, since both Presidents Buchanan and Lincoln were determined not to start war over just secession.
But Confederates had different ideas, first provoking war, then starting and declaring war while waging war in Union states.
Finally at any time they could have stopped their war and negotiated much better terms than the "Unconditional Surrender" they fought so long and so hard to achieve.

Bottom line: consent improperly withdrawn is simple rebellion, for which our Founders had no sympathy.

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