Re: [TSCM-L] Re: So Now What?

From: <d..._at_geer.org>
Date: Thu, 17 Aug 2006 22:41:09 -0400

"James M. Atkinson" writes:
-+-------------------------
 |
 | The freeing of the slaves (both
 | Black, White, Yellow, or Brown) in the South had everything to do
 | with economic control, and little to do with humanity of the leadership.
 |


As someone who grew up in what was left(*)
of Bartow County after Sherman came through,
I feel obliged to comment. Ask yourself
this simple question: Would any colony have
agreed to join the Union if it had known it
would have to fight to get out? Not one,
not a single one, would have.

"The Gettysburg speech was at once the shortest
and the most famous oration in American
history...the highest emotion reduced to a few
poetical phrases. Lincoln himself never even
remotely approached it. It is genuinely
stupendous. But let us not forget that it is
poetry, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the
argument in it. Put it into the cold words of
everyday. The doctrine is simply this: that the
Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed
their lives to the cause of self-determination --
that government of the people, by the people, for
the people, should not perish from the earth. It
is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The
Union soldiers in the battle actually fought
against self-determination; it was the
Confederates who fought for the right of their
people to govern themselves."
      -- H.L. Mencken, THE SMART SET, May 1920

"We hope never to live in a republic whereof one
section is pinned to the residue by bayonets."
      -- Horace Greeley, 11/9/1860

The war was about tariffs, not slavery however
much it is the victors who get to praise
themselves by writing the history of their
greatness and the selflessness of their draftees.
The Federal government derived 90% of its income
from tariffs. The North had 22.5M people; the
South 10M of whom 3.5M were slave. After the 1828
tariff law, the South almost seceded. In 1840,
the South paid 84% of all tariffs, rising to 87%
in 1860. They paid 83% of the $13 million federal
fishing bounties paid to New England fishermen,
and also paid $35 million to Northern shipping
interests which had a monopoly on shipping from
Southern ports. The South, in effect, was paying
tribute to the North. The Republican platform of
1860 called for higher tariffs; that was
implemented by the new Congress in the Morill
tariff of March, 1861, signed by President
Buchanan before Lincoln took the oath of office.
It imposed the highest tariffs in US history, with
over a 50% duty on iron products and 25% on
clothing; rates averaged 47%. By the time Lincoln
took that oath, seven states had seceded, and war
began on April 12.

"The war between North and South is a mere tariff
war, a war between a protectionist system and a
free trade system, and Britain naturally stands on
the side of free trade. Shall the slave-owner
enjoy the fruits of slave labour in their entirety
or shall he be cheated of a portion of these by
the protectionists of the North? That is the
question which is at issue in this war."
      -- Karl Marx, October 20, 1861, London


--dan


* Allatoona Pass:
   5301 men engaged
   1603 casualties
      6 hours
    700' of narrow gauge rail
Received on Sat Mar 02 2024 - 00:57:22 CST