Is Bush the worst President in history?

Well, CottonBowl, that leaves you out.

 

Cottonbowl = Dittohead

It seems to me that the one most apparent trait of Rush Limbaugh's army of idiots is their blind and mindless desire to see the world as black and white, with overly simplified solutions to complicated issues. "All Liberals are bad," "Democrats are weak," "If we don't reelect Dubya, then America will go straight to hell." If anyone disagrees with their black and white view of reality, they are commies or idiots or worse yet liberals.

You are not so different from the average stooge making up the army of Rush's Retards, my friend. The Civil War was fought over slavery and nothing else? What kind of simple minded bullshit is that?

The U.S. House of Representatives, under the influence of a very powerful Northern protectionist lobby, "actually passed the Morrill tariff in its 1859 to 1860 session, prior to the departure of southern congressman from the House of Representatives," write McGuire and Van Cott. "This vote took place on 10 May 1860, well before Lincoln's election, Confederate secession, and Lincoln's inauguration."ÊÊ

This suggests that the Morrill Tariff was not a "war tariff" put into place to finance the war, as has been so often stated to be the case by Northern revisionist historians, but the usual kind, designed to thwart free trade and plunder consumers, especially Southern consumers.

Moreover, the House vote of 105 to 64 was very lopsided in terms of Northern supporters and Southern opponents of the Morrill Tariff (Congressman Justin Morrill was a steel manufacturer from Vermont).ÊÊ"Only one yes vote was from a secessionist state (Tennessee)" and "only 15 no votes came from northern states."ÊÊ

This means that 87% of northern congressmen but only 12.5% of southern congressmen (and just 1 out of 40 congressmen from secessionist states) voted in favor of the Morrill tariff, the year prior to secession. The handwriting was on the wall for the South, and ultimately for the Confederacy, especially after the recent Panic of 1857. Since as an unfortunate sidelight of it, the South was hurt far less than the other regions of the country and many there concluded that the superiority of their economic system had been vindicated.

Northern newspapers that were associated with the Republican Party openly advocated protectionist tariffs as a tool of plunder directed at the Southern states.ÊÊAs the Daily Chicago Times editorialized on December 10, 1860:

The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country.ÊÊLast year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff [the Morrill Tariff] that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.

Cognizant that the Confederate Congress was about to adopt a much lower tariff rate, the Chicago paper warned that if the North were to "let the South adopt the free-trade system, the North's commerce will be reduced to less than half what it is now . . . leading to very general bankruptcy and ruin."

On March 12, 1861, a week after Lincoln's inauguration and a month before Fort Sumter, the New York Evening Post, another Republican Party mouthpiece, advocated a preemptive strike against the Southern free traders with a naval attack that would "abolish all ports of entry" into the Southern states.ÊÊ

The Newark Daily Advertiser, meanwhile, expressed its disgust that Southerners had apparently "taken to their bosoms the liberal and popular doctrine of free trade," and that they "may be willing to go . . . toward free trade with the European powers."ÊÊ"The chief instigator of the present troubles, South Carolina, has all along for years been preparing the way for the adoption of free trade," and must therefore be stopped "by the closing of the ports" by military force.ÊÊ

Returning victorious to his home of Springfield, Illinois, Lincoln attended a Republican Party rally that included "an immense wagon" bearing a gigantic sign reading "Protection for Home Industry."ÊLincoln’s (and the Republican Party’s) economic guru, Pennsylvania steel industry publicist/lobbyist Henry C. Carey, declared that without a high protectionist tariff, "Mr. Lincoln’s administration will be dead before the day of inauguration."

The U.S. House of Representatives had passed the Morrill tariff in the 1859-1860 session, and the Senate passed it on March 2, 1861, two days before Lincoln’s inauguration.ÊPresident James Buchanan, a Pennsylvanian who owed much of his own political success to Pennsylvania protectionists, signed it into law.ÊThe bill immediately raised the average tariff rate from about 15 percent (according to Frank Taussig in Tariff History of the United States)Êto 37.5 percent, but with a greatly expanded list of covered items.ÊThe tax burden would about triple.ÊSoon thereafter, a second tariff increase would increase the average rate to 47.06 percent,ÊTaussig writes.

When Lincoln was inaugurated his party had just doubled the average tariff rate and was planning on increasing it even more.ÊÊThen, in his First Inaugural Address, he promised a federal invasion of any state that did not collect the higher tariffs, as South Carolina had refused to do when it nullified the "Tariff of Abominations" in 1832.

Keep in mind, Dittohead, the winning side always writes the history of the war. Try to think for yourself and not allow others who are "more esteemed" than you do all of your thinking for you. The average southerner who fought so valiantly against obscenely overwhelming odds was not fighting to preserve a rich man's property any more than he was fighting to preserve the rich man's way of life. The average soldier was fighting to repel an invading army from the soverign territory of his home state. No one had a bigger beef against slavery, except for the slaves themselves of course, than the poor southerner. The slaves occupied jobs that were thereby unavailable to the poor free southerner.

No, my narrowminded friend, the Civil War was fought for a myriad of interrelated and complicated reasons and was not just a war to preserve slavery. Also the Morrill Tarriff was signed into law by President Buchanan BEFORE the war and even before Lincoln took office.

In the future, Dittohead, before you pop off and make such a jackass of yourself, try to do a little research on your own, and don't base your entire historical perspective on someone elses point of view who may have their own personal reasons for spinning their slant on history.

 

Fatcat, you ignorant moron, the argument is (please slowly so you don't move your lips and you can concentrate and understand, perhaps) whether......

....a protective tariff was passed OVER THE VOTES of the South BEFORE the war started.

Since I have proven that the South won every vote on the protective tariff in the decade before the war started, and that the Morill Tariff was passed AFTER the South seceded and its Senators and Representatives withdrew from Congress, the discussion is over.

The war was not caused because the South lost votes on the protective tariff.

End of story.

 

OK, dumbass, since I am so slow witted, please explain to me how Buchanan could have signed the Morrill Tarriff into law if it was enacted after the South seceded from the Union? I am obviously under the mistaken understanding that Mr. Lincoln was president at the time that the South left the Union. Wait, that is an irrefutable historical fact, so I am left with the conclusion that you just make shit up to fit your narrowminded argument of the day. As I suggested earlier, try to do some research before making a jackass of yourself. Oh, and by the way, yes Dubya is far and away our worst president, especially if viewed from the perpective of his ruinous environmental policies. Have a nice day, as you spread your own brand of understanding and sunshine amongst your fellow man.

 

Do I have to correct you every damn time? This is what Phatcat said (among many other points which totally destroyed your position).

Pay attention stupid.

 

Are you paying attention, moron?

The Morill Tariff was passed on March 2, 1861. James Buchanan left office on March 4, 1861.

 

Most of the Southern states had left the Union in secession votes in January, 1861. South Carolina had left the Union in December, 1860.

Anything else you want to know?

 

Now fatcat is wondering just how an American President left office in March and a new President's term started that month.

Anyone care to explain it to him/her?

 

You are so very lame

Buchanan SIGNED the Morrill Tariff act two days before leaving office. For God sake, are you really that thick? Just look up which president signed the act, or you too incredibly stupid to look up something even that easy to investigate. If you find that you are too much of an imbecile to research even so simple a matter as that, please feel free to come back here and further make an ass of youself.