Jump to content

Talk:Origins of the American Civil War/Archive 4

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4

Updates & Progress

I have added the beginnings of articles on Thomas Kettell and Negrophobia as a beginning and reference link for future edits here.Rangerdude 06:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Please place new postings toward the bottom of the page. Thanks. 172 07:31, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I suggest using this section to list any progress toward conflict resolution that we make as issues are resolved.Rangerdude 03:23, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Article Reorganization

In reading further I am of the belief that this article is a logistical mess with many excesses, redundancies, and unchecked/unsourced assertions. Some more problems, in addition to NPOV, that could be addressed and revised:

1. Consolidate the topic of slavery into a coherent section. Right now slavery is the dominant theme of 5 or 6 out of the article's 9 sections, and many redundancies exist in each that are also found in others. This could be one of the main reasons the article is too long. From an organizational perspective, we should try to consolidate the material together into a coherent discussion of slavery and all its aspects under a common header - perhaps with several subheaders for things like "abolitionism" and the "free soil" movement and the "plantation system." It'll make the article easier to read and more effective on the whole

The plantation system determined the structure of Southern society, just as free labor determined the structure of Northern society. Expect the word slavery to come up many times when we’re dealing with this subject. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It may have and to that extent should be discussed. But that was not the grievance of my complaint. Right now if I were to read the article while looking for a coherent, brief, and reasonably thorough analysis of slavery's role in the origins of the civil war (a reasonable assumption of what the average encyclopedia reader might be looking for) I could not do so with much ease. The reason is that the article is (1) too long, (2) too dispersed, (3) too redundant, and (4) disorganized. When not only the same recurring topic but also the same repeated and re-repeated assertions about that topic, often without specific sources, are spread out across five or six different categories there's an organization problem. That's why I suggested a comprehensive section on slavery under a single header with subheaders. Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Can we agree to argue about the structure of the article one we get the specific neutrality concerns out of the way? Otherwise, we'll be here forever.172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

2. There are several glaring oversights throughout the article. For example:

The Corwin Amendment - the only prewar compromise attempt to make it out of Congress in 1861 - is entirely omitted.
"Negrophobia" - There's also little to no mention of the free soil movement's darker side - what Richard Hofstadter called the "negrophobia" panic in the north. Prejudicial fears about free blacks in many midwestern states prompted them to adopt systems of Black Codes and emigration prohibitions in the 1830's-60's that were designed to keep freed slaves from settling there and competing with white labor.
Something for another article.
The black codes/negrophobia subject, as a dimension of the slavery issue that led to the civil war, is no less an appropriate subject for this article than the plantation system or any other facet of 19th century slavery and discrimination that you've included. Most reputable historians (i.e. Hofstadter) discuss it at length right along side the free soil movement. No reason exists to exclude it here. Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
You can make that argument based on normative considerations. But the role of this issue in enflaming sectional tensions is another matter. I suggest that you start adding this content in the specific entries concerning the Free Soil movement. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Tariffs - I added a little material on this subject but it could be addressed in its own subsection. The tariff was probably the single most common U.S. economic policy issue from the War of 1812 to the Civil War. From 1820 the south was almost always against tariffs - and very vocally so at times such as the nullification crisis.
Already dealt with in this article. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
As I noted, the manner in which tariffs were "dealt" with was sporadic, largely unsourced, and often with an POV. The previous article dismisses the South Carolina Exposition - a central event of the nullification crisis - as a minor "grumble" or something like that and then portrays it as a slavery document rather than tariffs. That reeks of a POV to downplay a significant incident and it's also just plain incorrect history. Virtually no substantive material existed on the Morrill Tariff before I added it - and you deleted that. Also nothing was there on its origins in Taylor and Calhoun - a significant contribution that should be mentioned (you deleted my attempts to add this as well including links to them and specific references to their books on the subject). The tariff issue was extensive and long lived in the antebellum period and therefore merits a thorough discussion in its own right - not some selective, sporadic running POV commentary spread out over 3 or 4 different headers and written in language that diminishes, belittles, or incorrectly states its details.Rangerdude 20:18, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)


3. Consolidate and reorganize the non-slavery issues as well. For example: do a section on economics, a section on "secession theory" and constitutional issues and so forth instead of spreading little bits of information about each across 4, 5, or 6 different headers. If anybody has Kenneth Stampp's book on the causes of the civil war this may be a good framework to base things from. Stampp basically puts together a list of all the different "causes" of the civil war and does a chapter on each containing 3 or 4 historical documents that display that issue.

4. There still needs to be a better history on the chain of secession itself. For example, what did South Carolina do to sway other states to follow them? (answer: they adopted a letter to all the other southern states outlining reasons they should secede too) Another issue: how did Fort Sumter impact southern states after the original seven left? What role did Lincoln's call for troops have in tennessee and Virginia etc. seceding? What about the border states like Missouri, Maryland, and Kentucky and the secession movements in each of them? This needs to be developed for it to be a true article on the "Origins of the American Civil War"

The relevant section states See Fort Sumter and American Civil War for coverage of events after South Carolina's secession from the Union. 172 13:09, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)

NPOV problems remain

Racism

I think we're making headway here. For brevity's sake I'm going to delete some of the earlier comments (I'll try to keep it under three indents for each discussion item), which should still be available on the edit histories. Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The only absurdity here is to selectively apply this 20th century terminology to a 19th century subject so that it maligns one side while neglecting the other. It would be perfectly proper if you wish to note that 19th century people held racial views that are considered bigotted today, but the 20th century concept of "racism" was not understood or even recognized by most people in centuries past. There are other ways of accurately describing the unenlightened racial beliefs of the past than simply shouting the canard "he's a racist."Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Name one relatively recent, authoritative account on slavery where racism does not appear in the index. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Without a trip to the library I can't confirm or deny any that does have racism in the index. I do have Jaffa's newest Lincoln bio on hand though and it deals heavily with the racial equality issue. It's also from a very pro-lincoln POV with an author known for overemphasizing equality issues. Just checked its index though and no word "racism." It does have "egalitarianism" and "equality" and other terms like that to address the issue in more professional academic language. This is also the norm of most texts I've seen on the subject. Unlike your article, they do NOT make blustery charges about people being "racists" however they do correctly note the presence of "racial discrimination," beliefs of "white supremacy," practices of "inequality" and that sort of stuff. The practice is very simple to employ and makes the writing sound more professional. Instead of saying "poor whites were all racists" say "many poor whites shared in a belief of racial inequality." Instead of saying "Mississippi had racist laws called Jim Crow" say "Mississippi implemented a system of Jim Crow laws, which were discriminatory against African Americans." It's not hard to substitute a more neutral term as these examples have shown and none of the meaning gets diminished.Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Why not just ask for more references concerning the clay eaters? I'll add them to the article once the page is unlocked and clarify the sentence. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Please do so but also please justify why you choose to include that information in an article that is supposed to be an encyclopedia overview. For example, is there evidence that poor people ate clay on a widespread common basis all over the country? Or are you referring to somebody's diary entry on a famine year that says the food ran out mid winter so they took to eating clay to survive? Context is key as are source specifics. Otherwise its a bizarre piece of dubious trivia that fits very awkwardly into the paragraph.Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Your attempts to add sources seem to have been caught up in the server problems last night and I apologize if I removed them, however you also inserted several of them in place of valid material additions I had made. On your sources themselves - it's a step in the right direction but a very small one for the reasons I stated above and others. Some of the things you source are not facts but paragraphs with a heavy POV. Saying "Joe Smith was an extremist reactionary and agitator" is a POV assertion. But so is saying "Joe Smith was an extremist reactionary and agitator" followed by a footnote to author Bob Jones who supposedly expressed that POV on page 267 of a book he published in 1943 but that you nevertheless do not quote or contextualize. The NPOV way of stating it would be "Critics such as historian Bob Jones have described Joe Smith as a reactionary and in his own day Senator Seward accused him of being a fire-eater." That way the reader knows exactly where the POV is coming from and who made it. I used Seward in this example because he did indeed call some people fireeaters, but the knowledge that it was Seward calling them that and not a more neutral voice also provides context to the POV as Seward himself wasn't exactly far from a radical on the other end of the spectrum. In other words, you need to source your material, reduce POV statements in general, and where you feel they are justified for inclusion, specifically attribute them in the text with quotes or easily verified references if possible so that readers know where the POV is coming from.Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
These words are used in the same context in any respect survey U.S. history textbook. But I'm not going to make a big deal about this. If it bothers you so much, I'll agree to replace words like extremist and agitator. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
First, the claim that they're commonly used in anonymous "history textbooks" is just that - a claim. I'll again note that this has not been my general experience, at least with the better quality textbooks. Perhaps it is different for some generic "7th grade U.S. History" book, but I do not consider that high enough quality anyway for use as source material on an article of this type. Needless to say, whether they are used or not elsewhere they are still POV terms and in the interest of the NPOV guidelines should be avoided in most contexts except for those that specifically attribute the POV term to a historical person who is making a POV statement or, in some cases, a recognized expert (though I am also leary of excesses in that latter category, see appeal to authority).
Jaffa was writing before the late 1960s and 1970s, when race started receiving the attention that it receives today in the social sciences and social history. You will find the term use to refer to the ideology that Africans should be held in bondage in relatively recent accounts and ones that are not apologias for slavery. Regarding survey texts, Brinkley's uses it. 172 07:50, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Besides, there is only one single use of the term racism in the article: Small farmers in the South generally accepted the political leadership of the slave magnates and embraced hysterical racism; they were thus unlikely agents for internal democratic reforms in the South. It must stay in the article. Otherwise, there would be no link to the article on racism remaining. 172 07:58, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)


I was referring to Jaffa's book "A New Birth of Freedom" published about two years ago. It contains academically neutral but effective terminology such as "equality" but not the 20th century term "racism." Also, why must this article have a link to racism? Why not slavery, discrimination, or the 19th century term negrophobia instead?Rangerdude 08:06, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Okay, I'd assumed that you were referring to a work in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when he published his best known works. He has been around for quite some time. He is a traditional narrative historian and his work is firmly anchored in an era before the topic of race was brought to the forefront by the new school histories of the late 1960s and 1970s... This section of the article, however, is dealing with the class structure of the Southern plantation system; so, at least one link to racism is necessary. 172 08:31, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Whatever the case with Jaffa, it's a current book from a well-established scholar. Again, I used it as an example simply because it's the one book I have sitting on my desk right now that's relevent to this topic. Also, I don't think if could be said that Jaffa overlooks the role of racial equality issues. It's even been said of him that he's single-mindedly obssessed with them! Jaffa's big schtick is the Declaration of Independence's doctrine of equality as applied to blacks and his latest Lincoln bio is all about Lincoln's role in extending the concept of equality to blacks that others had denied. His favorite and recurring historical topic is the Dred Scott decision, which he cites specifically for denying blacks racial equality. You have also failed to make the case why we need a link to racism - a 20th century term and concept that is most commonly associated with conditions of cultural and institutional discrimination in a modern post-slavery society - over any of the several alternatives I have suggested that would be better suited to a 19th century topic. That seems to be the rub, and a discussion of "racial equality" or "discrimination" or the "white supremacy" beliefs of whites toward blacks or the "negrophobia" of whites toward blacks would, IMHO, be a better term to use than "racism"
While this is less prevalent in traditional narrative histories, social history frequently uses its own technical terminology, as opposed to restricting itself to framing things in terms contemporaneous to the period being studied; and the section in which the term racism is used is indeed one offering a sketch of the Southern social structure. (BTW, modern social science concepts such as "social structure," "critical election," and "party system" are mentioned repeatedly in the article. Are there any objections to these terms? I doubt it. "Racism" just happens to be a sore spot for white Southerners.) Nevertheless, I do agree that it is inappropriate to lace the article with references to the "racism" of specific historical actors. If this were to be done, just about any politician and commentator mentioned could be described as "racist" in one way or another. However, slavery and racism are real, intertwined phenomena and the racist assumptions about the natural inferiority of blacks warrant mentioning. There was nothing unusual about a dependent labor force. What was new was the transformation of black servitude in America in to a permanent system based on race, with the condition of slavery passed from one generation to the next. Along with the institutionalization of slavery came racism. ("Institutionalization"-- there's another 20th century social science term. Is this term not allowed in the article?) I recommend taking a look at the works cited above. They are the leading examples of debate on whether or not the creation of a rigid slave system was a result of historic racism or a response to economic and social needs (whether racism emerged largely as a result of slavery or was the cause of slavery). Thus, a link to the backgrounding on racism in the United States found in the slavery article is an important supplement to this article. 172 10:33, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So the question, then, should be whether this social history practice you describe, which by your own admission breaks from the traditional historical field's habit of using NPOV and historically context wordings, should be employed in this article. I've already stated based upon the NPOV guidelines that they should not. You identify terms such as "party system" and "critical election" as social concepts, but each are also phrases with their own self evident meanings to those who are unfamiliar with social science theories. Racism, by contrast is exclusively a 20th century construct and term. Would you also argue that it's appropriate to link use term "racism" in an article about the 12th century crusades? The way that the europeans looked upon the arabs, or conversely how the arabs looked upon the europeans, certainly resembles what we would call "racism" today but it has no real meaning in comprehending 12th century events as the participants themselves did not know or comprehend the terms! They saw themselves as Christians fighting inferior heretics, or as Muslims fighting inferior infidels and thus what we describe as racism is more properly classified as a form of religious superiority claim, or religious bigotry. Unless you are proposing that we go through every historical article and replace the existing descriptions for every event where one group of people looked down upon and wronged another with the term "racism," it seems that its inclusion here is also inconsistent with other historical articles. Furthermore what descriptive value "racism" offers of the 19th century is easily supplanted by more neutral but equally valid terms with meaning in 19th century contexts as I have demonstrated by example several times to little response from you. I'm beginning to suspect obstinance on your part surrounding this issue, and obstinance normally indicates that somebody is pushing an agenda he or she would rather not admit openly. Rangerdude 21:52, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
No, I'm happy to admit it. I'm trying to keep this article from becoming a neo-Confederate tract. 172 22:11, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
That may be your motive, but in the process you are also suppressing relevent historical information that should be included and engaging in POV violations of your own. Attempting to counter others from inserting a POV, real or imagined, with opposite POV in the other direction still leaves us with a biased article. And when you respond to any and every attempt to bring more neutrality to that biased article by impugning the motives of other editors and branding everything they do as neo-confederate without substantiation and with clear pejorative intent, we end up in a situation not unlike that faced right now: an editing war, a locked article, and very little movement towards consensus due to obstinance on the part of a party who seeks to preserve his POV material at all costs.Rangerdude 23:16, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Kettell

Again, my complaint here is disorganization, redundancy, and errors in your content. Consolidate it down where its redundant and allow errors to be corrected where they are present. I already specified a couple (i.e. your portrayal of the SC exposition, the WIlmot proviso etc.). I also began attempting to correct and clean up your section on Thomas Prentice Kettell - you didn't even have his name properly linked - but you immediately deleted everything I was doing within moments of my edits! The simple fact is there were errors there. I don't know if you've read Kettell's book or not. There is one modern scholarly edition of it with an academic essay on its introduction that is probably about the most comprehensive look at the impact of Kettell's work out there. It documents very plainly that he intended the book as an argument for unity. It also has a timeline of how partisans in the north and south seized onto it to boost their cause or condemned it for saying something they did not like about their side. I was in the process of editing your section based on that essay when you began undoing everything I had added and reverting to your own POV terminology such as "agitator"Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
So this unnamed source on Kettlell is more authoritative than Nevins and Donald? I find this hard to believe.
My apologies for not providing his name - Fletcher M. Green, editor of the scholarly edition of "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits" (1965 & 2003 - University of Alabama Press). And in answer to your question, as far as Kettell's book is concerned YES. Nevins was a general civil war historian and Donald is primarily a Lincoln expert. They are both highly reputable in those areas, but that does not automatically give them infallable expertise in highly specialized topics. To my knowledge Green's is the only modern edition of Kettell's book to have been edited from a scholarly perspective and therefore should be considered the primary authoritative source at the present. His introduction to the book also contains one of the only scholarly biographies of Kettell, however brief it may be. That qualifies Green as one of very few (perhaps the only one) modern scholars to have a specific expertise on Kettell himself.Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
But this article is not the place for an attempt to rehabilitate his legacy. Also, the Thomas Kettell article is blank. Perhaps you'll be interested in starting work on it. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't have any particular desire to "rehabilitate" Kettell's legacy (and in fact I didn't even know he had much of one beyond having written a couple books that were famous in their day but have been more or less forgotten. A brief Kettell article should be added though - i'll make a stub shortly and perhaps expand it when I have more time. Green's intro is about the only biography of him out there and is probably the best thing to base it off of.Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'm not familiar with Green's work on the subject. I haven't been able to find any book reviews to get a sense of the reaction to his work and from where he's coming? Could you post some? It has also been many years since I last read Kettell's book... I'll agree to remove language like "agitator" in the text. Such language can go; but at the same time, this article is not the place to a revisionist treatment of Kettell is not really relevant to this article. 172 08:16, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
A quick google search reveals that Green was a history professor at UNC Chapel Hill, held an endowement, and served as department chair.[1] I don't know much more about him than that, but those are solid credentials in their own right. It would also be unfair to characterize Green's edition of Kettell's book (see above for dates of issue and academic press) as revisionist because it is, to my knowledge, the ONLY Kettell-specific scholarly analysis that's even out there. Nevins may have devoted a couple paragraphs of discussion to Kettell as have dozens of others, but there simply doesn't seem to be anything other than Green specifically dealing with Kettell or the book.Rangerdude 09:07, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Also looks as if Green was president of the Organization of American Historians for a term [2] - a position that's also been held by Eugene Genovese, George Frederickson, C Vann Woodward, and James G. Randall. His credentials look very solid.Rangerdude 09:23, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Opps. I screwed up. I quickly saw 2003-- the date of recent publication-- and took that as the date of initial publication. I couldn't make the connection with the name because I was assuming that this was new book by a living scholar. A pretty embarrassing case of cognitive dissonance. Of course he is a solid source. Sorry about the hassle of my request earlier. I'm not familiar with his work on Kettell; but I'll have to take a look. 172 10:58, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Tariffs

Nobody ever tried to load up the article with "irrelevant content" on tariffs. All I'm asking for is a fair and coherent discussion of it. I made some minor additions toward that end such as mentioning Taylor's role and the specific tariff acts and even that was apparently offensive to you. I'll also challenge your claim that the Beard idea has been "discredited." Some scholars have disagreed with it and challenged it and I'm sure you can name a few of them. Others have defended and expanded it though and I could name them. The issue is presently unresolved as with most historical theories. To claim that the debate is closed out of convenience to your own preferred position smacks of arrogance and censorship Rangerdude 20:58, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The Beard school has been out of favor for over fifty years since Nevins. Some libertarian and neo-Confederate ideologues have adopted the Charles Beard schools. But they do not receive serious attention in the leading scholarly literature. 172 21:50, 8 Jan 2005 (UTC)
You are making blanket characterizations and using pejoratives again ("neo-confederates" and "idealogues") that should be avoided - both for courtesy and appropriateness. I'll also dispute your historiography on two grounds. First the "Beard School" is an important stage in American historical scholarship that attracted comment both positive and negative from leading historians of its day (Nevins, Hofstadter etc included). As such, it should not be excluded even if it is no longer as popular among historians. Come to think of it, in 2005 we aren't much more removed from the Beards as we are from Nevins. I wouldn't propose doing away with his contributions though on the basis that he's no longer the favored civil war historian of the day.
Second, whereas some elements of the historian's profession have drifted away from the "Beard School," it is still considered a major forerunner of Political Economy (particularly the public choice branch) in the economics and economic history professions. While more or less all that could be said about the Beard School in scholarly literature has been said in some form or another, more recent developments that deal with the tariff issue are increasingly abundant. The most recent I know of is a book on the subject by Mark Thornton last year that evaluated the causal role of tariffs in the 1850's political situation in a framework directly based on George Stigler (nobel laureate) that reached very similar conclusions to the Beards, though also more complex.
On that note, I'd like to see a concise but detailed section or subsection dealing specifically with antebellum tariff politics. It's addition, of course, would accompany the elimination of redundancy by removing the existing sporadic passages on tariffs.Rangerdude 03:42, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It would make more sense to add such a section to History of the United States (1789-1849) and History of the United States (1849-1865), as tariff policy was not consistently a source of sectional tensions. 172 07:41, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
You are incorrect about the issue's duration. The majority of southern members in congress consistently opposed tariff increases from roughly 1820 to 1861 with few if any exceptions. This includes voting against the protectionist tariff bills of 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1842, and 1860 and voting for the reductions of 1833, 1846, and 1857. You can also directly trace the philosophical development of the tariff issue from around 1820 with John Taylor of Caroline's Tyranny Unmasked to the South Carolina Exposition and Protest to the Nullification Crisis and ordinance to the anti-tariff writings of John C. Calhoun to the Walker Tariff, Walker's treasury report, and the Warehousing Act of 1846, to Robert M.T. Hunter, the 1857 tariff act, and southern opposition to the Morrill Tariff to the anti-tariff portions of the address adopted by the South Carolina Secession Convention in December 1860.Rangerdude 08:14, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nonsense. The question of the tariff is only a sectional one in select contexts. Louisiana sugar planters, for instance, supported tariffs and were dependent on them. Many planters supported the high-tariff Whig. President Taylor, for instance, was a Whig from the South. In the years leading up to the Civil War, there were even serious efforts to recreate the old Whig coalition. Southern ex-Whigs and Know-Nothings John Bell and John Crittenden were attempting to forge an alliance against the Democratic Buchanan administration. 172


You are doing nothing more than inflating minority viewpoints as counterexamples to the majority viewpoint among southerners from 1820-1861, which was clearly and vocally opposed to tariffs. That is no more valid that calling the north anti-tariff in 1860 because a dozen of its congressmen joined the nearly unanimous southerners in voting against the Morrill bill. If you wish to note this minority viewpoint among southerners I have no objections, but don't overstate its significance to the degree that you dismiss the anti-tariff majority viewpoint. That the anti-tariff position was the majority view among southern officials is not a difficult fact to ascertain either. It is demonstrated conclusively in every single one of the aforementioned tariff votes in Congress - 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1833, 1842, 1846, 1857, 1860-61. The majority of the southern delegation took the free trade position in each and every one of them. Sometimes there was a small minority of Kentucky whigs and sugar planters who broke ranks. Other times, such as the 1860 House vote, the number of southern dissenters could be counted on a single hand.Rangerdude 09:18, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Of course it was the minority view point among Southerners. Nevertheless, the integration of some Southerners in the Whig Party and strength of the Democratic Party uniting certain elements of North and South were essential parts of the stable two-party system that had been able to dampen sectional conflict until the election of Lincoln... It is more useful to chronicle the unraveling of the unifying forces that had existed within the United States, such as nationalism and the party system, rather than chronicling each episode in a series of divisions. The origins of the Civil War lie in what distinguished 1860-61 from 1820, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1833, 1842, 1846, and 1857. With the emergence of the Republicans as the nation's first major sectional party and with the division of the Democratic Party over the Lecompton constitution (i.e. slavery), the election of Lincoln, who was certainly not the first pro-tariff president elected drawing largely on support outside the South, was the breaking point. 172 11:31, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
That's all great background and explanatory information but it does not and cannot overshadow the issue it attempts to describe: the tariff debate itself. As I have given several examples and specific votes to demonstrate, the majority position in the south from 1820 to 1861 was continuously unified by opposition to tariffs and bolstered by an underlying intellectual and theoretical case made by Taylor and Calhoun. It is of no use to chronicle the "unraveling" of the pro-tariff minority POV if you are completely unwilling to discuss the more important context of that POV in the south: the anti-tariff majority. Nor are the earlier tariff events heavily distinguished from 1860-61, at least in any way that is different from 90% of the stuff you included in your article. If anything, the Nullification Crisis was the closest southerners came to secession at any point in the antebellum period save secession in 1860-61 itself. It is also the most significant and far reaching exercise of nullification and states rights constitutional theories before the war save, perhaps, the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions. To dismiss it as a minor event or discuss it only in passing is historically inaccurate and therefore unacceptable. And yes - Lincoln was not the first pro-tariff president, but he was indeed the first staunch and overtly pro-tariff president they'd had in a long time. Others who dabbed in the tariff before him such as Tyler were comparatively moderate on the issue. The last pro-tariff radical had been John Quincy Adams, who signed the Tariff of Abominations in 1828 that gave us none other than the Nullification Crisis.Rangerdude 21:52, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I'm not dismissing the Nullification Crisis as a minor event. I placed a significant amount of content on tariffs, banking policy, and public land in the article a year ago. (BTW, have you read beyond the section on the Southern plantation system? The section entitled "The panic of 1857 and the coming of the Civil War" goes into further detail on the tariff.) But when I was writing the article, I chose deliberately not to create a special section tracing tariff policy. This would bias the article in a way that tells an inevitable tale of an irrepressible, inherent conflict between Southern planters and Northern finance, manufacturing, and commerce over federal economic policy that was predestined to result in civil war. I will continue to oppose the addition of such a section. The origins of the Civil War cannot be reduced to the mere culmination of sectional divisions in the federal government; instead, they must be traced also in terms of the problems such as slavery, expansion, changes in the party system, the rise of mass society, and modernization... BTW, a History of sectional tensions in the United States organized by areas in federal policy could act as a supplement to this article. Such an article would be able to trace debates on tariff policy chronologically and systematically, which you seem to favor doing here. 172 22:06, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Go back and reread my original grievance with your discussion of nullification et al. I said that it is sporadic, incoherently dispersed throughout the article, and at times biased and factually wrong. Yes, you did talk about nullification. But you underemphasized it with a POV term - calling it a minor "grumble" - and removed my edit that attempted to add more detail about it. And yes, you did discuss the 1857 panic. But you did so with a POV, removed my edits to clarify, expand it, and introduce neutrality. Also, the issue extends well before 1857 as I have documented here. Nor would simply having a well written NPOV section on the tariff - a matter of historical fact (that is what we're supposed to be writing about here, is it not?) - in any way "bias" your article. The omission of it and censorship of attempts to add it do, however, bias your article and suggest the presence of a political agenda that excludes it unduly.Rangerdude 23:39, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Look, if the word "grumble" bothers you so much we can replace it with "episode" or something and add a couple of sentences. But as I indicated earlier, I will do everything that I can to prevent the creation of a new, separate section tracing changes in tariff policy over the years. 172 05:38, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Well, all I can say then is perhaps you shouldn't be editing this article. It has become evident that you have allowed your personal biases and fears of these anonymous neo-confederates, real or perceived (I suspect the latter), to guide your organization and drafting of this article. The product is a largely unsourced and biased polemical rant loaded with NPOV guideline violations. Up until it was locked, you were editing it as a self-appointed censor and gatekeeper where you denied others the ability to make positive, factually valid additions to the article that you personally did not agree with because of your POV bias. Now, following reasonable and extended discussions as to why new content should be added, you refuse even the slightest compromise beyond finally relenting to change one of your more flagrant one-word NPOV violations and remain as obstinate as ever about censoring the article. That tells me your motivation here is to protect a POV article and it also tells me you cannot overcome your existing biases on this subject to reach a solution that is closer to the NPOV guidelines of this medium.Rangerdude 21:40, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I have no idea what Rangerdude is trying to argue here. Of course the South had a majority against the tariff. But this is utterly irrelevant to the question of secession. Tariffs were simply not a sectional issue in the way that slavery was. Not only were there significant Whig minorities in the South as a whole, but many southern states, including even deep south states like Georgia and Louisiana, actually featured Whigs winning fairly consistently. The south did not secede because they feared Lincoln's tariff policies (which could never have gotten through the Senate, anyway, if the south hadn't seceded). They seceded because of slavery. If we have a historiographical section about how historians have historically looked at the question of the origins of the Civil War, Beard's theory ought to be mentioned (with appropriate disclaimers about why no respected historians today hold to it anymore, of course). But, given that, well, no respected historians today hold to it anymore, it shouldn't be suggested to be a plausible interpretation of the origins of the Civil War. That a few libertarian and/or neo-confederate cranks continue to hold to the tariff theory is neither here nor there. john k 22:50, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

John - Thank you for your comments, but your claim that tariffs were not a sectional issue like slavery is simply wrong. Your loose employment of pejorative language is also inappropriate for a serious discussion on the contents of this article and your attempts to malign the motives of those who dispute your POV is unnecessarily abusive. The object of this discussion is to produce a comprehensive, high quality article that addresses the origins of hte civil war in a concise, readible manner that is written with NPOV in mind. If you desire to participate in this discussion and make contributions, please do so in a civil manner that resists maligning other points of view or dismissing the introduction of material that you personally do not like but nevertheless may be relevent to the topic.
As to your suggestions - Much like 172, you are overemphasizing a southern minority position to the detriment of the majority position and the issue itself. Look at the votes on the Morrill Tariff. Yes, there were southern whigs in congress who supported it - nobody disputes that. But the problem with your contention is that those whig members could be counted on one hand! Your statement that the south did not secede, at least in part, over tariffs is also contradicted in the records of the secession conventions as is your claim about the senate. South Carolina's secession convention adopted a statement of reasons for secession on December 25th to this end. It denounced the Morrill tariff as a one of the causes to secede and expressed the belief that southern members in congress would be unable to stop it after Lincoln's inauguration:
"And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue— to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures"
Passages like that - and there are many others like it from secessionist leaders - cannot simply be ignored or dismissed because it doesn't suit your point of view to include them. The purpose here is a comprehensive article that should be as close to neutral as we can get it. Nor does the honest, factual, and pertinent discussion of tariffs on this article necessarily come at a loss to the discussion of slavery, which is more than sufficiently expanded upon in this article - so much so that I have suggested consolidating it into a single section with subheaders to produce more effective prose with fewer redundancies. But there is also room for tariffs, the current discussion ofthem being inadequate and biased at points. I suggest that you quit viewing the two as "competitor" causes of the war. Rather they were contributing parts of a complex series of events, controversies, and historical movements that led to the war.Rangerdude 23:32, 9 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rangedude, your Morrill Tariff example is deeply flawed. By 1861 there were very, very few southern Whigs/Oppositionists left, and none from the deep south. The reason for this had nothing to do with the tariff, which was, in 1860, at its lowest level since 1816, iirc. The reason that there were no more southern Whigs had entirely to do with the slavery extension issue. Thus, any kind of unified southern opposition to tariffs in 1860 was a result of increasing sectional tensions, not its cause. Similarly, support in the north for protective tariffs was limited to Republicans and to the state of Pennsylvania. That the Republicans were far more popular than the Whigs had ever been was more due, again, to the slavery issue than it was to anything to do with tariffs (although it's more complicated than that, certainly). As for the Senate, I will stand by this. As for the South Carolina secession document - sure, of course they mentioned the tariff. But there are no historians anymore who think this was anything more than an excuse. Of course the tariff was a significant issue. but it had little directly to do with secession. john k 01:19, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

John, if the Morrill tariff does not fit your criteria by all means look at ANY other tariff bill from the era I described. You will find the exact same thing. There is not one single example where the pro-tariff southerners were anything more than a minority. The Morrill Tariff was the most sectionally divided vote to be sure, but it was in keeping with all the others - not a break from them. There were 9 major tariff bills from 1820-61:
Majorities in the southern delegation voted either anti-tariff or for a rate reduction in 9 out of 9 votes. The strongest southern Whig showing from those years was in 1842, and it was not anywhere near enough to dominate the southern delegation. To claim that the tariff position that showed itself in the 1860 vote is the product of tensions and not a cause is to show ignorance of the philosophical argument underlying the southern tariff position. As I demonstrated above to 172, this argument may be traced directly from 1820 to 1861 through the writings and speeches of southern political figures and thinkers and three men in particular: John Taylor of Caroline (pre-1824), John C. Calhoun (1820's through 1850), and Robert M. T. Hunter (after 1850). Take whatever stance you like on the Senate as well. All that really matters to a discussion on the secession decision is whether or not the secessionists believed they could still stop a bill in the Senate. The South Carolina declaration and many other speeches like it indicate that they did not think that they could do so. Robert Toombs made the exact same argument to the Georgia secession convention making the exact same complaint about the Morrill bill. Others said it at secession conventions all over the south. To take this well documented knowledge that they believed themselves unable to stop it in the Senate and then ignore it because you and some anonymous unnamed "historians," writing some 145 years later, come along and offer an opinion that they could have is beyond absurd. This is supposed to be a history article that covers all possible issues and perspectives on the origins of the civil war, not some forum for User:John Kenney to post his personal POV highlighting the one cause he likes in particular while belittling and dismissing all others.Rangerdude 03:20, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
John is not attempting to use this article as a forum for his personal POV, unlike some people... I will support adding a paragraph expanding the coverage of the Morrill bill in the section dealing with the period between the panic of 1857 and the election of Lincoln. We can do that and strike out the reference to Kettlell as an agitator and the word "grumble." Any further coverage would offer to much detail relative to other topics. 172 05:50, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
When somebody enters into a discussion on a note that goes out of its way to malign and dismiss another perspective on an issue as he did I have no choice but to conclude that he's pushing a POV. The same could be said of a person who edits an article in a way that censors documented historical material that he personally does not wish to include in an article. That's why I made note of it, and I will thank him for toning it down a bit in later responses. It is still inappropriate though and gives reason to question the role each of your biases play in determining the content of this article. Regarding the Panic of 1857 header - that would indeed be the most likely place to put tariff material as part of a larger reorganization of the article itself. Since the Panic of 1857 is a specific event with its own article though, it would be appropriate to change the section's title and broaden its scope. Perhaps something along the lines of "Economic Issues" would do. A brief overview and timeline of the economic disputes, all with appropriate links to specific individual articles, would follow.Rangerdude 06:38, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Rangerdude, the fact that all tariff increases saw a majority of the south opposed to them is neither here nor there. Prior to the break-up of the Whigs, a substantial minority within the south was voting for a pro-tariff party. Thus, while high tariff forces were never a majority within the south as a whole, they were most certainly a perfectly acceptable viewpoint, one held by many of the richest planters. Your argument is as if I were to claim that today's political parties were sectional because Kerry won outside of the old Confederacy, and Bush won big within it. The tariff issue shows that the two sections had different views on tariffs, as one might expect. This doesn't obviate my argument that late 1850s tariff concerns were more a result of than a cause of sectional tensions, and it doesn't show that these different views on tariffs had anything specific to do with the coming of the Civil War. That the two sides disagreed about something, and that, when it came to a crisis, the one side used this disagreement as one of its arguments to justify its case, is unsurprising. But the existence of this issue on its own is not an explanation of the origins of the war - it is, at best, peripheral. john k 10:58, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Provide specifics, John. Specifics. Right now you're simply repeating a line about the southern whigs which, as I have noted and documented through specific votes, were never large enough to constitute anything close to a majority in the south. Furthermore, I can state at a 99% confidence level that there was a strong statistically significant relationship between region and a vote for/against each and every one of those tariff bills I named and can run and give you the x2's to prove it if you so desire. Your argument about the late 1850's is also little more than an asusmption which you have offered no specific evidence for beyond your own assertion of it to be so and, again, appealing to the minority of southern whigs. If you compare the 1860 vote to any of those before it you will find that far from being an anamoly with unique characteristics, the statistical trends exhibited in each were nearly identical. What happened in the 1860 vote is the same thing that happened in the 1828 vote - the north overwhelmingly supported and the south overwhelmingly opposed.Rangerdude 20:55, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

More tariffs

  • What needs explanation is
    1. why secession even before the tariff was passed? This weakens their case, propaganda-wise
    2. why move to secession so quickly? - why not just refuse to collect the tariff? - and make the feds take the first military steps - like in Nullification crisis.
    • I think the article should give plenty of explanation of the tariffs -- since that is what many sympathizers claim as a major reason -- but the short-comings of that explanation need to be rpesented too - without saying it is just neo-con ideology.
    • More needs to be made of the slave states facing a future as a perrmanent minority, now that the Democratic party has split along sectional lines & will no longer effect/enforce compromise.
    • more also needs to be made as to why other slave states supported SC in 1861 when they did NOT in 1832 - particularly regarding LA, which benefitted from tariffs
    • and more needs to be made of the fire-eaters AND efforts to find new territories (both inside & outside present US boundaries) that the South could bring in as slave-states
    • NPOV article should not repeatedly say tariff's purpose was to help North - when it also helped SOME in South. Say instead it was to protect price of goods made in USA -- something many people (north & south) still vehemently support
    --JimWae 04:09, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
All that sounds fine to me just as long as it's written from a NPOV and the claims are factually sourced with quotes and specific references to other historical events. Rangerdude 04:29, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

And more can be added on just about anything when you are dealing with a subject that has generated the wealth of scholarly literature that this one has, although all five points above are already addressed in some detail... Battles over the tariff can be traced in a new article on the History of sectional tensions in the United States, to which the origins of the Civil War cannot be reduced. Or they can be traced in the U.S. history series... But chronicling every instance in which the tariff came to a vote in Congress in laborious detail in this article would mean telling a tale of an predetermined struggle over trade policy that was to result was going to result inevitably in civil war. This may please a few Confederate battle flag wavers, but it would mean disengaging the article from the serious recent historical scholarship. 172 05:38, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)

There is nothing "predetermined" about simply chroncling history as it happened, 172. And no, I don't demand that you include every single instance where the tariff came to a vote (I only mentioned them in detail here because some persons were denying that the tariff was a sectional issue at all based on erronious information and speculation). I do expect, however, that an article on the events that caused the civil war would make an honest, coherent, succinct, and unbiased attempt to discuss it. That includes recognition that it was a common source of sectional tension as well as identifying and properly contextualizing its major events and participants - Calhoun, Taylor, the nullification crisis, and the morrill tariff being the foremost among them and ones that should be mentioned in their own right. Right now we've got a garbled and disorganized mess that relegates it to biased passing commentary inserted sporadically across an article that, at times, reads more like a polemic about all the faults of a bunch of supposed poor dirt-eating backwards racist redneck slaveowning southerners than a work of historical scholarship.
Since we seem to simply be going back and forth on this issue, may I suggest that we draft new headers and subheaders to organize this article (or which ones we should keep) and discuss them? I've already noted that I think we should add an "Economic Issues" header of some sorts in place of the Panic of 1857 and will start there.Rangerdude 20:55, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Further point: I was not denying that the tariff was a sectional issue entirely. I was denying that it was primarily a sectional issue. The tariff was an issue where something of a majority of southerners and a very large minority of northerners felt one way, while a minority of southerners and a slight majority of northerners felt another. Slavery is entirely different, because there are no southerners who are opposed to slavery, and most of them feel they have to defend it as hysterically as possible. (This is an exaggeration, but to disagree on the tariff was acceptable within southern political discourse. To support black Republicanism was simply unacceptable.) The south did not secede because the north was going to push through a tariff that about a third of southerners would support anyway (as I noted before, the Morrill Tariff couldn't have gotten through what would have been the Senate of the 37th Congress, which would have retained a Democratic majority, much less the 36th Congress). They seceded because they felt the victory of the Republicans in the election meant that the north was determined to ultimately extirpate "their way of life" aka the system of plantation slavery. john k 11:04, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
John - you are being speculative again on what constitutes a "minority" "majority" "very large minority" and so forth. I told you before and I'll tell you again - look at the votes themselves. Take the 1828 for example. In 1828 the House southern "minority" that voted for the bill was only 20% of their delegation as opposed to 80% against it. The "very large minority" you claim existed in the north was in fact only 26% of their delegation! 1824 gave the same thing - the southern minority was only 23% of the delegation and the northern minority only 27%. A quarter of their given delegations is not a "large minority" and three quarters is not a "slight majority" - it is a blowout of the northern pro-tariff position over the northern anti-tariff position. Your claim that the Morrill Tariff could not have gotten through the Senate also remains unsubstantiated and, as I showed, was not believed by the southerners. That it had a slight Democratic majority is also meaningless on an issue that was breaking on regional, not partisan, lines. Did you know that some of the Morrill bill's major proponents in the Senate were northern Democrats from PA and NJ? That it was signed by a northern Democrat president from PA? That all but a dozen northern Democrats in the House voted for it? They did. The South also knew that two new republican senators would be joining from the admission of Kansas that spring.Rangerdude 20:55, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I don't understand what Rangerdude is trying to argue here. John isn't denying that it was primarily a sectional issue. Nor is John claiming that it was not opposed by the vast majority of Southerners at the time of the passage of the Morrill bill. What he is saying is that the kind of unified southern opposition to tariffs in 1860 was a result of sectional tensions that were already heating up, not its cause. Rangerdue's response is still not addressing John's point-- the consensus in scholarship since Nevins-- that the existence of this issue on its own is peripheral to the origins of the Civil War. 172 22:06, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
The disagreement here is very straight forward. John is asserting (on his own word, mind you) that the southern tariff opposition did not unify until the late 1850s around the time of the Morrill Tariff and is attributing this (again on his own word) as a product of the sectional conflict over slavery. I am disputing both of these assertions, noting that southern tariff opposition already showing as a solidly unified sectional majority as early as the 1820's. I have also presented statistical evidence to back my claim. On another note, you keep appealing to some anonymous "consensus since Nevins" to support your position (again, see appeal to authority) without either specifying it or demonstrating exactly what this supposed consensus is beyond maligning those who you see breaking it as neo-confederates. I am beginning to think that what you refer to is in fact not a "consensus since Nevins" but rather Nevins himself. As I noted previously, Nevins is not much less removed from the modern era as Beard. Though an accomplished contributer to Civil War history in his own right from his own time, Nevins is not the end-all of Civil War history. He wrote 50 years ago and a lot has been added to the literature since then, so appealing to him as an authority on which to exclude material that you personally do not like is of limited value.Rangerdude 23:09, 10 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Nevins too old for you? How about consensus since Donald? If Donalad is also too old, how about Foner? Or how about McPherson? The list can go on and on. 172 00:14, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Donald is primarily an Abraham Lincoln expert and has not written much on the tariff subject and has not claimed any of his own expertise there. Foner's main expertise is Reconstruction and hasn't written much on tariffs. Foner, known in some academic circles as "Eric the Red," is also a controversial proponent of marxist historiography and isn't known as a consensus historian like Donald would be. McPherson's main discussion of tariffs is in Battle Cry and amounts to all of about 2 pages. In short, none of them provide the comprehensive and thorough analysis of tariff issues that would be a prerequisite for assigning authority (since once again you are seeking appeals to authority) to them on that subject. As was the case with Kettell, that also means we have to find more specialized experts who know tariff politics and give it more than a 2 page summary (that isn't very rigorous and leaves a lot to be desired I might add) in a thousand page synopsis of the war. The most recent specialized book on civil war tariffs that I know of is the one I mentioned by Mark Thornton (Auburn University) that came out last year. There have also been several academic journal articles on the subject in the last decade or so that could be used. There was also a book from the late 70's that was a highly technical history of antebellum tariff politics (I can't recall the name right now but I can find it if I look). And there's always the history of United States tariffs by Frank Taussig - it's 75 years old but its recognized as a classic now and its about the only specific history of US tariff policy from the founding to the 1930's out there. One of Gabor Borritt's Lincoln bio's has some more detailed stuff on tariffs too, though it's all specific to Lincoln. I suspect Fogel and Engerman have probably done some stuff on civil war tariffs or if not, you could at least find more than a 2 page snippet on them in some of their books. So that's where I'll start. In other words, to address this subject properly we need to move beyond the giant Battle Cry style "complete summaries of the civil war" histories and into more specified and detailed scholarly works.Rangerdude 00:48, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Of course stuff has been published about tariff policy recently. But this is neither here nor there. And Frank Taussig is just as outdated as Beard. This has nothing to do with the fact while the economic determinism of the Beards influences historians to this day, no one seriously argues that the tariff was the Morrill bill was anything more than a peripheral cause of increased sectional tensions. It was an effect. 172 06:40, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)


172 - you are failing to comprehend something very basic here, and something that is crucial for a work of scholarly quality. Your unsourced and anonymous appeal to authority is just that - 'unsourced and anonymous.' 'Unsourced and anonymous' simply doesn't cut it in the scholarly world, and neither does a gratuitous dismissal of scholarly work that inconveniences your position as "neither here nor there." In all honesty, if you handed in a paper that read like your article here be it on a civil war subject or any other, I'd flunk you without question and possibly even hand it over for plagiarism review on the grounds of paraphrasing other people's theories and work without proper attribution.
What's you point? I'd do the same. The same standards for referencing do not apply for Wikipedia and an article for an academic journal, or that matter even an undergraduate paper, perhaps even a high school paper in an advanced program. I don't think that I can't think of a single article that could be submitted as a paper. They are simply different species. References are not a requirement on Wikipedia, which is essentially a venue for information sharing that must always be verified by virtue of the fact that anyone can edit it at any time. Nevertheless, if you want a reference to any specific point, I'll provide one and add it to the sandbox on which I am working. 172 10:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Making the claim that "no one seriously argues that the tariff was the Morrill bill was anything more than a peripheral cause" followed by "it was an effect" - all without any substantiating evidence or sources - is simply more of the same. Have you proven that non one seriously views the Morrill Tariff as something more than peripheral? No. You have not, and in fact I have given you a number of modern scholarly sources that contradict this notion. Have you proven that the bill was the effect of the tensions rather than a cause? No. You have not. You simply asserted it so, even though I have quoted original documents from the secessionists stating that the push for the Morrill bill was a cause of agitation for them.

Your case could be strengthened by a recent secondary source placing the same amount of evidence on the tariff as Beard. The burden is also on you. 172 10:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
I've already directed you to Mark Thornton's book, published just last year, about 3 times. If you want another, there was a peer reviewed article I saw emphasizing Morrill by Robert McGuire and Norman Van Cott in the scholarly journal Economic Inquiry from 2002. You seem reluctant to even look at these Rangerdude 19:23, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)


You also seem to have great difficulty grasping the difference between a general overview history of the war written for popular audiences and sold en masse at the local Barnes and Noble - e.g. McPherson's Battle Cry - and a specialized technical or scholarly book or journal article on the type of subject that only academics discuss. Battle Cry may be great for getting an overview of the war or finding a date or brief summary of something, but it simply doesn't work as a technical manual for tariff politics because there isn't enough there.
This is a cheap shot. It's quite a lot to infer just because I mentioned McPherson in passing in a rushed response. (I have other things to do aside from editing Wikipedia.) While this article does not rely on them entirely (this would be clear with a thorough referencing of the text, which I am willing to provide despite the fact that it is not required customarily on Wikipedia), the survey overviews by authors like Donald, McPherson, and Potter are a way of comparing how the significance of various subjects are generally weighed. On that note, are they also making the same alleged mistakes as this article when they go into great detail on the role of slavery in determining the structure of the Southern society and the tenor of Southern politics while giving tariff little more than a 2 page summary? 172 10:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
It's no cheap shot to simply note that the histories you are referencing as modern "authoritative" views on the tariff are in fact general overviews of the war that do not give a rigorous treatment to the tariff issue of any significant depth. There are many reasons for this, some that have been explored and some that have not. For starters, space is often a consideration in overview books and naturally authors will devote more space to the impact of a battle than a comparatively boring tariff bill. Second, most of the historians you reference have little to zero background in economics and thus would not be expected to discuss the inner workings of an extremely technical type of policy that also happens to be misunderstood by large sections of the public today. When discussing matters of detail that require expertise - and tariffs do - it's always preferable to go to the specialist on that event or that subject over the general historian of the entire war.Rangerdude 19:23, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)


Same goes for Foner and most of the other authors you mentioned. Even Nevins, in his multi-volume Ordeal series, gives a cursory look at the topic that, while more thorough than McPherson, is anything but comprehensive. You say that Taussig is outdated, but Taussig's book is also the only thing out there like it. He's the only major scholar to do a comprehensive tariff history of the U.S.
I know. I'd use him in an articles concerning the tariff or an article like History of sectional tensions in the United States, but you brought him up in response to the assertion by John and me that the tariff is a peripheral subject for the purposes of this article-- a statement that would not appear in the article, of course, but one on which editorial considerations ought to be based. 172 10:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

in those periods and until somebody else comes along and does an updated one, he's what we've got to work with (unless you've got an alternative that I haven't seen you post?). Once again we find ourselves at a standstill over the same exercise of obstinance on your part. I've offered suggestions, specific historical materials, statistics, scholarly experts, and means of compromise relating to how we could provide a fair, balanced, factually accurate NPOV discussion of tariffs in the context of the civil war. And all you have to offer are the same old gratuitous and unsourced assertions followed by your reasserted refusal to consider much of anything beyond what you already have in place, that is to say the heavily censored and biased POV polemic that got us into this mess in the first place.Rangerdude 08:21, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Re: And all you have to offer are the same old gratuitous and unsourced assertions followed by your reasserted refusal to consider much of anything beyond what you already have in place. Well, let's see from you a recent secondary source stating the contending opinion. Original research isn't going to cut it. It'll be great if you want to write an article for an academic journal, but Wikipedia isn't the place for it. 172 10:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Once again, I've already mentioned Thornton's book two or three times as a modern, recent specialized look at the Morrill tariff. The McGuire peer reviewed article is another and I'm sure I could find a couple more if I do a little searching in the journals.
  • What needs explanation is
    1. why secession even before the tariff was passed? This weakens their case, propaganda-wise
    2. why move to secession so quickly? - why not just refuse to collect the tariff? - and make the feds take the first military steps - like in Nullification crisis.
    3. why did other slave states support SC in 1861 when they did NOT in 1832 - particularly regarding LA, which benefitted from tariffs? This is where slavery comes in & also the sectionalization of the Democratic party
    --JimWae 23:36, 2005 Jan 10 (UTC)
Jim - the link you give is to one of three documents published by the South Carolina convention. The one I quoted is the "Address of South Carolina to the Slaveholding States" and has a large section on tariffs: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=433 The third document is a simple ordinance making secession official and doesn't say much else.Rangerdude 08:21, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)
  • It mentions tariffs twice - both times immediately adjacent to slavery. It does mention taxes more, even more on the new minority position, and is most extensive on slavery, it seems --JimWae 08:32, 2005 Jan 11 (UTC)

Jim - when it mentions taxes it is effectively talking about tariffs. Tariffs were pretty much the only type of taxes we had back then Rangerdude 09:25, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Proposed compromise

There seems to be little hope of anyone changing his mind here. I propose this draft (the link compares the differences with the article that is currently protected) as a compromise to get the page unlocked and end the neutrality dispute tag out of the article. Further changes can be considered. This draft does not contain some of the language that Rangerdude finds so objectionable, has a new section on the Nullification Crisis, a new paragraph on the Morrill Tariff Act, and a few structural changes. Will Rangerdude accept this as an alternative to the current version of the article? 172 08:02, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

172 - At first glance it looks to be an improvement over the last, though I still have some differences I would like to see addressed. Some are content, others are organizational.

  • The grumble/episodes change is an improvement but two issues remain with this passage. First, occasional seems to downplay the significance of the nullification crisis. Second and more importantly, the addition of the nullification section may make this paragraph itself redundant and thus a candidate for deletion for the sake of brevity.
  • The nullification section is a good addition. A few minor changes I'd like to see:
    • An introductory paragraph of 3-4 sentences should probably be added to contextualize the issue and explain why South Carolina reacted as it did. Specifically, this should state that protectionist tariffs were seen as beneficial to industrial interests by protecting them from the competition of Europe however states like SC, which had few industries and depended on agricultural exports for their income, had to pay the costs for a policy that they did not benefit from. This would also be a good place to mention the southern anti-tariff philosophical position, specifically linking to Taylor and the SC Exposition (esp. if it is removed from the redundant paragraph above)
    • The last 2 sentences of the second paragraph drift away from fact-telling into POV analysis at points. Specifically, the conclusion that "the episode had shown that no single state could assert its rights by independent action" is questionable as that is the Jacksonian perspective. Yet both the Jacksonians and the South Carolinians claimed victory after the compromise tariff, the other viewpoint being that SC had shown it could force a major policy compromise on the national level through its independent action. Perhaps a "both sides claimed victory" followed by each perspective would fix this.
    • the Tariff of Abominations link needs to be capitalized to fix it.
  • On Kettell - commentator is a better word than agitator, but Kettell was actually not a southerner. He was a northerner. Nor does his book try to portray the north as "parasitic" (another POV term) - that was a term used by some of his southern fans to describe their own interpretations of his book. "Sucked up" could also probably be replaced by a more neutral and academically atuned term such as "consumed." Also, when I see the statement "Political sociologists have noted..." I immediately ask who? A footnote is better than nothing, but this should be stated in the text itself. Say "Joe Smith, a political sociologist, noted...." instead.
  • Your Morrill tariff paragraph has many problems:
    • It states that the act "moderately increased" duties - this is a severe understatement. It moved the average rate from a low of about 17% to over 37% in the first year (in other words, it more than doubled it) and set the stage for it moving up to 47% in the next three years.
    • Stylisically - what the rates were before 1846 needs to be contextualized some as the average reader will have no clue what that means. A better description would be to say that it restored the rates to protectionist levels. If yoy want a historical reference point, the Morrill tariff's ad valorem rates were similar to the 1842 Tariff (36% average rate) and the rates of the early 1830's before the downward push of the Compromise Tariff (which successively reduced rates from 43% in 1832 to a goal of 20% over a decade), though Morrill also had some dollar amount rates that exceeded the equivalent of 100% ad valorem.
    • This paragraph should be placed in the context of an economic issues discussion - not an example of what Congress did after the south left. The historical reasons for this are many and include the historical southern opposition to tariffs, the fact that the Morrill Act was compared at the time to the Tariff of Abominations, and the fact that it was cited among the reasons for secession by several secessionist legislatures and politicians.
    • If you wish to reference its passage after the southerners left this would be appropriate with due reference to the fact that there were 2 competing beliefs at the time - some thought they could block it in the senate while most secessionists thought they could not. This would also be a fair compromise on the issue seeing as we'll never know for sure either way whether or not they could have blocked it since that vote never happened.

That's about it for the edits you made. Other things with the article that should go in elsewhere and n a broader note the article still needs to be cleaned up:

  • There needs to be at least a link somewhere to the Corwin Amendment - probably near the Crittenden Compromise - since it is the one compromise attempt that did pass.
  • The negrophobia problem needs to be mentioned in the context of the free soil movement
  • Lots of redundant information exists throughout. This could be cleaned up, as I proposed earlier but as we put off until the POV stuff is resolved, by consolidating some of the sections and headers together.
  • Some of the passages throughout start to stray off into side issues such as temperence, labor unions, social movements to improve working conditions and that sort of thing. It's the kind of stuff that's interesting but hurts the article in terms of being concise and brief. This probably belongs in other articles and should be mentioned with greater brevity.
  • The abolitionist acts of Brown in Bleeding Kansas should probably be reorganized in closer proximity to abolitionism itself. There are also NPOV problems surrounding the description of Brown himself, which make him sound like a bad cartoon superhero (his "heroism and courage have been a source of inspiration to fighters for justice and equality since"???). Bottom line is Brown was and remains a controversial figure even to abolitionists, especially those who advocated non-violence. A better NPOV description would recognize him as a controversial figure and note that he was hailed as a martyr among some in the north but also detested as a murderer in the south for the very same actions. Also there's no need to used "so-called," which implies doubt about its existence, for the Pottawatamie Creek Massacre link. Some praised it, some called it murder but there is no doubt that it happened.
  • SOme mention should be made of the violent turn in abolitionism in the 1850's especially with Brown. Harper's Ferry and, to a lesser degree, Bleeding Kansas spawned near hysteria around the country on both sides. The south went on an anti-abolitionist frenzy fearing a slave revolt and saw Brown's attempt to start one at Harper's Ferry as "proof" of the conspiracy. Some in the north also reacted with a bit too much zeal for Brown's treason feeding this. Harper's Ferry also spawned and inflamed secessionist secret societies like the Knights of the Golden Circle as well as their abolitionist adversaries like the Wide Awakes - both sides accused of an array of violent, paramilitary, disunionist, arsonist activities and every other possible charge. Also fear over violent abolitionism should be stated as one of the causes given by many secessionists.

I'm sure more things will come to mind but those are my suggestions right now.Rangerdude 09:22, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Most of these suggestions are good. I started incorporating some of them in the sandbox. I'll be singing off for now. It's taking me about several minutes to open a page and about ten to edit one. There must be problems with the server again tonight. 172 10:54, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

We seem to be making more progress discussing specific points rather than broader editorial principles, i.e. the emphasis that ought to be placed on tariffs. I am still incorporating some of your points in my sandbox. compare differences with current version 172 01:46, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

BTW, as a stopgap measure, would you agree to have the current article replaced with this sandbox, as I think that we both can agree that it is an improvement, while we work on resolving other points?

--- Corwin amendment did not fail - it passed both houses. But slave states left & they could not/would not vote on it & then when the war started, it lost attention.--JimWae 03:07, 2005 Jan 12 (UTC)

I'm aware. I meant failure to secure the ratification of the amendment. 172 03:44, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Any objections?

Are there any objections to having the article unprotected so that I can put in the sandbox version as a temporary fix while we reach a longer-term agreement? If not, I'll put in a request, or just do it myself. 172 21:49, 12 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I'll agree to it - make it unprotected with the new draft version. The POV header should remain on it though until it is refined further and also to attract input on how to make it better.Rangerdude 08:05, 13 Jan 2005 (UTC)

The word radical appears 32 times in the new (2005-Jan) article & it is not always clear to which position it might refer. I find the following paragraph particualrly unclear.

The radicals, however, staunchly opposed any attempts to modify the Republican position on slavery. Radicals were appalled by what they considered a surrender of their principles when, for example, all the ninety-two Republican members of Congress voted for the Crittenden bill. Although this compromise measure prevented Kansas' entry into the union as a slave state, the fact that it called for popular sovereignty, rather than outright opposition to the expansion of slavery, was deeply troubling to the free-labor radicals.

Lincoln was considered a moderate by Republicans, advocating non-extension instead of abolition. I'd think the radical position at the time was for quick abolition in states in which it already existed. I'd think calling Lincoln a radical is taking a southern POV. Perhaps the word abolitionist could replace radical in a number of cases. --JimWae 06:15, 2005 Jan 14 (UTC)

The radicals in the above paragraph refer to radical Republican supporters outside Congress, particularly in the press. Refine the language if you want... Where is Lincoln referred to as a radical? If he is, that needs to be changed right away. 172 07:29, 14 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Fugitive Slave Law

Many of the arguments [User:Rangerdude] makes for tariffs apply with even more force to the question of fugitive slaves, and particularly the enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. The current article mentions tariffs more than two dozen times, and the fugitive slave issue just seven times. If one reads the various secession documents, debates, editorials, speeches, etc., (not to mention the various compromise efforts advanced by Corwin, Crittenden, etc., and the proposals discussed in the various peace conventions) the count was rather the reverse. For the secessionists, cooperationists, and unionists alike, the fugitive issue got far more attention and discussion than did the tariff issue. At the risk of article bloat, I would suggest a separate sub-section, perhaps under "Divisive Forces" (4.2.4?) where this issue gets full and formal discussion. Tlbenson 07:40, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

I couldn't agree with you more. Unfortunately, the problem here is nowhere near as bad as it is the summary found in a more important article-- American Civil War. (See [3]) Fixing that article is a higher priority, IMHO. 172 17:06, 19 Jan 2005 (UTC)
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:Origins_of_the_American_Civil_War/Archive_4&oldid=63048225"