George,

When it comes to tariffs, I did not say Mr. King was "wrong." I did say that his numbers do not match those put forth by established historians. Here are two examples.

In the January 2004 issue of "North & South" Magazine (Vol. 7, No. 1), Historian Gerald Prokopwicz debated the history and character of Abraham Lincoln with Thomas DiLorenzo. At one point, DiLorenzo made certain claims about tariffs. The editors inserted a small aside written by James McPherson on tariffs in the 19th century. It reads:

"DiLorenzo is essentially correct that the tariff supplied ninety percent of federal revenue before the Civil War. For the thiry years from 1831 to 1860 it was eighty-four percent, but for the 1850s as a decade it was indeed ninety percent.

"But the idea that the South paid about seventy-five percent of tariff revenues is totally absurd. DiLorenzo bases this on pages 26-27 of Charles Adams, _When in the Course of Human Events_, but Adams comes up with these figures out of thin air, and worse, appears to be measuring the South's share of exports, and then transposing that percentage to their share of dutiable imports. Exports, of course, are not subject to taxation and never have been, because such taxes are prohibited by Article I, Section 9 of the US Constitution---which Adams appears not to know. In any case, Adams claims that about eighty-two percent of exports from the U.S. were furnished by the South---he cites no source for this, and it is in fact wrong---the true figure was about sixty percent on average, most of that cotton---and then by a slight of hand claims that this proves the South paid a similarly disproportionate share of tariffs. But of course the tariffs were only on imports.

"The idea that the South would pay a disproportionate share of import duties defies common sense as well as facts. The majority of imports from abroad entered ports in the Northeastern US, principally New York City. The importers paid duties at the customs houses in those cities. The free states had sixty-two percent of the US population in the 1850s and seventy-two percent of the free population. The standard of living was higher in the free states and the people of those stats consumed more than their proporitionate share of dutiable products, so a high proportion of tariff revenue (on both consumer and capital goods) was paid ultimately by the people of those states---a fair guess would be that the North paid about seventy percent of tariff duties. There is no way to measure this precisely, for once the duties were paid no statistics were kept on teh final destination of dutiable products. But consider a few examples. There was a tariff on sugar, which benefited only sugar planters in Louisiana, but seventy percent of the sugar was consumed in the free states. There was a tariff on hemp, which benefited only the growers in Kentucky and Missorui, but the shipbuilding industry was almost entirely in the North, so Northern users of hemp paid a disproportionate amount of that tariff. There were duties on both raw wool and finished wool cloth, which of course benefited sheep farmers who were mostly in the North and woolen textile manufacturers who were almost entirely in the North, but it was Northern consumers who ultimately paid probably eighty percent of that tariff (woolen clothes were worn more in the North than the South, for obvious reasons). Or take the tariff on iron---it benefited mainly Northern manufacturers (though there was an iron industry in the South as well), but sixty-five percent of the railroad mileage and seventy-five percent of the railroad rolling stock were in the North, which meant that Northern railroads (and their customers, indirectly) paid those proportions of the duties on iron for their rails, locomotives, and whells. One can come up with many more examples."
("The Truth About Tariffs," _North & South_, Jan. 2004, Vol. 7, No. 1, p. 52)

Far from the South being clobbered by tariffs, McPherson points out that most goods subject to tariffs were consumed by northerners. He estimates, based on available evidence and general industrial and consumer trends, that northerners paid about 75% of tariff duties.

Two issues later, in the same magazine, historian William C. Davis agreed with McPherson. In a letter to the editor, Davis wrote:

"I was delighted ot see 'The Truth About Slavery' by James McPherson as a sidebar to your recent Prokopowicz-DiLorenzo debate [N&S, vol. 7, #1]. It really is time that some responsible took on and comprehensively cracked this hoary old chestnut about the South supposedly financing the Union through the tariff by paying an unfair burden of up to two-thirds of national revenue. It is simply nonsense, but unfortunatley historians have for too long stayed away from the tariff debate as part of a wider effort to put behind them the Lost Cause mythology. As a result the recent spate of neo-Confederate revisionist works by DiLorenzo, Charles Adams, Jeffrey Hummel, and others, has made a strong bid to legitimize this non-issue for unwary readers of today.

"McPherson rightly shreds the fallacious arguments and figures in Adams' _When in the Course of Human Events_. Indeed, readers ought to be wary of accepting anything in the surreal world of Adams, a man who bill shimself as as the world's leading scholar on the history of taxation. Yet incredibly, on page 27 of his book, in citing (erroneous) import and export figures, he concludes that the North paid a mere seventeen percent of the tariff in 1860, the South eighty-seven percent. It apparently escaped this mathematical wizard that his percentages add up to one hundred and four percent rather than one hundred percent.

"More pertinent that this silly aside, however, is something McPherson hints at when he notes that we only know where imports that produced revenue entered the country, mostly in the North as he says. He does not go on to point out that the South's major point of importation, New Orleans, served the entire Mississippi River Valley, the Ohio, Illinois, MIssouri, and several other tributaries. Thus New Orleans, the port that produced the greatest tariff revenue in the South in 1860, was actually a gateway for products going to Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Cincinnati, Peoria, Burlington, even Chicago and St. Paul, and in every case the tariff tax was beig paid by the retail purchaser, not the merchant middleman in New Orleans. Thus even the South's most productive revenue port was taking dramatically less money out of actual Southern pockets than commerce figures mght suggest on their surface.

"This will not convince the zealots, of course, nor whould we expect it to, for they are working in the realm of emotion and values where facts carry little weight. But we do need to keep facts out there all the same."
---William C. Davis, Virginia Center for Civil War Studies, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
_North & South_, May 2004, Vol. 7, No. 3, p. 6

I place a great deal more value in the words two leading Civil War and American history scholars (men who have taught at Princeton and at Virginia Tech) than the unsubstantiated claims of an unknown SCV member. If Mr. King wants his claims to stand up in the fact of men like McPherson and Davis, he'll have to offer some evidence.

"No Craig you are wrong, what makes it extreme is you don't agree with it."

George, surely you recognize absolutism in historical writing.

"We read the same type of stuff day in and day out about the South. You are not even willing to say hey the North was 50% wrong."

What is with the "wrong" and "right" stuff? Where have I said either side was right or wrong? This is my problem with how so many people in the US approach history---they try to justify or condemn something like secession or slavery or the Civil War rather than understand it. This is what Davis talks about in his letter: "they are working in the realm of emotion and values where facts carry little weight."

"You think maybe he wanted us to challenge his claims, maybe say where did he find that, how does he know?"

I don't know, but considering the fact that he provides few sources or evidence, he does do much to aid the pursuit of information.

"I see you making the same type of statements and offer no sources, what is the difference?"

I'm offering a brief critique of some of his points, somewhat like a book review, highlighting problems in his list of "10 Causes of the War Between the States." If I ever want to publish an article about my take on the causes of the war, I will provide more evidence to back it up.

"How many of these established historians are Southern leaning?"

What do you consider "Southern leaning"? Agreeing with you?