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Abraham Lincoln and the Morrill Tariff
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Forty-year Background of Sectional Tariff Conflicts
Part 3 of 8 of a Series on the Morrill Tariff
Abraham Lincoln strongly endorsed the newly passed Morrill Tariff during his inaugural speech, and though most of his speech was conciliatory on slavery, he promised to enforce collection of the tariff whether or not the Southern States remained in the Union. After promising that his objective was only to defend and maintain the Union, he added:
“In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it is forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no use of force against or among the people anywhere…” (Italic emphasis added.).20
In other words, there would be no Federal violence against Southern states except to collect the tariff and to secure control of the places where it might be collected, for example, Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor. It is obvious from his inaugural speech that Lincoln’s conciliatory words on slavery contrasted with his hard line on tariffs. Raising the tariff was by far his most important objective.
- Hits: 2965
The Morrill Tariff
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Furious National Debate over Protectionism vs. Free Trade – Part 2
As South Carolina statesman and political philosopher John C. Calhoun frequently pointed out, any tax measure that has a disparate and damaging effect on different regional or commercial interests is inherently unconstitutional. Article I, Section 8 of the U.S. Constitution provides that:
“…all duties, imports, and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States.”
Article 5, Section 9 ordains that:
“No tax, or duty, shall be laid upon articles exported from any State. No preference shall be given, by any regulation of commerce or revenue, to the ports of one State, over those of another.”
The clearly manifest spirit of these Constitutional provisions is not that duties should be uniform in rate, but that they should be uniform in effect. The intent of these measures is to prohibit any legislation that gives preference to special commercial interests, geographic regions, states, or ports. Surely, it prohibits any tariff that damages other commercial interests or geographic regions for the benefit of another. The Confederate Constitution, recognizing the injustice and turmoil caused by much of the tariff legislation of the past 40 years, allowed for low-rate revenue tariffs but prohibited protective tariffs.
- Hits: 2211
The Morrill Tariff
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Provocation to Southern Secession and Northern War – Part 1
Most Americans now believe that the U.S. “Civil War” was just about slavery. They have to an enormous degree been miseducated. Since the early 1960s, powerful academic and political interests have been straining every nerve to sustain the myth that the war was a glorious moral crusade against slavery. How to manage the multi-faceted problem of slavery was often a divisive issue but not in the overly-simplified moral sense that lives in postwar and modern propaganda. But had there been no Morrill Tariff in 1861, the major cotton-exporting states would not have been so strongly compelled to secede, and there might never have been a war. The conflict that cost the lives of over 750,000 Union and Confederate soldiers and at least 50,000 Southern civilians and impoverished many millions for generations might never have been.1
Before the Morrill Tariff, there had been nearly 40 years of political tariff wars between Northern industrial Whig/Republicans favoring high-tariff protectionism and Southern agricultural low-tariff free-trade advocates. The sharply increased rates and sectional bias of the 1824 Tariff benefited the North at Southern expense and was the first tariff to create substantial Southern distrust of Northern political dominance.
- Hits: 2818
Biden Inflation and Economic Chaos
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Grim Numbers in the Battle for American Freedom
The U.S GDP was $22.7 trillion at the end of September 2021, and the U.S. Federal Debt was $28.4 trillion. This gives an extremely dangerous ratio of debt over GDP of 125 percent. Godman Sachs estimates 2022 GDP to grow 4.0 percent to $23.6 trillion. The Biden Administration estimates a 2022 Budget deficit of $1.5 trillion. This is probably far below the actual figure given recent analysis by the University of Pennsylvania-Wharton Business School, but would increase U.S. debt to at least $29.9 trillion, a ratio of at least 127 percent. My own estimate justified by Wharton statistics is that the 2022 Budget deficit will be closer to $2.0 trillion and raise Federal Debt to $30.4 trillion or 129 percent of GDP, and considering an amnesty is included in the legislation, may be quite conservative. Amnesties are budget-busters and usually far larger and more expensive than anticipated.
- Hits: 1642
Hyperinflation Warnings
- By Mike Scruggs
- Category: Mike Scruggs' Column
Bad Government Has Awful Consequences
In 1965, I wrote a check for $165.00 in Rio de Janeiro to a famous jewelry store. It was not cashed until exactly a year later, the legal time limit on checks. The Brazilian inflation rate was over 80 percent that year, and my check was passed around and used as a substitute for the rapidly declining value of Brazilian currency. Brazilian inflation began a sharper escalation after 1981, when the rate had climbed to 102 percent annually. By 1990, the inflation rate was over 70 percent per month and peaked at an annual rate of 2,948 percent. Various government plans based on faulty economic reasoning were instituted but failed to tame inflation and caused widespread shortages of goods and services and economic stagnation. Some of this same faulty reasoning can be heard today in the halls American government, including apologies for enormous spending programs by President Joe Biden, Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen, and Democrat leaders of Congress Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer. This includes outrageous statements that huge trillion-dollar spending programs would have zero net costs.
- Hits: 1606
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East.
He holds a BS degree from the University of Georgia and an MBA from Stanford University. A former USAF intelligence officer and Air Commando, he is a decorated combat veteran of the Vietnam War, and holds the Distinguished Flying Cross, Purple Heart, and Air Medal. He is a retired First Vice President for a major national financial services firm and former Chairman of the Board of a classical Christian school.
Click the website below to order books. http://www.universalmediainc.org/books.htm.