March 19, 1861

New York Herald

The News.

The public will find in the HERALD of this morning the two new tariffs which are destined to play an important part in the settlement of the troubles which now surround the United States. The Southern tariff is very simple and easily understood, but the Northern tariff is full of incongruities, and we have therefore endeavored to make it clear by throwing it alphabetically in tabular form. This tariff, so arranged, is thus ready for immediate reference. It will be perceived that spirits of turpentine, Peruvian bark, and other manufactures of flax, are liable to different rates of duty, without a distinct specification. Several interpolations also appear in different parts of the official document, whether clerical errors or legal alterations, is not stated. They will lead to litigations and trouble, annoyance and expense.

One of the effects of this Morrill tariff, however, will be to settle the question of the navigation of the Mississippi river—the only one which looked threatening to the South. The Southern tariff being lower than the Northern, all goods destined for Memphis, St. Louis, Cincinnati and other ports of entry in the West, will be landed at New Orleans, giving employment to the boats and railroads on and near the Mississippi river, and reviving the old business as it flourished before the East opened its artificial connections with the West.

A despatch from Savannah intimates that goods in transit through the Confederate States for such States as are without their jurisdiction can proceed to their destination without payment of duties.

Advices from Charleston state that a despatch had been received in that city from Havre, intimating that ships from the Confederate States would be admitted into that port on the same footing as those carrying the federal flag.

The administration having come to a decision upon the claims of applicants, the following gentlemen have been appointed to represent the nation abroad:

Charles Francis Adams—Minister to England

William L. Layton—Minister to France

N. P. Judd—Minister to Prussia

George P. Marsh—Minister to Sardinia

James Watson Webb—Minister to Turkey

Jacob T. Halderman—Minister to Sweden

W. S. Thayer—Consul General to Alexandria.

Nothing of importance transpired in the Senate of the United States yesterday beyond the confirmation of appointments and the delivery of a speech by Mr. Breckinbridge on the resolution of Mr. Douglas.

Advices from Fort Brown intimate the surrender of the Ringgold Barracks at Brazos Santiago to the Texan troops, and that its evacuation would take place on the 20th inst. Col. Ben McCulloch is now on his way to Richmond to purchase arms for the State of Texas. He will also endeavor to induce President Davis to form a regiment of mounted riflemen for the protection of the Texan frontier.

The tenor of advices from Washington indicate no change in the policy of the administration relative to the reception of the Southern Commissioners. Preparations for the evacuation of Fort Sumter will probably be inaugurated in a few days, but the mode in which it will take place has not yet been decided upon. The rush of place hunters still continues.

The attendance of members in both branches of our State Legislature yesterday was rather slim, and the proceedings were not in the main of great importance. In the Senate but little business was transacted. Among the few bills introduced was one to amend the Revised Statutes in relation to the assessment and collection of taxes. The bill amendatory of the act establishing regulations for the port of New York was ordered to a third reading. In the Assembly a number of petitions in favor of a railroad in Broadway were presented. Progress was reported on the Metropolitan Health bill, and also on the bill to amend the city charter. Various other reports were made, and different bills otherwise acted upon, but none of them of general interest. 

The Two Tariffs, North and South.

We publish today the tariff recently adopted by the Northern Congress at Washington and the one virtually agreed upon by the Southern Congress at Montgomery, both in estenso, and they present, we think, a fair contrast between the legislative capacity of these two bodies. It is impossible to deny to the Southern tariff an exemplification of statesmanship, enlightenment, wisdom and a knowledge of governing a great and enterprising people, which are wholly wanting in the other document.

The two measures, in fact, differ as much in spirit as the eighteenth and the nineteenth centuries; they are as widely different as the legislation of the Mountain in revolutionary France, or the Puritan legislation of the old Commonwealth of England, and the legislation of these two countries at the present day, as any commercial man who understands the subject may see by comparing the one with the other.

The tariff of the Washington Congress is the most ignorant, useless, blundering and pernicious enactment that ever was concocted for the avowed purpose of bettering the interests of the country. On the contrary, the tariff of the Montgomery Congress is a sound, practical and intelligible measure, and as such it will command the admiration of the statesmen of England and France, and all the commercial nations of Europe. They will discover, from the comparison, that the art of government is with the South, and not with the North, and they will be guided by that conviction in their policy as regards the two sections.

For the last forty years a set of stockjobbers and speculators in the North, and especially in New York, New England and Pennsylvania, have been using Congress on this question of tariff and revenue for their own benefit, and for purely stockjobbing purposes, just precisely as they operate in the corner gatherings in Wall street; and they have readily found such men as Morrill, who represents some grogshop, hole and corner interest in Vermont, to do the business for them in Washington. The country has suffered many times from ill judged tariffs, got up to suit the stockjobbing and other individual interests, as, for example, from the tariff of 1828, which was settled in 1832, but not before it almost drove South Carolina into nullification and secession; and now that the negro agitation had driven intelligent and practical Southern members out of Congress, the abolitionists and stockjobbers got affairs into their own hands, and we see the result in this most iniquitous measure, the Morrill tariff.

The combined effects of these two tariffs must be to desolate the entire North, to stop its importations, cripple its commerce and turn its capital into another channel; for, although there is specie now lying idle in New York to the amount of nearly forty millions of dollars, and as much more in the other large cities, waiting for an opportunity of investment, it will be soon scattered all over the country, wherever the most available means of using it are presented, and it will be lost to the trade of this city and the other Northern states. There is nothing to be predicted of the combination of results produced by the Northern and Southern tariffs but general ruin to the commerce of the Northern confederacy. France and England, in view of these two measures, will find but little difficulty now in recognizing the independence of the Confederate States of the South. The statesmen of these nations care nothing for our eternal nigger question. Their own commercial interests abroad are all in all to them; and, indeed, upon the subject of negroes, both the American governments stand now upon an equal footing, inasmuch as the Southern, as well as the Northern, constitution prohibits the African slave trade.

The tariff of the South opens its ports upon fair and equitable terms to the manufacturers of foreign countries, which it were folly to suppose will not be eagerly availed of; which the stupid and suicidal tariff just adopted by the Northern Congress imposes excessive and almost prohibitory duties upon the same articles. Thus the combination of abolition fanatics and stockjobbers in Washington has reduced the whole North to the verge of ruin, which nothing can avert unless the administration recognizes the necessity of at once calling an extra session of Congress to repeal the Morrill tariff, and enact such measures as may bring back the seceded States, and reconstruct the Union upon terms of conciliation, justice and right.

The Richmond Enquirer

Views of Vice President Stephens.

Mr. A.H. Stephens, Vice President of the Southern Confederacy, reached Atlanta from Montgomery on Monday last, and was received with every demonstration of respect, admiration and confidence on the part of the people of Fulton and the adjoining counties. The Atlanta “Confederacy” says: “Expectation was on the tip-toe and the whole population were out to meet their favorite. We do not remember ever before to have seen so large an assemblage of our citizens brought together. The numerous military companies in full dress, and the fire departments with gay uniforms and brilliant torches were out in full force.”

We publish a synopsis of Mr. Stephens’ speech on the occasion, as given in the “Confederacy,” knowing that it will be perused with interest and satisfaction by our readers.

Mr. Stephens, let it be borne in mind, occupies the second place officially in the new Confederacy; a position to which he was called by the Congress thereof, and by their constituents of all parties. The people of Georgia, and other people who know him, acknowledge the fidelity of the picture of A. H. Stephens as drawn in his memorable Congressional canvass of 1855, by an enthusiastic friend and admirer—thus:

“Stephens is small in stature, weighing only 100 pounds, sometimes more, sometimes less; but he is the best illustration of multum in parvo to be found anywhere. There is much contained beneath his diminutive exterior—an intellectual and moral treasure which you will rarely find in a clay-tenement either large or small. He unites the eloquence of a Randolph with the simplicity and purity of a Macon.”

Such, we say, is the estimation in which Mr. Stephens is held by his Southern neighbors and friends. Thus introduced and endorsed, his statement of the present and his opinion of the future of the Southern Confederacy, cannot fail to have its effect upon the border States and upon reflecting men in other portions of the old Union. But we will no longer withhold Mr. Stephens’ speech from the reader:

Mr. Stephens was presented to the acres of enthusiastic admirers who stood there to do him honor, by our worthy Mayor in a few very appropriate words of welcome.

In response Mr. Stephens excused himself, from his state of weariness and fatigue, from making any very extended remarks, but said he desired to notice an allusion of the Mayor to the labors of the Congress at Montgomery. —With marked emphasis, Mr. Stephens said that in all the public bodies in which he had ever served the country, and in his experience they had not been few, he never met as many men combining the same exalted talent with as much of devoted, unselfish patriotism. Their whole aim seemed to be to see the right and pursue it. This was his opinion, but very soon we would have the opportunity of seeing what had been done and passing upon it ourselves. He ventured to say, that the history of the world did not present such another social phenomenon as the existing revolution in the Cotton States. A vast empire was divided—a government thrown off, a new system inaugurated in juxtaposition to the old, and without a drop of blood, the slightest social disorder or physical suffering. All we had to do, said the speaker, to perpetuate this happy state of things, was to be true to our own honor and fame. We were once Unionists but now we are all Secessionists, and if we continued to display to all the world the proper union of hearts and purpose, there could be no such word as fail for us. But, in most eloquent tones he declared, if dissensions springing from venal and selfish ambitions, if unreasoning and captious fault finding should discourage the true friends of Southern liberty, he could prophesy no good for us.

Mr. Stephens said that he had once venerated the old Constitution under which he had been born, and did still feel a great respect for it. But upon a dispassionate comparison of the two Constitutions, he did not hesitate to declare that the new was an improvement on the old. He went on to state that he thought the mode appropriating money when brought into the Treasury by taxation, as provided for by the Constitution of the Confederate States, a decided improvement on that of any government whatever. The labor, he said, was not so much to get money into the public chest as to protect it from misappropriation after it was raised. By the new Constitution not a dollar could be drawn from the public Treasury, unless by a two-thirds vote of Congress. An exception to this rule was only made when the President should report to Congress that pressing public necessity and exigency called for it. Another grand difference between the old and the new Constitution was this, said Mr. Stephens, in the old Constitution the Fathers looked upon the fallacy of the equality of the races as underlaying the foundations of republican liberty. Jefferson, Madison and Washington, and many others, were tender of the word slave in the organic law, and all looked forward to the time when the institution of slavery should be removed from our midst as a trouble and a stumbling block. The delusion could not be traced in any component parts of the Southern Constitution. In that instrument we solemnly discarded the pestilent heresy of fancy politicians, that all men, of all races, were equal, and we had made African inequality and subordination, and the equality of white men, the chief corner stone of the Southern Republic. With an honest administration of a government so founded, Mr., Stephens said, the world was yet to see in us the model nation of history. Restore peace, set our people quietly to work out their destiny from this point of departure, and we would go on from one step of glorious development to another. We would expand Southward and Westward, to the East and to the North (God forbid, said a gallant Secessionist,) until there would be no complaint about territory.

Mr. Stephens said before he closed he would make a prediction that some might take in the way of good news if they wished. He gave it as his opinion, that before Saturday night we would hear of the surrender of Fort Sumter. What the labors and science of General Beauregard had done in convincing Major Anderson that his position was not impregnable he would not undertake to say. But let this prediction turn out as it may, of one thing we might rest assured, that the Forts would be given up. or they would be taken away. Mr. Stephens seemed to be satisfied that we should have a peaceable separation from the North, but he said our general preparation and readiness to meet a different result might have had a great deal to do with such a consummation. He said we all desired peace—none of us felt that war and its sufferings and distractions were light things, but yet we were prepared for war. After invoking a fraternal and cordial union of all hearts in defence and support of the Honor and Freedom of our people, in most touching language, Mr. Stephens closed by proposing three cheers for the Confederate States of America.

Mr. Keitt, of South Carolina, it was whispered around, was in the throng, and soon a thousand voices called him out. Well did this gallant and eloquent gentleman sustain the report we had all received of his power as a speaker. He rendered a tribute to our Vice President of unsurpassable eloquence, and gave us, in his own unselfish and noble devotedness to the cause of Southern Independence, an earnest of what his State would do in approval of the recent labors of the Congress at Montgomery.

The immense crowd dispersed at half past eight, cheered and elated with what they had heard of the brightening prospects of our beloved country.

A few old friends pressed in to pay their respects to the distinguished speakers, but all seemed to think that it would not be proper to fatigue them by friendly attentions. Our guests left by the nine o’ train of the Georgia Railroad.

Diary of a Yankee in the Patent Office

TUESDAY 19

Another cold day. M. 19 early this morning, but the sun took the snow off before night. There does not seem to be any news in particular afloat but Warlike rumors are in the secession papers. The Cabinet does not seem to be a unit upon all questions and it may not hold together long. Sent packages of seeds from the Agriclt Room to both the Editors at Lyons, Tinsley & Van Camp. Went down to the Ave with Juliet. Called upon Miss Douglas on H Street. She commences school with Miss D. tomorrow. 11 o’clock.

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