Category Archives: Detroit

Cruise the Great Lakes or the St Lawrence

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Pearl of the Seas, one of several Great Lakes cruise companies.

The Great Lakes system presents a growing summer cruise opportunity, relatively untraveled, but so far relatively expensive. There’s great scenery, including Niagara Falls, Mackinac, Painted Rocks, Chicago, and the Soo Locks: interesting sites, and the options are growing. As a cheaper alternative, as interesting, IMHO, is the lower Saint Lawrence seaway, including Quebec City, Montreal, Portland and Prince Edward Island, leaving from Boston, NYC, or Philadelphia.

The 2026 Great Lakes season includes seven cruise lanes and 10 largish ships and 7 cruise lines, up from six lines and eight ships in 2025. Major lines include Viking, Pearl Seas, Ponant, and American Cruise Lines who provide over 800 port visits in 2026, up from 700 in 2025. The largest of the Great Lakes ships are smaller than those for Alaska and the Caribbean cruises, but more luxurious. On the St Lawrence, the ships are bigger, the prices lower, and you get more or less what you’d expect on an Alaska cruise, with an open bar, typically.

Viking Oceanis

The cost differences are more than I would expect, but coming down, I expect. Currently, a nine-day Great Lakes cruise from a Viking Oceanis cruise from Cleveland costs a minimum of $8,675 per person. The 14-day version in the map above costs $14,270+. Details: https://l.cleveland.com/g2f86w. By comparison, a Boston to Quebec City cruise costs about $1200 per person, similar to a one week European or Alaska tour, on average.

I put the blame for the high cost of Great Lakes cruising on the size limits of the locks on the St Lawrence canal and on the Niagara Falls, Welland Canal: 740 feet (225.5 m) in length, 78 feet (23.8 m) in width (beam), and 26.5 feet (8.08 m) of depth (draft). The largest cruise ship now operating on the Great Lakes, the Viking Oceanis, show above measures 665 feet (205 meters) length, by 77 feet (23.5 meters) width, by 19 feet, 8″ draft, barely smaller than the canal. It boasts a capacity for 378 guests and 256 crew members. By contrast, the Norwegian Jewel, a popular ship for the New York and Boston to Quebec City route holds 2,870 passenger and a crew of about 1,069. This explains some of the price difference but not all. The rest, perhaps is competition. A standard European cruise ship can be rerouted to the St. Lawrence, but not to the Great Lakes.

Aerial Norwegian Jewel Norwegian Jewel – Norwegian Cruise Line

If one wanted to run a large cruise ship on the Great Lakes, it would have to be built there. It could be done, but isn’t currently. We make very large ore carriers that operate entirely on the Great Lakes, so the capacity exists. The other alternative would be to expand one of the canals. IF this were done, there would be a lot more competition and ships, and we could be served by much larger container ships as well. An unfortunate aspect of the small lock size of the Welland and upper St. Lawrence is that currently, only very small container ships can enter or leave the Great Lakes. The result is that cargo prices are much higher than for any of the US coastal ports or the Mississippi. Both the US and Canada would benefit from a larger connection to the sea.

Robert Buxbaum, July 7, 2026

Our new helium leak detector at REB Research

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Our helium leak detector being calibrated with a standardized He leak

We just got a new helium leak detector, a Varian 938, about 15 years old, shown at right. Our old detector, a Veeco, had not worked well for years, and then we could no longer get it fixed. For a while we outsourced our leak checking, and on rush jobs it didn’t always get done. Now we can check everything in-house at much better sensitivity than before.

It used to be that helium leak checking services were common locally, in Detroit, but we lost a lot of manufacturing and our quality checkers left too, for Ohio, then abroad. Companies that used to do He leak checking switched to fluorescent die checking, which isn’t as good, and then stopped checking altogether. But small cracks at welds are not uncommon, particularly with laser welding of stainless steel. They form as the metal cools, and are too small to see. They show up in helium leakage through the micro-cracks, and if not detected and corrected, these cracks will grow and destroy a pipe or system over time. For my products, hydrogen purifiers, the micro cracks affect hydrogen purity. Any crack that helium can get through will allow impurities to diffuse into our output hydrogen. Because of the problems of micro-leaks and durability, it used to be obligatory in the nuclear navy to helium leak check every part.

The picture above was taken while calibrating our new helium leak detector. I’d bought some calibrated sources, in this case, one certified to bleed at 3.6×10-8 cc/sec, which is equivalent to 2.1 x 10-9 slpm. If a leak of that rate would appear in one of my 1 slpm purifiers, that would imply a delivered hydrogen purity of 99.999998%, and that’s generally the purity limit I certify. This is also a common leak standard in the industry, but my new detector is better than that standard. We can test down to 0.5×10-9cc/s . A 1 slpm purifier with that leak rate will deliver hydrogen at 99.9999999+ purity, more than nine-nines, as they say. On the calibration day, above, I tested three new purifiers, and found they were all perfect to the higher standard, ≤ 0.5×10-9cc/s. I’m so happy with this, I thinking of going into free-lance, helium leak checking. There’s no one local who does it.

In case you want to know, I bought this detector on eBay but found it didn’t work. I tried cleaning key parts, replaced the pump oil, nothing helped. Then bought another leak detector, with a spare filament, but without a pump or a mass-spec unit. It included the standard leaks that I now use to calibrate. That one didn’t work in the same way that the original one didn’t; we never reached pressure, and the filament never came on. Eventually, I came to believe that the vacuum pump was a fault. I sent it to a great pump repair shop in Greentown, PA, and discovered they also repair helium leak detectors. I hope to visit them. They replaced the pump and spiffed up my detector at a decent prices ($1500 as I recall). Now, it works like a charm.

Robert Buxbaum, July 1, 2026

Sewage: rain to the river, poop to the fields, nothing to your basement

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I’ve written a fair amount about sewage over the years, including the benefits of small dams, and problems of combined sewers, but I thought I’d write here about something really fundamental: sewage has two components, poop and rain, and they should be kept separate. The poop and related liquids are known as sanitary sewage. Ideally it is the treated, saved and used as fertilizer. Rain, known as storm sewage, needs to go to the rivers at a controlled speed, unmixed with sanitary sewage. Sorry to say, in many counties, mine included, the two are mixed following every rain, costing us unnecessary money, and making swimming unsafe, and boating (sometimes) unpleasant.

Our system is not quite mixed, but is semi-separate. It only mixes in a “big” rain, more than 1/2″, something that happens once per month, on average. The Pipes are semi-connected as shown below.

Combined sewer system, like in our county, Oakland MI. We use little dams in the pipe system to semi-separate the flows. Here, showing a rain-induced overflow of combined sewage, a CSO.

The pipes of a sanitary sewage system can be relatively small in diameter as this flow is continuous, but never that large. The cost of treatment is high, per gallon though. Some of this cost can be recovered in fertilizer value.

Stormwater flow, by contrast, requires big pipes because the flow, while episodic and be 10,000 more than the sanitary flow. A city can go for weeks without storm flow as there’re is no rain. A storm will then drop more water in an hour than all the sanitary sewage of the last few weeks. You need large diameter stormwater pipes, and you typically want retention basins so that even these pipes are not overwhelmed, and to provide a little settling. The pipes should direct storm water to the nearest river. In our county we mixed the two for historical reasons. This adds tremendously to the cost of sewage treatment, and we find we regularly overwhelm the treatment facility. When this happens, as shown above, sanitary sewage is flushed into the riveras I described ten years ago in a post focussed on pollution from combined sewers. If the rains are really heavy, they back up “sanitary” sewage into basements as well. More commonly, once or twice a month where I live, we just pollute the river. Several cities with combined sewers have separated them recently. Paris, for example, ahead of the 2024 Summer Olympics.

To get an idea of the relative size of the flows in our county, note that Oakland county is a square 30 miles by 30 miles. That’s 900 square miles, or 25.1 billion square feet. In th4e event of a, not uncommon, 2″ rain on this area, we must deal with 4.2 billion cubic feet of water or 33 billion gallons. Some of this absorbs into the ground, but much of it runs goes to pipes heading to the rivers. Ideally we retain some of it above ground for an hour or more because the pipes can’t handle this flow. Even with retention, our rivers rise some 10 feet typically and begin to flow at many miles per hour after a storm. They can be seen carrying trees along, and massively eroding the soil, even in areas that were prepared appropriately.

A home based approach to sewage. Many homes near me have this setup — with internal plumbing and a septic field for sewage treatment. Often, these homes are near a stream that flows at least temporarily.

Sanitary sewage flows are far less voluminous. Our county has roughly 1 million people who flush about 100 million gallons per day, generally sending this to our sanitary sewage treatment plants. That averages a mere 4 million gallons per hour, or 500,000 cubic feet. That’s roughly 8000 times less flow than the storm flow. If any significant fraction of the rainwater goes into our sanitary system, it will quickly overwhelm it and back up into our basements.

Many people try to get out of paying the high price for municipal sewage treatment by making their own small system with a septic tank an a septic field. I think this is a great idea, a benefit for them and the county. I will be happy to direct them to appropriate educational materials so that home waste flows to the septic tank where anaerobic bacteria break things down, it should then flow to a septic field that filters the nutrients and allows aerobic bacteria to break things down further. Nutrients in the sewage helps whatever you plant and, as we say, “the grass is always greenest over the septic tank.” As for the county on the whole, I wish we got real value from the fertilizer, as Milwaukee does, and wish we’d separate the sewers.

Robert Buxbaum, February 23, 2025

Fentanyl deaths are way down, maybe justifying drug-runner attacks. We’re still 10x worse than Europe.

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For the past few months, the US navy has been attacking drug-running boats from Venezuela. Videos show ships trying to run away with packages pushed overboard before the sailors are captured or killed. It’s claimed that the packages contained fentanyl, a deadly synthetic heroin. At the same time, there has been a dramatic drop in the rate of fentanyl deaths. Based on the graph above, it seems that some 1500 US lives were saved per month, from fentanyl death alone.

2023 from the Harlem Coalition. There are far more US drug overdose deaths than firearm or vehicle deaths/year.

Opioid overdose deaths have exceeded gun or vehicle deaths since 2005. But there has been a big uptick since the introduction of synthetic opioids, about 2014. Fentanyl is now the leading cause of overdose deaths, alone outpacing gun and vehicle deaths, see graph.

It’s not clear that the attacks on the boats is a primary reason for the drop in deaths, by the way. A lot of credit goes to seizures at the Mexico and Canada border, including the decrease in migrant passage. Some of those were “mules”, carrying drugs. Improved screening at the border seems to have help stop the mules. In 2025, the DEA seized over 47 million fentanyl-laced pills and nearly 10,000 pounds of fentanyl powder, some made in the US, some brought in, cross-border.

An other positive change is increased screening of small packages, of value under $800. They previously entered the US, tariff free, at reduced postage rates. Chinese companies could send 2 oz packages to customers here for 70¢, cheaper than Americans could ship cross town. The DEA reports that most of the precursor chemicals enter the US in packages from China. More checking, and help from China, means fewer of these chemicals get in.

Before we compliment ourselves, our drug numbers are still vastly too high, about 70,000 overdose deaths in 2025, a vastly higher rate than in Europe or Japan, see chart below. The reason is, in my opinion, that we are over-diagnosed and over-medicated. We see ads for drugs on TV, magazines telling us to ask for a pill for any pain or discomfort. They’re all addictive. Doctors are happy to comply, and when the prescription stops, or stops being effective, you’re a hooked customer for heroin or fentanyl.

Addiction has become a middle-aged problem affecting mostly those 25 to 45. It’s made US lifespan significantly shorter. Doctors are curing the pain and killing us patients. Magazines, TV, and drug companies, too. Europe has stricter regulations on pills with fewer prescriptions allowed, no drug ads, and no automatic refills. Does everyone over 50 need blood pressure meds, for example.

Robert Buxbaum, January 26, 2026

Gerrymandering, old-politics, fairer versions could be worse than less fair

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There is no truly good way to give representative voices to a population. The founders of the country decided that there would be a set number of congresional representatives, divided it by states, and left it to the individual states to subdivide, with a few provisos. They mandated that congressional districts have to be contiguous, entirely within a state, and contain approximately the same number of citizens in each. A later law specified that the districts should not directly disadvantage a racial minority. Within these parameters, legislators in most states have divided congressional districts to advantage those in power to a greater or lesser extent. The most egregious of these are Gerrymanders, odd shaped districts that protect sitting congressmen and parties, as bad as the worst of these are, they are better than some, truly awful, “fair” divisions, in my opinion.

This was Michigan’s district map (Detroit area) until redrawn by independent commission, 2022. My district was the dark blue one that looked like a man in a chair.

Consider my state: Michigan, a swing state that voted for both Biden, and Trump. Currently the state house is 52% R and 48% D, but Democrats were in majority as recently as 2024. Our congressional district map used to be a disaster, shown at left. In 2022 it was replaced by a map created by an independent committee that aimed for roughly square districts that aimed to keep towns and communities together. The result is that most districts are either safe D or safe R. This, we’re told, is bad in that it leads to factionalism, with congressmen pandering to political extremes, with little incentive to compromise.

A fairer alternative (?) would divide the congressional districts so that all or most district are swing, like the state. Supposedly such districts would elect moderates who compromise. This version, though no-less fair than the above, is not good, in my opinion. I expect it creates chaos and turnover. I’m also not convinced that compromise is always best.

Pennsylvania’s congressional map before redistricting by independent committee. Ugly, but fair in its way.

The variant of this that preceded our current is for congressmen and others in power to create districts that are fairly safe for themselves and their party, leaving those of the other party in a few, super-concentrated districts. This division is less fair, but far more stable and workable. It lead to ugly gerrymander districts in Michigan (left) and Pennsylvania (below). This is not bad in itself. What was bad about these gerrymanders is that the congress folk, secure in their jobs, formed a political aristocracy. Seats passed from generation to generation, and ruled fairly disconnected from the wishes of those they represented. A good part of the aristocracy is that they worked well with each other, across party lines. They were friends, alumni of the same schools, members of the same churches and country clubs. They were good-‘ol-boys, who didn’t pander nor embrace ideological extremes. Writers romanticize this, but I’ prefer our current’m glad it’s going in MI.

California and Texas politicians are pushing for more gerrymandering. California’s congressional districts were drawn by independent committee. Their governor called the Trump White House fascists as recently as today. There’s a vote to get five more D-districts. The claim is it’s to balance Texas’s push for three more R-districts. I nothing illegal or immoral here, just old style politics, power grabs left and right, with incendiary language. The districts look bad, but I’ve seen worse. No need to call ‘fascist’ unless your next step is to impeach president Trump again, or your hope is another shooting.

The worst option, in my opinion is term limits. It’s promoted from both sides, and I consider it insane, except for party bosses. It actively prevents people from re-electing the politicians they like based on the objection that these people have been on the job long enough to feel at home and get things done. I consider term limits completely non-republican, non-democratic, a disease, “fair” only in that it hurts every citizen equally, benefitting only party bosses.

Robert Buxbaum, September 27, 2025

98% Certainty that Trump has reduced crime in DC

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It’s been 24 days since Trump sent the national guard into DC, and the crime rate has dropped by a factor of six. The murder rate went from 101 murders per year in 2024, one murder every 3.6 days, to one murder in 24 days. I find that the odds of this being coincidence is less than 2%. Car theft and other crime has dropped as well. I consider murder rate the best metric for crime because no murders go unreported, and none get misclassified as altercations or misunderstandings.

Using the National Guard to maintain order is not that unusual. Eisenhower sent them to Arkansas in opposition to the governor to ensure desegregation. LBJ sent them to Chicago to protect the Democratic convention of 1968.

To figure the odds that this improvement is coincidence, consider that the odds of a murder on any one day is 101/365 = .277. Based on this, the odds of no murder on any of particular days is, 1-.277 = .723. On any given day in DC it’s more likely to have no murders than to have a murder, but the odds get much lower for going many days without a murder, or for 24 days with only one. The chance of of having 24 days without murder, for example beginning at some set-start, would be (.773)24 = .0021 = 0.21%. The odds of having only one murder in this time is calculated similarly, as 24(.277)(.773)23 = 1.8%. This is to say that there is a 98.2% chance that the drop in crime rate is not accidental.

The D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser had originally objected to the guard, but now is happy, or so Trump claims. If she removed them now on, she would have to argue that high crime rates are good. Other mayors may not want to be in this position.

A federal judge, Charles Breyer, just declared the use of the national guard illegal, by the way, a violation of the Posse Comitatus act of 1878 see the complete statement here. The Posse Comitatus act bars the use of federal troops for police activities, except federally related ones. Judge Breyer, decides that there is no federal justification and demands that the national guard leave within 10 days. Trump claims that various riots in DC and LA (and Chicago) constitute an insurrection, and adds that attacks on federal ICE agents and federal buildings makes it federal. Judge Breyer recognizes that many other presidents have used the guard for law and order, even in opposition to the governor. Eisenhower for example, or LBJ to protect the Democratic National Convention 1968, but sees no justification, here or (it seems) for Eisenhower or LBJ either. Judge Breyer seems to believe they all acted illegally. I don’t know enough law to judge, but recognize that allowing Trump to reduce the crime rate makes mayors and governors look bad. Detroit crime is awful, as is LAs, Chicago’s…

Robert E. Buxbaum September 4, 2025.

Tariffs on German cars are inflationary, but not for you.

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As things stand, the major export of Germany to the US is high end cars: Mercedes, Audis, Porsches, BMWs, $100,000+ on average. The lower end models are made in the US, Mexico, and Canada. These high end cars are the biggest profit centers of their makers and of the German economy. Currently, they face an import tax (tariff) of 15%, the same as everything from Germany (or Italy or Japan). Liberal economists are furious at this; they claim it’s a tax and that it is inflationary. They are right on both counts except that this is only a tax and inflationary for the few Americans who buy new, high end cars.

The Americans who buy such cars are typically rich folks — poor and middle class folks can’t afford them. They are also folks with ‘taste’, folks who need a BMW, and would not be caught dead behind the wheel of a US car. Normally liberal economists would favor taxing such people, but these are often the who hire economists. They run the TV programs and newspapers, universities and hedge funds. They choose the economists and the economists are eager to see things their way.

Another high tariff item imported from Europe is art. Modern art for $1 million dollars that ends up in museums. For the average Americans the tariff on this, or on art is irrelevant or beneficial. The income it generates is used to offset other taxes, allowing Trump to remove the tax on tips, for example. That this tariff falls on rich people and replaces a tax that otherwise fell on poor workers. Liberal economists should favor of this, but their opinions are not their own.

A side benefit of these tariffs for ordinary folks, is that that they cause some buyers to switch to American-made products, cars and art. Perhaps not for themselves, but for for their children. They may buy a German car made in the US, rather than one made in Germany, or art from an American. This provides jobs for US workers — and an opportunity for Detroit to retool for the future. Detroit auto workers seem to understand this; they voted for Trump in 2016 and 2024. Detroit’s union leaders opposed tariffs. In Michigan, the union leaders get their power mostly from MI politicians, Democrats, who force union membership.

This is not to ignore the suffering of those who buy foreign products, the buyers of new BMWs, or French cheese, or high end art. As things stand, Columbian coffee is tariffed at 10%, and that may add 50¢/lb. Mexican coffee is not taxed, but many average Americans prefer Columbian. I hope they can be consoled by Trump’s tax breaks.

Some months ago, Trump showed off a tariff schedule that he considered ideal, with rates targeted to reduce our trade deficit by half. I derive here, Trump’s formula and rates, and give my opinions of the target. By the formula he presented, the EU tariff should be higher than it is, 20%. Trump has it at 15%, I think, for diplomatic leverage, to goad the EU into lowering their tariffs on us goods, now 15%. He’s also pushed them to spend more on defense, and pushed to end the war between Cambodia and Thailand. He threatened them with near 100% tariffs if they didn’t stop fighting.

Robert Buxbaum, September 2, 2025. Here’s a Bob Dylan song, union sundown, making a musical case against free trade. Once upon a time that was a liberal view. Now not. The NY appeals court ruled to block Trump’s tariffs to stop the horrible damage being done. My guess is the judges drink high-end coffee, eat French cheese, and drive new, German cars.

Pirates of the Bermuda Triangle.

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The Bermuda Triangle is a mysterious area of the Caribbean that has managed to swallow ships, and airplanes without a trace. Boats and planes go in fully crewed, and show up weeks later, empty. It’s a running mystery that has spanned centuries, and I think I have an explanation; pirates.

One clue supporting my explanation is that there were spurts of Triangle disappearances: the 1920s were very big, as were the early 1700s as were the 1980s. These were all times of major smuggling, and the area of the Bermuda Triangle is a haven for smuggling too. The 1920s was a time of prohibition and thus of peak whiskey smuggling between the US between foreign ports. Liquor was legal in Bermuda and Cuba. It was a short hop to Miami. My theory is that this smuggling attracted pirates, as any smuggler that was boarded was unlikely to contact the coast guard for protection. Sometimes the pirates killed the crew and took the illegal goods, leaving the rest. The manifest showed noting unusual because the illegal liquor wasn’t in the manifest. Another similar theory, is that the crew might become pirates themselves, mutinying.

A fairly typical case: In 1921: January 31, the  Carroll A. Deering, a five-masted schooner, Captained by W. B. Wormell, left Barbados, then vanished. It was found January 28, aground and abandoned at Diamond Shoals, near Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Some background: The First Mate McLellan got drunk in town and complained to Captain Hugh Norton of Snow that he could not discipline the crew without Wormell interfering, and that he had to do all the navigation owing to Wormell’s poor eyesight.[5] Later, Captain Norton, his first mate, and another captain were in the Continental Café and heard McLellan say, “I’ll get the captain before we get to Norfolk, I will.”[5] McLellan was arrested in a drunken state, but on January 9 Wormell forgave him, bailed him out of jail, and set sail for Hampton Roads.[6] It was found without the crew, without the two lifeboats, and without much of the crew personal items. My theory is mutiny, the demons who did this were human, IMHO.

Robert Buxbaum, August 22, 2025

Check the screws on your door locks.

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Original hardware brass screws from my door and locks, plus one of the stainless screw that I used as a replacement.

I just replaced the door knob assembly on my home and found that it was held in place by a faceplate that was attached by two, 5/8″, brass screws. These screws, shown at right with their replacement, would not have been able to withstand a criminal, I think. Our door is metal, foam filled, and reasonably strong. I figure it would have withstood a beating, but the brass screws would not, especially since only 1/4″ of the screw is designed to catch foam. Look closely at the screws, and you will see there are two sizes of pitch, each 1/4 long. Only the last 1/4″ looks like it was ever engaged. The top 1/4″ may have been designed to catch metal, but the holes in the door were not tapped to match. The bottom 1/4″ held everything. Even without a criminal attack, the screw at right was bent and beginning to go.

Instead of reusing these awful screws or buying similar ones, I replaced them with stainless screws, 1 3/4″ long, like the one shown in the picture above. But then I had a thought — what were the other locks on my door attached with? I checked and found my deadbolt lock was held in by two of the same type of sorry, 5/8″ brass screws. So I replaced these too, using two more, 1.75″ stainless steel. Then, in my disgust, I thought to write this post. Perhaps the screws holding your door hardware is as lousy as was holding mine. Take a look.

Robert Buxbaum, November 28, 2024

This is not the most important election, 1860 was

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Every year we hear the same claim: that this the most important election of America’s history. This year is among the more contentious than most, but the issues dividing the candidates are few. Both, for example, claim they will protect the border and spur the economy. In lieu of issues, there’s name calling. Trump claims Harris is as incompetent buffoon and Harris claims Trump is a fascist dictator. The rancor practically guarantees as they’ll be riots whoever wins but, as these things go, the election is less important, and divisive than ’64 and ’68, and in particular, the election of 1860.

Following the 1860 election, election seven states ceded from the union and we had a Civil War. Even the most bleak prediction for 2024-25 is for a more peaceful transfer of power. The election of 1860 had two major issues on the ballot; one was slavery or rather the expansion of slavery to the territories, and the other was implementation of the Morrill tariffs. These import taxes, proposed by Justin Morrill and passed but not yet implemented, would have raised the average agricultural duty from 15% to to 47%. Duties on durable goods wool rise to 65%, with the burden falling disproportionately on the southern states. Duties on durable goods. There was also a price schedule that would have prevented British shippers from minimizing the effect by falsely claiming a price far below market, something China currently does. In September 1860, Republican Leader Thaddeus Stevens told a New York City audience that “the Tariff would impoverish the southern and western states, but that was essential for advancing national greatness and the prosperity of industrial workers.”

Matching the two sides to the two major issues of the day, there were four major candidates for president in 1860. All of them won states. Lincoln carried the greatest number, 18, and won the most electoral votes, 180. He was for high tariffs and against the expansion of slavery. Second was John Breckinridge, the Southern Democrat, who carried 11 states and got 72 electoral votes. He was for the expansion of slavery and against the higher tariffs. Then there was Stephen Douglas, the Northern Democrat, who was for allowing the expansion of slavery, considering it a “states right,” and also for the higher tariffs. Douglas carried only one state, Missouri, with 12 electoral votes. Finally, there was John Bell, the Constitutional Union candidate, who carried three states, Virginia, Tennessee, and Kentucky, representing 39 electoral votes. He opposed the expansion of slavery and also the increased tariff, but he generally believed that compromise was always possible. This was the worst vote split in US history. The worst split I’ve seen was 1968, when three candidates carried states.

Had either Bell or Douglas won, I suspect that the Civil War could have been avoided, at least temporarily. Virginia, the most important of the slave states, had shown it was willing to accept an anti-slavery president so long as he did not impose high tariffs — tariffs that benefitted the northern industrial workers and manufacturers at the expense of southern consumers and agricultural producers. Lincoln’s victory precipitated the immediate secession of 3 states. Another 4 seceded after inauguration.

The south imagined they could walk away because that’s how they read the constitution before the 13th amendment. They imagined they could win a civil war because they imagined they had British military support. “Cotton was king,” they claimed. The UK prime minister, Lord Palmerston, had told secretary Adams, “We do not like slavery, but we want cotton, and we dislike very much your Morrill tariff.” As it was, the British stayed on the sidelines, in part because of diplomacy. Besides, the gunship Monitor showed that the North could sink most any British ship that entered US waters.

As for 2024, I expect there will be riots whoever wins, but nothing more. The parties are realigning significantly, as happened in 1964-68, and neither side much understands the appeal of the other. This seems like less of a wrenching election than in 1964 and 1968, though. In ’64-’68 US boys were dying in Vietnam in numbers, and black folks and their white friends were being lynched in the south. Nothing like that is happening today. Today’s riots have been fueled by nothing more than name-calling, fear, and the occasional assassination attempt. Mild, even compared to 1968.

Robert Buxbaum, November 4, 2024. Justin Morrill is mostly remembered today for the Land-grant college act of 1862. This created an agricultural -technical college in each state. I taught at Michigan State University, Michigan’s land grant university. I’m generally a fan of tariffs, both as an aid to the domestic economy and as a tool of foreign policy. I present these views here. I got these views from Peter Cooper.