Posted on 12/27/2023 11:47:50 PM PST by Jonty30
Here is my question.
Was the North intending to end slavery to make growing cotton in the South untenable for the plantation owners in order to bankrupt them so that the Northern Textile barons could take over the land?
I know the South seceded because the North was trying to end slavery, which would have raised the cost of growing cotton because the plantation would now have to pay wages, instead of trading labour for bodily needs. This likely was not an affordable option for the landowners, because the North was not going to pay a penny more for cotton than they had to and they had the stronger hand, especially since the North was not going to allow the South to sell their cotton to the world and not to the North.
So, the question occurs to me. Why was the North so intent on ending slavery, knowing that it would bankrupt much of the South. The North knew this, but was willing to do it anyway.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the North wanted to buy up the South for pennies, so they would own the land and be able to grow cotton at the lowest cost to them.
It is hard not to turn cynical these days and the older you get the harder it is. Experience will do that to you.
The South Seceded after makibg ckear they would not accept the election of Lincoln who, with many others, exoressed their disdain fir skavery abd viwed nit to allow expansion of slavery in new states.
There was no call for ending slavery as it was thought the dissolution of such would tear apart the republic.
The south made good on their promise to secede and form the confederacy, while the North made clear their doing so would result in economic sanctions to bring them back into the union...peacefully.
Enter Fort Sumter...
FAFO rules demanded war and it was on...
It was a little bit like Tiger Woods who was in the living room watching a football game, when his wife walked in and asked “What’s on the TV?”
“Dust” replied Tiger.
And that’s how it started.
Slavery was the #1 reason for the South secession, but it wasn't the only reason. The #2 issue for the 1860 election was called the Morrill Tariff, and tariffs were a huge issue in the decades leading up to the Civil War. The South constantly complained that the tariffs were designed to protect Northern industrial interests while the Southern raw materials industries had to compete directly against the rest of the world. The money the tariffs collected was used to build things like an expansive rail system up in the North and the South comparatively got left out.
“The South constantly complained that the tariffs were designed to protect Northern industrial interests while the Southern raw materials industries had to compete directly against the rest of the world. The money the tariffs collected was used to build things like an expansive rail system up in the North and the South comparatively got left out.”
Just like Alberta’s relationship with Canada. We pay and pay and get forgotten when the feds spend our money.
The war was just a continuation of the federalist vs anti federalist conflict . The civil war marked the end of the federal system in the us. We are essentially a unitary system of government now
Ping
Ping
When has a powerful centralized government ever given up power without killing lots of ‘her’ people? Sure it’s simplified ignoring all the politics and Ft. Sumpter, but history has proven that governments love killing their own citizens to retain power. The Civil War just introduced the killing fields to industrial scale methods of killing using obsolete Napoleonic battle tactics.
He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.This was the passage removed from the Declaration of Independence, or the southern states would refuse to support independency.
The northern states (minus a few shipping merchant delegates) were intending to end slavery from the very founding of the nation. In 1776, it wasn't about bankrupting the south to steal their land from them; to Thomas Jefferson it was a moral call end an abomination before man and God.
The above passage was replaced with "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."
-PJ
In 1776, I agree. However, in 1860, I have to consider the possibility that there was a monetary interest in ending slavery in order to dislodge Southern landowners from their land so it can be bought up to ensure a perpetual floor price for cotton.
I have a question.
Are you a moron?
(It’s a rhetorical question).
I have never seen it.
No. I’m not a moron.
I can always tell who are the morons on the board by their willingness to accept what they’ve been told at face value.
For example, the German morons accepted Hitler’s word that eliminating Jews were good for the country. In America, the American moron believes that the North genocided almost 2 million Southerners, because it was good for the country.
“ No. I’m not a moron.”
I believe but the “question” is ludicrous.
Beginning at the premise.
If they’d ended slavery and paid wages they’d have made more money.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The North was waging economic warfare against the South, in many forms, for many years before the Civil War, and they didn't care one smidgeon about the slavery issue. Many northern states had slavery up to and into the Civil War years.
I knew that the various states had to give and take in order to get together, especially with regards to slaves, but had not seen that particular paragraph.
A lawyer friend came back from a huge long trial. They didn’t win and they didn’t lose. “Well, we worked things out so each side felt like we were satisfied. We came to a compromise.”
“Well that’s good - and now you’re home.”
“Yes, but I don’t know. It just feels like such a ... compromise.”
Where did I say that they would have made more money by ending slavery and paying wages?
I didn’t say that, because that isn’t true. They would have had to pay a wage to keep workers and that would have cost the plantation owners more, but it’s unlikely the North would have paid more if they could avoid it. Food is cheap and the board was built in, because it was on the plantation. Paying wages would have meant paying enough to pay for the food and lodgings elsewhere.
According to you, paying for food and lodgings and clothes was more expensive than paying wages that would have covered plus taxation. That premise seems moronic to me.
They didn’t care about the slaves. Aside from killing about 40,000 slaves and free blacks, during the Civil War, the North proceeded to kill about half a million after the Civil War by abandoning the South to starvation after destroying their land.
I personally reject any idea of the claim that the Civil War was fought to free slaves. You don’t starve 500,000 now ex-slaves after the war if your claim was to free them.
It was all about the land and, I believe, securing a permanent floor price for cotton domestically.
“ Where did I say that they would have made more money by ending slavery and paying wages?”
I said that.
Your premise that ending slavery would bankrupt plantation owners is ludicrous.
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