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.
ping marked. Thanks.
They weren't intending to end slavery. In March of 1861, the Northern controlled Congress voted by a 2/3rds margin in both the House and Senate to pass the "Corwin Amendment."
This amendment would guarantee legal slavery in the United States until every last state gave it up voluntarily.
Lincoln called for this amendment to be ratified in his first inaugural address.
So no, the North wasn't really trying to end slavery. They were trying to stop the South from leaving and taking all the money they were earning from their trade goods, with them.
The Civil war was about money. We've all been taught it was about slavery, but it was really about the 700 million per year in Southern produced goods that were traded with the North and Europe, and who would control that trade and most especially who would get that money.
That is all the war was about.
Slavery couldn't "expand" into any other states. The climate and the soil would not support plantation farming anywhere in the territories.
That slavery was going to "expand" was just a lie they told to scare people into voting against the South.
Enter Fort Sumter...
Where Union forces in the dead of night, seized an unguarded fortress that was built for South Carolina's defense.
And then Lincoln sent warships with orders to attack the Confederates surrounding the fort.
I have always characterized it as the Hamiltonians against the Jeffersonians.
Very different philosophies regarding the proper role of government in the lives of it's citizens.
You may have forgotten that when the Declaration was written, *ALL* the states were slave states.
And yes, the ugly truth is that without the Southern states, England quickly reconquers the New England states and re-establishes British rule.
The northern states (minus a few shipping merchant delegates) were intending to end slavery from the very founding of the nation.
That's not accurate. Most of the Northern states passed "gradual abolition" laws, but they didn't really end it. George Washington constantly cycled his slaves in and out of Pennsylvania in an effort to not violate Pennsylvania's gradual abolition laws that specified how long a slave could remain in their state.
Massachusetts of course went for Judicial activism, and got their slavery abolished on a legal technicality that was absolutely not voted for by the people. Very undemocratic, but Massachusetts has always been a Masshole about using courts to force the laws to mean what they want instead of what they really mean.
The above passage was replaced with "He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us."
Which refers to Lord Dunmore's proclamation that any slave that came to fight for the British would be freed.
Amen.
People understand that the government is lying to us now. What they don't understand is that the government has always lied to us, and it's supporters simply parrot the same lies over and over until it becomes conventional wisdom.
That's how we got this widespread believe that the Civil War is only about slavery, and nothing but slavery.
The reality is it was about money. A *LOT* of money. Hundreds of millions of dollars would have been lost to powerful Northern interests if the South had successfully maintained their independence.
Yeah, because free labor is a lot more expensive than paid labor.
Yes they did, and here I am referring to the ones that had already claimed to have "abolished" it. This is very different from the five Union states that had slavery during and some after the Civil War.
“Thomas Jefferson- repeatedly blasted about slaves he was not allowed to free (by Virginia State Law) until he was finally able to do so.”
He was never able to do so. Over his lifetime Jefferson owned over 600 slaves. Jefferson freed exactly 10 of them. Five were given their freedom while he lived. The remaining five were freed per his will. The remainder of the slaves on the Jefferson properties were sold after his death to pay off the estate debts.
That gave the Confederacy enough size and resources to make the Civil War a long and bloody contest. Formally, for the first phase of the Civil War, the Union's war objective was not the elimination of slavery but preservation of the Union. At least initially, the South preferred to talk mostly of the South's right to be independent. Yet a close reading of the articles of secession passed by the state legislatures who joined the Confederacy show that the preservation of slavery -- often referred to gingerly as the South's "peculiar institution" -- was the reason why the South wanted independence.
Looked on dispassionately, one notices the haphazard way in which the Civil War began. There was no ultimatum by the North over slavery, simply the election of the antislavery Lincoln as President. After Lincoln was elected, he attempted to soothe Southern anxieties over slavery. Only after Gettysburg in July of 1863 did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation effectively ending slavery. Even then, it was framed as a war measure instead of a full-on abolition. The formal and complete abolition of slavery was not written into the Constitution until the 14th Amendment was ratified in 1868 -- well after the end of the Civil War.
Are people including the effects of the cotton gin and mechanization on plantation life?
My great-grandfather emigrated from Dublin to New York in 1860, and showed up in time for First Manassas, with the New York Volunteer Infantry. He was reported to have deserted on the March to Chancellorsville on May 2, 1863. As far as I know he never starved, and was working as a stationary engineer in Brooklyn in 1890. My great-great-grandfather was Captain of the New York Municipal Police Second Precinct during the July 1863 Draft Riots in New York, and his officers might well have been battling his future grandson’s deserter father-in-law.
Life is complicated.
“Only after Gettysburg in July of 1863 did Lincoln issue the Emancipation Proclamation effectively ending slavery.”
Not quite the case. The Emancipation Proclamation was issued after the Battle of Antietam which occurred in September 1862. The Proclamation took effect on January 1, 1863. The Battle of Gettysburg didn’t take place until July, 1-3 1863.
Good catch, and my mistake, relying on memory alone instead of checking.
“Yeah, because free labor is a lot more expensive than paid labor.”
Full room and board. No competitive interest among workers.
Capitalism and free market always more efficient and cost effective.
So why did England have to wait until the Union navy blockaded the South to open their paid labor cotton plantations in Egypt and India?
If it was more efficient and cost effective, couldn't they have done it while having to compete with slave labor in America?
Why did they so long rely on the slave plantations in America instead of pursuing the better more cost effective method?
Exactly but we can’t have that discussion because the left has to link anti federalism with slavery
“ So why did England have to wait until the Union navy blockaded the South to open their paid labor cotton plantations in Egypt and India?”
Blockade.
If there was an alternative universe where slavery ended but no blockade to compare you might have an actual control group.
Very good possibility! Just as today, the totalitarians hide behind “climate change”, it’s “all to save the planet”; then it was the “abomination” of slavery. Look up the laws in much of the northern territories, which forbade the entry of negroes.
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