Posted on 11/23/2016 6:01:04 PM PST by Loud Mime
I am studying our Civil War; anybody have any recommendations for reading?
Shelby Foote - Stars in Their Courses - Gettysburg Campaign audiobook- narrated by Shelby Foote (Top 5 audiobooks of all time, IMO)
The Growth of the American Republic [Volumes I & II] Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager available from Amazon - get the older editions.
There was a World War II discussion thread here at FR and I missed it?
I discovered the map long before I discovered the tabulation of export values. The map came from a website called "deadconfederates.com" and was created to debunk the theory that the South had any significant economic concerns regarding tariffs.
The map, showing that most of the tariff revenues were paid by New York, was intended to demonstrate that the South paid very little in the way of tariffs, and so the cost of running the government was born mostly by the North. It was intended to debunk "tariffs" as a valid cause of the war.
Then I ran across the fact (from various sources) that the South produced the vast bulk of all export value, and I suddenly realized this was a very serious conundrum.
If the South was producing almost all the money to pay for imports, how than was all the revenue ending up in New York? "I smell a skunk." I thought.
What I had done was to stumble on what I believe to be the actual cause of the war. Money. Not slavery, money. Lots and lots of money that would have been lost to the North if the South became independent.
*THAT* is why the war started.
Thomas DiLorenzo, The Real Lincoln
Carl Sandburg’s Lincoln is garbage, full of very basic factual mistakes.
Amen
For years and years, from ... think think ... 2007 to 2015, roughly, every day. It was World War +70 years.
It was a great experience. On of the things I’ve used in teaching is the fact that, around 2013, when the U.S. finally achieved a victory in Africa, one of the participants, said, “I thought we were going to lose!!!” I asked if he were contemporary with the events, and he said, no, he’d just been reading every day for years, as the news got worse and worse, until finally - light!
THANK YOU!!! for that link.
Makes sense. Money is always an issue. The colonists got upset over a two penny tax on tea. And South Carolina almost seceded over tariffs back in the 1830s...
Yes, I remember that one; I posted in it sometimes. Thanks for refreshing my aging memory.
You’re welcome. It’s going to be so informative. HOmer finds all sorts of contemporaneous sources to help us live with the events.
You’re welcome.
Second that. Edited by Mark Twain. What a hero Grant was!
I highly recommend the Fremantle book about the only British officer who reported on the Civil War...unofficially, and on leave. We have the rights to the book here in Hollywood.
Virtually all of them were out of New York/New England.
And, pray tell, why weren’t more out of the Southern States?
This was a question that I myself had spent quite awhile wondering, and i'm still not sure I have a good answer for that, but I did happen to run across a fellow who gave me the best explanation for it I have yet heard. (and he has a particularly important perspective on the topic, he is descended from those very shippers of New York that controlled the trade. It was their family business. ) To put it most simply, it was the consequence of money and a near monopoly on the existing shipping industry. It's like they "Standard Oiled" the Southern manufactures and shipping industries out of business.
I will try to find the link for this fellow's explanation of it, but it is deep in another thread on this subject, but for whatever reason, virtually the entire shipping industry had become controlled out of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
They set their rates at just below the costs of hiring a foreign ship and crew per the Navigation act of 1817. The Southern growers knew they were getting screwed, but couldn't do anything about it.
Agreed, that’s an interesting read.
One Gallant Rush - the story of the Massachusetts 54th Infantry at Battery Wagner. Compelling.
The slavers were among the richest people on the planet at the time and they could easily have floated their own fleet if they wanted to. They didn’t. The Navigation Act did NOTHING to stand in their way.
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