April 12, 1861: The Civil War Begins

Fold3 ^ | April 1, 2021 | Jenny Ashcraft

[jmacusa]

Diogenes Lamp, there you go again. >”Slavery was going to go anyway anyway but it would have done so more slowly without all the death, destruction, and poverty which followed the path taken’’.<

That is simply breathtakingly stupid. So by your admission the South choose a path of violent secession and war to preserve an institution that was ''slowly going away''. Good God, you really are dumb.

[BroJoeK]

wardaddy: "Southern democrats were more conservative than average Rockefeller Republican"

Southern Democrats were happy to solidly support "Progressives" like Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.
They even voted solidly for Progressive Illinois Gov. Adlai Stephenson, twice over Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
That does not make Southerners more conservative than "average Rockefeller Republican".

In 1964 most Southerners outside the Deep South voted for Lyndon Johnson's "Great Society" over conservative Republican Barry Goldwater.
That year Goldwater earned about 2.5 million votes in the Southern states he carried, but that was less than 10% of Goldwater's 27 million votes total -- meaning 90%+ of Goldwater supporters lived outside the Deep South.

In 1968 Nixon won with 32 million votes and again in 1972 with 47 million -- most of the difference was: in 1972 George Wallace's 10 million voters went to Nixon.
And, all things considered, in what sense was Nixon more conservative that Nelson Rockefeller?

Point is: on occasions Southerners happily supported both "Progressive Democrats" like Wilson, Roosevelt, Stephenson, Carter & Clinton plus "moderate" Republicans like Nixon, the Bushes, McCain & Romney.
Now, please understand, I don't blame them for that, but I also don't want to be slapped in the face by "holier than thou" Southern conservatives.

In politics, nobody is "holy", we all do the best we can under the circumstances.

[BroJoeK]

x: "The first talk of major federal railroad subsidies was for a transcontinental line, and Southerners like Jefferson Davis were as greedy for those as any Northerner. "

Right, in the 1850s Federal land grants paid for thousands of miles of railroad, North and South:

"The Land Grant Act of 1850 provided for 3.75 million acres of land to the states to support railroad projects; by 1857, 21 million acres of public lands were used for railroads in the Mississippi River valley, and the stage was set for more substantial Congressional subsidies to future railroads..."

"The act gave land in Illinois to the Illinois Central Railroad, and land in Alabama and Mississippi to the Mobile and Ohio Railroad..."

x: "There was some talk of federal subsidies for road-building.
I don't know how far it got, but the West and the Border states between North and South would have benefited.
Dredging Southern ports and building coastal forts in the South were also big items in the small federal budgets of the day."

Congress had no trouble, even in the early days, voting money for "postal roads" -- have no idea how they distinguished "postal roads" from any other types of road -- i.e., the old Cumberland Road first ordered by President Jefferson in 1806 -- but "postal roads" were not controversial and presumably were spread around pretty evenly.

[HandyDandy]

For more on “postal roads”, search “Star Routes” in Wikipedia.

[BroJoeK]

Adlai Stevenson — not Stephenson, sorry...

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy: "For more on “postal roads”, search “Star Routes” in Wikipedia."

My source on early republic postal roads and other "Internal Improvements" is this book.
Table 4 shows annual Federal spending for the 12 years from 1826 to 1837 (JQ Adams & A Jackson).
During those years Federal revenues averaged about $30 million per year, of which $2 million went for "Internal Improvements".
Of that $2 million per year, roughly:

1. Half went for postal roads & canals.
2. A third went for clearing rivers & harbors.
3. A sixth went for lighthouses.

Again, I don't know how they distinguished "postal roads" from other more major projects, such as Pres. Jefferson's Secretary of Treasury Gallatin's 1808 proposals, estimated to total $20 million: