Posted on 04/08/2018 3:39:59 PM PDT by iowamark
A friend recently posed this question: “If you had to recommend one book for a first-time visitor to the U.S. to read, to understand our country, what would it be and why?”...
If the goal is an education, we could recommend Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager’s Growth of the American Republic, a two-volume history that used to be required reading...
Huckleberry Finn may be the greatest American novel... But there is no single novel, no matter how great, that can do the job alone.
Consider instead the great American essayists who invented a new style of writing in the 1920s and founded The New Yorker. E. B. White’s One Man’s Meat is the finest such essay collection... Joseph Mitchell’s Up in the Old Hotel is nearly as great...
Teddy Roosevelt’s short book The Strenuous Life, which opens with his 1899 speech by that name, is an explanation of America’s view of itself — a view that greatly shaped the 20th century. It was the peculiar marriage of power and prosperity together with a sense of moral urgency. Roosevelt demands an active life, a life of struggling for personal and national virtue. He commends a triad of strength in body, intellect, and character — of which character is the most important. America must meet its moral obligations vigorously, he tells us: “It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.”...
The origin of that moral urgency was America’s most important spiritual crisis. It is best expressed in a single speech, rich in Biblical imagery and contemporary prophecy: Lincoln’s Second Inaugural Address, which is the greatest of all American writing. It is a tone-poem or photograph of the American soul. A complete understanding, in just 697 words.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
I’m not afraid of anything, except that others might believe your hokum.
Yes, that's far more persuasive than the fact that there was hundreds of millions of dollars at stake, and the change was going to bankrupt numerous wealthy and powerful men who backed Lincoln for the Presidency.
It was all about feelings, and not at all about huge amounts of money and power.
Both Southern plantation owners and Northen businessmen made money.
The South was going to get an instant 80 million more dollars per year flowing into their economy just by becoming independent. The Northern businessmen were going to lose that 80 million dollars per year flowing through their economy.
Of course they didn't want anyone to notice this, or to think this was why they couldn't allow the South to become economically independent. Of course Charles Dickens (an avowed anti-slavery proponent) clearly saw what was happening at the time.
I take the facts of the American quarrel to stand thus. Slavery has in reality nothing on earth to do with it, in any kind of association with any generous or chivalrous sentiment on the part of the North. But the North having gradually got to itself the making of the laws and the settlement of the tariffs, and having taxed South most abominably for its own advantage, began to see, as the country grew, that unless it advocated the laying down of a geographical line beyond which slavery should not extend, the South would necessarily to recover it's old political power, and be able to help itself a little in the adjustment of the commercial affairs.Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and until it was convenient to make a pretense that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the Abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there's not a pins difference between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out, just as it happens."
"As to Secession being Rebellion, it is distinctly provable by State papers that Washington, considered it no such thing – that Massachusetts, now loudest against it, has itself asserted its right to secede, again and again – and that years ago, when the two Carolinas began to train their militia expressly for Secession, commissioners sent to treat with them and to represent the disastrous policy of such secession, never hinted it would be rebellion."
Charles Dickens, March 16, 1862 (From a private letter, not intended to be published.)
Leave it to a foreigner to speak the truth (same as today) while politically motivated Americans are lying to everyone for their own advantage.
“Also, if you run those numbers I posted for 1859, you will see that the South was producing 73% of all revenue from Europe.”
I’m not seeing that and it isn’t true anyway, as the real sources I’ve posted tell another story.
Well then make a good case to prove it wrong. Show me where my numbers are incorrect! But to do that, first you are going to have to look at the numbers, and the more an honest man looks at the numbers, the more he realizes that they don't make any sense if one accepts what we have been told.
The South was making the Money, but somehow it all ended up under New York control. The South was paying the vast bulk of all the Taxes, yet the north had 4 times their population.
Not what people had been led to believe, is it?
Wake up to the money. The money tells the truth. Follow the money.
The numbers you posted are not backed up by a source.
“Roughing It” by Mark Twain.
Still the funniest book I’ve ever read...
You're "real" sources only quoted cotton, and they put that at 60% of the total trade. The South produced Tobacco, Sugar, Hemp, and Molasses as well, and that accounted for another 13% of the total trade.
And i'm being nice here. According to Pea Ridge, (If I am remembering correctly) the official records of the US government puts the South's trade value at nearly 82% of the total.
But even according to your "real" sources, you have admitted to the South producing 60%, so you are only arguing over 13% of the total.
Why is it so important to you to fight to keep that 13%, as if that makes it okay for the South to be paying 60% of all the taxes with 1/4th the population of the North?
They may have done so originally, but it is evident that at the time they didn't see how this would adversely affect them in the future. They didn't count on the North getting such strong control over congress (Did you notice that the "Free Soil Party" was headquartered in New York?) that they wouldn't be able to change them later. They also didn't realize what would be the negative consequences to them of the "Navigation act of 1817". (Which I don't want to get into right now.)
Instead of quoting the America hater Dickins, you’d do better looking at a contemporary Englishman, John Stuart Mill.
“...what are the Southern chiefs fighting about? Their apologists in England say that it is about tariffs, and similar trumpery.” Yet, Mill noted, the Southerners themselves “say nothing of the kind. They tell the world … that the object of the fight was slavery. … Slavery alone was thought of, alone talked of … the South separated on slavery, and proclaimed slavery as the one cause of separation.”
Not even other lost causers believe his hokum ;’}
They are, however, happy to allow him to take the flak.
You just missed it then. It was at the top of the page. The "Source" is a book written in 1860, by New Yorker and economist "Thomas Prentice Kettell".
He was on your side, he was a well known and widely respected economist at the time, and it was before the Civil War had even started.
That's a pretty good source, because he has no incentive to manipulate the data to favor one side over the other.
“Don’t care. Isn’t relevant to the point of what was going on in 1861.”
Talk about dodging. I guess you think those exports just sprang up out of nowhere?
Might as well quote John Brown. John Stuart Mills was a natural law theorist, and abhorred slavery, and he wasn't interested in doing anything other than condemning it. I also don't see where he visited the US during the time in question, as did Charles Dickens.
Mills was just repeating what all the elite social set of New York was telling him on their visits to England, and what he wanted to believe anyways.
There was a lot of that going on. Still is.
I don't want to talk about them because it's already pretty D@mned hard to keep the conversation on track for what was going on in 1860-1861. Asking "What about X, four years later" is really irrelevant to the decision making process for 1860-1861.
The focus should be on who was going to gain and who was going to lose in 1861, and whether this threat of financial loss or gain was sufficient inducement to trigger a war.
The numbers show that it was. I want to talk about the numbers leading up to 1861. Nothing else changed other than who was going to collect the money. Slavery didn't get worse than it was, there was no possibility of abolishing it in a legal process in the Union, and nothing was going to change except for who was going to get the money.
I looked again and I still cannot find where you posted the source of your claim for 73% of exports save for post number 152. If you would show me where you did that before that post, I will look at it.
Here are some more numbers for you. You will like these numbers even less. You also won't like the source they come from because you won't be able to criticize it.
PeaRidge to DiogenesLamp
This data chart must be the one you are seeking:
U. S. Department of Commerce
Agricultural Production of the South Yearly Detail 1859
Value of Total U.S. Exports ..........$278,902,000
Value of Raw Southern Products:
Cotton .....................$161,435,000
Tobacco .....................21,074,000
Rice .........................2,207,000
Naval stores .................3,696,000
Sugar ..........................197,000
Molasses ........................76,000
Hemp .............................9,000
Other ........................9,615,000
________ Total ( 71% ) $198,309,000
Value of Southern manufactured Cotton exports ............4,989,000
Value of cotton component of Northern Manufactured cotton exports (60%) ......3,669,000
___________ Total ( 74% ) $205,459,000
Value of Processed Foods:
.............Bread-stuffs/processed fish/meats/corn...........$36,640,000
Total Southern Products ( 87% ) $242,099,000
Export Specie for Purchase or debts: ........$57,502,000 assume 20% for overseas purchase.
Total Southern Contribution ....................$252,000,000
U.S. Department of Commerce, U. S. Treasury, Report of L. E. Chittenden, Howell Cobb, Treasurer, Annual State of the Union Address, James Buchanan, J. D. B. DeBow, Charles Adams, Thomas Kettel, W. F. Taussig, Thomas Huertas, Historical Statistics of the United States Department of Commerce, pg. 106,432.
Don't fear the numbers. Embrace the truth.
I posted the page of that book. I thought that would be enough. Here is a link to the source.
https://books.google.com/books?id=rUcWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA73&focus=viewport&vq=%24106,000,000
And
Some of us have to work, and I have spent too much time this morning on this thoroughly enjoyable trip through the looking glass as it is. Rest assured I will return. But before I go I want to be fair to you and ensure that your position is clearly stated.
May we agree that you are no longer arguing that the South seceded due to ornerous tarriffs saddled upon it by wicked Northen interests, but rather that the war was conducted due to those wicked Northern interests wishing to maintain their profits gained off the backs of beleaguered Southern plantation owners?
That has never been my argument. For the last three years, i've been pointing out that what was at stake was the bulk of European trade, and the possibility of the South capitalizing industry (with the extra money) that would compete directly with established Northern Robber Barons.
The dispute was on whether New York would continue being the seat of Empire, or whether it would fall to Southern economic challengers.
If the South had been left alone, very wealthy people in the North East were going to lose huge sums of money, and possibly even their businesses altogether. More than enough motive to bring down the fire.
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