Battle of Appomattox: Understanding General Lee's Surrender

The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse is considered by many historians the end of the Civil War and the start of post-Civil War America. The events of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General and future President Ulysses S. Grant at a small town courthouse in Central Virginia put into effect much of what was to follow.

The surrender at Appomattox Courthouse was about reconciliation, healing, and restoring the Union. While the Radical Republicans had their mercifully brief time in the sun rubbing defeated Dixie’s nose in it, they represented the bleeding edge of Northern radicalism that wanted to punish the South, not reintegrate it into the Union as an equal partner.

The sentiment of actual Civil War veterans is far removed from the attitude of the far left in America today. Modern day “woke-Americans” clamor for the removal of Confederate statues in the South, the lion’s share of which were erected while Civil War veterans were still alive. There was little objection to these statues at the time because it was considered an important part of the national reconciliation to allow the defeated South to honor its wartime dead and because there is a longstanding tradition of memorializing defeated foes in honor cultures.

There were barges on the Mississippi River before the Civil War, but they weren't the massive ones we see today. My understanding is that most of the power transport on the river was in steamboats of the sort familiar to us from Mark Twain or Showboat or Disneyland. Pilots had to point out shoals and snags and guide the ships around them.

It was only after the Civil War, after more work was done to the river, that massive barge transport took over. For some places, this only happened long after the Civil War was over. Channels had to be dug, snags removed, and on the upper river, locks had to be built. Similar work was done on the Ohio, the Missouri, the Tennessee, the Cumberland, the Arkansas, and other rivers.

P.S. The graphic comes from a site that is lobbying against more locks being built and other work being done to the river. If some people today had had their way in the past, much of the Mississippi would probably still be unnavigable for barges carrying large cargoes. The heavy volume of river traffic hasn't benefitted cities and towns that weren't able to upgrade their own ports, though. River traffic was a lot less in the 19th century, but towns like Cairo were better off than now.

In any case, midwestern farmers would still have been shipping much of their crop to large Eastern cities by train, because that's where the customers were.

The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York.

But the fears expressed in the editorial makes no sense. Leaving aside for the moment the question of how goods bought in New Orleans would reach the Northwest, if they did buy their goods from New Orleans in the now independent Confederacy then wouldn't the U.S. tariff still be applied the moment they were landed in a U.S. port? And if the Confederacy levied their tariff first then U.S. consumers would be paying more for goods delivered that way.

Would U.S. shipping be impacted by the separation? Perhaps, especially if the split was acrimonious. Coastal shipping might take a hit under those circumstances. But there is no reason to believe that the traffic into and out of Northern ports would dry up. Exports of Southern cotton would still leave from Southern ports, and if the separation was peaceful then there is no reason to believe the some of that wouldn't continue to be carried in U.S. ships.

As usual for you, x, your posting is intentionally misleading. Regardless of your misdirection, here for you is the strength of the Mississippi and the source of fear of the Northern business interests:

Before the beginning of the war, the South grew 60 percent of the world’s cotton, provided over half of all U.S. export earnings, and furnished 70 percent of the cotton consumed by the British textile industry. Cotton exports paid for a substantial share of the capital and technology that laid the basis for America’s industrial revolution.

All of this began in the years from the Louisiana Purchase to the 1850s, which were golden ones for the deep South, witnessing intense growth and development, and significant changes in the internal structure of its economy.

The North America continent’s interior was drained by a single river system—the Mississippi. From the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico, from the Rockies to the Appalachians, the Mississippi with its vast network of tributaries, particularly the Ohio and Missouri Rivers, provided a natural waterway system for moving people and goods across the midcontinent of North America and down the Mississippi to its outlet on the Gulf.

Any city so strategically situated at the mouth of so splendid a transportation system would control the trade between the vast interior of North America and the rest of the world; and a city in so strange a situation might even determine the political future of North America.

These facts were as obvious to seventeenth century French explorers as they were to Thomas Jefferson, who said of New Orleans: “There is one spot on the globe, the possessor of which is our natural and habitual enemy. It is New Orleans.”

More specifically:

In 1803, New Orleans was basically 8,000 people directly or indirectly tied to moving goods from river vessels to dock to ship and vice versa. Its primary industry was the port, moving and storing goods. Ship chandelling, repairing, and building were a distant second industry, but rapid economic growth after 1803 spawned new economic interests.

For example, by the 1820’s and 1830’s, New Orleans was the commercial entry port and financial intermediary for goods from all reaches of the Mississippi. There were many more merchants to handle the growing trade and the financing of farms, plantations, and communities upriver.

There were growing wholesale, retail, and transient service sectors to supply the food, clothing, and goods of growing population of residents and visitors: and there was the inevitable growth of government to provide police, fire, and health services and to administer docks and levees.

After 1803, New Orleans was seldom troubled by labor shortages, except during epidemics. The city's labor force grew rapidly after the Purchase and was composed of individuals of different races, nationalities, and skills. In 1803, of the city's 8,000 residents, approximately 3,000 were whites, 3,000 free persons of color, and 2,000 slaves.

In addition to the emergence of new economic sectors, the focus of New Orleans’ economic activities began to change in the late 1830’s. Until then, about 90% of the city's trade consisted of downriver shipments of Midwestern foodstuffs.

In the 1830’s and 1840’s, the growing world demand for cotton led to the development of vast, efficient slave plantations in the lower Mississippi Valley that produced more cotton at lower prices.

By the late 1840’s cotton was king, and Charleston, Mobile, New Orleans and the Mississippi River planters were prosperous. Increased world demand for cotton had pushed New Orleans into a less national, more regional orientation and role. On the eve of the Civil War, port activity was way up, but more than ever it centered around the exportation of cotton and the importation of plantation-destined goods.

This is the same reason that Natchez, Miss. ranked highest in per-capita millionaires before the beginning of the Civil war.

Aiding this process was the completion of the Erie and other canals in the 1820’s and 1830’s which drained away much of the upper Midwest grain trade. But, the railroad did not yet threaten the city's cotton business. The 1850’s were the high-water marks of cotton shipping, cotton culture, and cotton wealth in the nineteenth century deep South.

In terms of trade, between 1821 and 1835, the average total of exports and imports per year through New Orleans was $22 million ($15 million exports, and $7 million imports), a fourfold increase in exports alone. The exports represented for the period 1821-35 about 18% of all United States exports, and for 1852-60, 30% of the same.

Cotton shipment peaked during the 1860-61 season, totaling over 2,200,000 bales, worth $110,000,000 and representing 60% of the value of all products received from the upcountry. Sugar and tobacco were distant runners-up to cotton, and foodstuffs made up the bulk of the rest of the exports.

Most of the cotton was shipped from New Orleans to Liverpool and other British ports, either directly, or by transshipment through New York. New Orleans, then, was a transshipment point for cotton, and the city never developed into a major manufacturing center for the primary products it transshipped, financed or stored.

Cotton was the sinews of business in Ante-bellum Southern ports, such as Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and Biloxi, the economic rhythms of the cities revolving around the cotton seasons. Cotton was picked and baled from September through December. Shipments into the cities ran from a low in October to a high in January, tapering off in the spring, with most of a year's crop exported by May.

In summer, the ports were virtually deserted as the heat, humidity, and falling water levels slowed dock workers, rotted any agricultural products on the docks, and hindered the river traffic. Many merchants and their families left the port cities to avoid the heat, yellow fever, cholera, and hurricanes. However, between January and March, many plantation owners and their families would visit in the cities, partaking of the social whirl of Mardi Gras, shopping, and meeting with their cotton factors, who acted as agents, bankers, and financial advisors.

On the Mississippi, the increased output of cotton was borne by a new, more efficient means of water transportation — the steamboat. The first steamboat came downriver to New Orleans in 1812. In 1821, 287 steamboats arrived in New Orleans; by 1826, there were 700 steamboat arrivals. In 1845, 2,500 steamboats were recorded, and during the 1850s an average of 3,000 steamboats a year called at the city. After 1830, then, steamboats were in general use on the Mississippi, allowing two-way packet lines to operate, carrying both cargo and passengers on regular schedules. Flatbed boats, which were once the main river vessels, virtually disappeared after 1857.
By 1860, New Orleans had a fledgling ship building industry, with machine shops, ironworks, and several shipbuilding firms, located mainly on the west bank in Algiers. Algiers also supported a dry dock and a ship repair industry, so that in all, over 500 men were employed in ship repair and building by 1861.

From 1810 to 1860, not just shipping and storage, but wholesale trade, entertainment, travel services, and finance boomed. Wholesale trade developed naturally as the city and its hinterlands, which until Chicago and St. Louis emerged included most of the Midwest, grew. New Orleans was the nearest distribution center for the upriver and inland communities of the Mississippi Valley for most of the period. In the 1850’s, St. Louis, the closest rival wholesale center, was far behind New Orleans and mainly oriented westward. New Orleans’ fast growing population also provided an increasing market for her thriving wholesale business.

Retail trade, too, benefited from a growing market of wage earners, renters, and plantation owners, whose income and wealth, new and old, supported a multiplicity of retail shops and artisans. New Orleans's close contacts with Europe, both in trade and in visitors, made for a cosmopolitan atmosphere that made shopping in New Orleans an international experience. D.H. Holmes, Maison Blanche, Werleins, and other modern retailers trace their histories to the boom times of the 1830’s, 40’s, and 50’s.

During the Pre-Civil War period, a scarcity of capital in New Orleans forced seekers of large-scale investment to look to New York, London, or Paris. New Orleans merchants were critical sources of credit for planters who borrowed in the spring and repaid in the winter from crop sales; but the merchants and their banks received credit from the New York or Liverpool cotton shipping and manufacturing interests.

With the cotton boom, New Orleans became the banking and financial center for the lower Mississippi Valley.

All major forms of national and international credit were in use in the city.

None of you is stupid, just ignorant either by failure to study or intentionally. I am going to give it to you straight, and let's wee what questions you come up with. That will tell the truth.

While empires such as the British and French taxed other nation-states, the fledgling United States, which had emerged from the status of subject-state via the American Revolution, did not have access to other nation states to generate revenue. This hegemonic-subservient relationship did not appeal to the new American consciousness, as displayed in its Constitution, and with liberty in mind, it also did not choose to direct tax its own citizens.

Instead, the new United States government chose to institute a system of taxation on foreign trade by using tariffs on imported goods. American production was not taxed as it left the country, but goods bought overseas and delivered to American ports were taxed, with the revenue going directly to the U.S. Treasury.

Many in government in the developing United States, who saw the necessity of achieving economic self-sufficiency, wanted to protect the nascent new industries that would produce goods to be exported. Often, infrastructure improvements that would either provide low cost transportation, or improve market access were underwritten by the government. In the case of domestic manufactured goods for sale within the country, tariff rates would be raised over the going rates elsewhere in order to encourage the United States citizens to purchase American made goods.

Thriving agriculture was carefully encouraged. Domestic production not only would preclude imports of food, but serve as exports that became the currency to buy overseas finished goods instead of bullion being transferred. Farmers also provided a base for taxation because of their demand for implements and finished goods.

As the 1850s drew to a close, there arose in Congress those that championed the goal of regulated commerce that could produce a planned and regulated favorable balance of trade. In general, tariffs should be high on imported manufactured goods and low on imported raw material. They essentially realized that the Southern states and its vast market were captive markets for manufactured goods while being primary sources of raw material for Northern consumption or export.

In essence, the domestic production of the South eliminated the need for the United States to export valuable metals to obtain goods. Since cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar, and flax were used to obtain the English goods, the production of the South was the currency of the trade of the country.

Those in power in the government that understood the necessity of a successful economic strategy, including the incoming President, Abraham Lincoln, knew that a large population of inexpensive workmen was needed to provide a domestic labor force that would produce the agricultural products to be exported. In his first inaugural speech, President Lincoln flatly stated that he would not interfere with slavery where it currently existed. He knew that the economic system of production should not be disturbed, and he promised not to change that status if the Southern states would remain in the Union.

By the 1850s, over 95% of the total revenue collected by the Treasury department was from tariff revenues. The expenses of the government, including operations, the military, and internal projects, were essentially totally financed by tariff revenue. When the Southern Confederacy was formed, not only was the revenue stream of the US Treasury broken, but the government would need to borrow.

The finances of the Federal Government had been in a very disordered condition due to business downturns resulting from the political disturbances, and which by reducing the imports of overseas goods, had reduced the customs income, the chief source of revenue for the Treasury.

In June, 1860, a loan of twenty million dollars had been authorized by Congress. Of this amount, ten million was offered in October in a five per cent stock, and it had been taken by investors at a small premium.

Before any installments were paid up, the panic that attended the election had affected credit, and many bids were withdrawn.

This so seriously affected the Treasury Department, that as the New Year approached, it seemed likely there would be no funds with which to meet the interest on the National debt.

By the Act of December 17th, 1860, an issue of ten million dollars, in treasury notes, was authorized, to bear such a rate of interest as might be offered by the lowest bidders, but so shaken was credit, few bids were made, and some of them at a rate of thirty six per cent interest per annum.

The capitalists interested in the Government credit finally took one million five hundred thousand dollars of one year treasury notes, at twelve per cent per annum (the amount was subsequently raised to five million dollars), on condition that the money should be applied to paying the interest on the national debt.

This was certainly a dark day in the Capitol, when the Federal Government, which had earned the honor of being the only nation that had ever paid its debts in full—principal and interest—and which in 1856, with an overflowing treasury, had paid twenty-two per cent premium for its own stock, was now reduced to give twelve per cent interest, for a few millions, and to engage to protect its credit with the money.

This, combined with the specter that as soon as the primary cotton and tobacco producing states seceded with the subsequent massive loss in exportable products, that the US Treasury was in great jeopardy.

Just as Lincoln took office, the United States Congress voted a doubling of the tariff rates. This aggressive tax and protectionist policy had been advocated for decades by political groups seeking to protect their interests. Just as the new president was organizing his government, the Confederacy announced its tariff rates—one half the of the new Union rates.

With New Orleans already the gateway to the Midwest, and with Charleston having a newly dredged harbor, Lincoln and his supporters realized that direct trade with Europe would now be possible for Southern business interests. This would supplant the shipping, banking, insurance, and freight companies that flourished with the movement of Southern goods through northern ports into the overseas trade. Northern ports, supplying the mid west would also be damaged by the trade that would move back through New Orleans, Galveston, and Mobile.

After the tariff rates were announced, newspapers, politicians, businessmen, and industrialists called on Lincoln to take action to obviate the Southern competition. Since essentially the Southern states were forming their own cotton, rice, and tobacco world exchange, he had to halt it.

His options were not plentiful. He could not sabotage the Confederate market without initiating a blockade, and because that would be an all out unilateral act of war that no one in his cabinet would support. He could use the United States Army and Navy to materially force the Confederacy back into the Union, however he knew that the citizens of the country and world opinion would be against him. He could not risk his new administration by being an obvious aggressor to the new Confederacy.

He could not underwrite a change in government, or ‘coup d’etat’ since the Confederate government had just been formed with essentially the same Constitution as that to which he had just pledged to support. Again, he would be seen as the aggressor against a country with the same laws to which he and his party swore loyalty.

He did have the option of negotiating acceptable terms and limitations that would be acceptable to both parties. However, this would involve dismantling the tariff system, changing the taxation traditions of the government, and opening up American manufacturing to foreign competition. Also, since the less influential individual Southern states had now formed essentially a powerful trading block that could require cooperation that they could not achieve as members of the Union, the new government faced the fact that a new country had been founded and must be dealt with.

He could not depend on any European countries to aid the government in the institution of trading sanctions because they wanted a less powerful United States.

However, since his ‘house divided’ speech, Lincoln had demonstrated an unassailable inclination towards confrontation with the Southern leadership. He, therefore, chose a course of action that was coercive but not obviously aggressive, and enabled plausible deniability over the actions that eventually led to the outright war that most of the era expected.

Without notifying Congress, Lincoln sent a fleet of Union warships under command of a retired junior Naval officer under orders to send supplies to a group of Union soldiers that were about to surrender and leave a fort with no function other than to force taxation of the local people. Their resistance became labeled rebellion, despite the absence of any other higher authority from which to rebel, except a sitting U.S. president who had vowed to protect the revenue stream from Southern production.

The new President would accept slavery but not the loss of revenue for the country. He essentially treated the Southern Confederacy as subject states of which he demanded that they remain under the taxing authority of the government.

It is interesting that an earlier poster postulated that states that ignored the ‘runaway slave’ act were noble in their effort to resist the government. It can equally be said that the Confederacy, and particularly the people of Charleston were noble in their efforts to resist the Union naval invasion of Charleston Harbor and Lincoln's openly stated and absolute objective of protecting the revenue flow to the Treasury. These people were resisting the efforts of Lincoln to reduce them to minor nation-states to be taxed as the Europeans had done in Africa and in the far East.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.