Man Born in 1846 Talks About the 1860s and Fighting in the Civil War

https://www.youtube.com ^ | Jul 10, 2022 | Julius Franklin Howell

[DiogenesLamp]

I guess that you have finally managed to pinpoint the moral equivalence between “unpaid slave labor” in the South, and the North’s “low wages paid to disadvantaged women and children laborers who lived in squalor and worked long hours, many times in unsafe sweatshops.” Bravo! So well played! Good show, old chap!

I have read articles that claim the manufacturers much preferred low paid wages to their workers because it was actually cheaper than slavery in the long run. If a worker becomes too sick or too injured to work, he's just fired and left to die on his own.

A slave still had to be taken care of regardless.

To get a better sense of the “non-cotton widgets” manufactured in the North, I might suggest you tour a Southern plantation. Because every manufactured item you see there will have come from the North.

Because of Washington DC law that forced them to buy those Northern products or pay extremely high prices for better quality foreign goods that would have been actually cheaper were it not for DC laws keeping prices artificially high.

DC was a big money laundering machine that had the effect of pulling money out of the South and sending it to all the connected people in the North. (And it still is today.)

The total was something like 700 million dollars per year. 200 million was foreign trade, and 500 million was direct trade between North and South.

[jeffersondem]

“Because every manufactured item you see there (on a southern plantation) will have come from the North.”

That is an interesting comment.

By some accounts the South, after 1850, was sending over two million bales of cotton to Europe per year.

Was the South gifting that cotton to Europe, or selling it to Europe?

If the latter, how did Europe pay: with an inexhaustible supply of found gold, or by exporting manufactured goods to southern customers?

May we see your data that proves “every manufactured item you see there (on southern plantations) will have come from the North"?

[x]

And non-cotton widgets manufactured were also highly profitable to the North because of low wages paid to disadvantaged women and children laborers who lived in squalor and worked long hours, many times in unsafe sweatshops.

That was more of postbellum thing. Industry was just getting starting in the 1850s and still small scale, and the workers might be farm girls who wanted a better life.

The people who had it worst in the North might be Irish immigrants who had trouble finding any kind of steady work and wouldn't have fared better in the South.

Textile mills bought cotton, wool and linen from wherever they could get it. If cotton was too expensive they could make the clothes out of something else.

[HandyDandy]

“The power of cotton on the world market may have brought wealth to the South, but it also increased its economic dependence on other countries and other parts of the United States. Much of the corn and pork that slaves consumed came from farms in the West. Cheap clothing and shoes worn by slaves were manufactured in the North. The North also supplied furnishings for the homes of both wealthy planters and members of the middle class. Nearly all the accoutrements of comfortable living for southern whites, such as carpets, lamps, dinnerware, upholstered furniture, books, and musical instruments, were made in either the North or Europe. Southern planters also borrowed money from banks in northern cities, and in the southern summers, took advantage of the developments in transportation to travel to resorts at Saratoga, New York; Litchfield, Connecticut; and Newport, Rhode Island.” So please correct my original statement that “every manufactured item you see there will have come from the North. Please add “or Europe”. The point being, none was manufactured in the South. Certainly the fine Italian marble mantle pieces didn’t come from the North, ……or did they?

https://mlpp.pressbooks.pub/ushistory1/chapter/slavery-king-cotton/

[jeffersondem]

I don’t want to put too fine a point on this but . . . the map (Industry and Agriculture in the North and South, 1860 below) provided by Professor Brother Joe clearly indicates manufacturing facilities existed in the South prewar.

Southern manufacturing was only a fraction of northern capacity; I don’t argue otherwise.

But to insist no southern manufacturing existed (your post 204) is wrongheaded and does not contribute to the discussion.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "May we see your data that proves “every manufactured item you see there (on southern plantations) will have come from the North"?"

The data we have says that US cotton exports in 1860 totaled roughly $200 million, which was about half of total US exports, including circa $60 million in specie.
How much of that $200 million actually went to the Southern planters we don't know, but DiogenesLamp suggest that more than a third of revenues went to pay for "factors", shipping, warehousing, insurance, loan interest and the occasional night out on the town in NYC.
In DiogenesLamp's mind that's equivalent to stealing from the rightful owners, Southern slaveholders.

Be that as it may, we also know that Southerners annually "imported" around $200 million in manufactured goods from the North, and these were ordinary items like clothing, shoes, iron stoves, farm equipment, rails & railroad equipment, soap, candles, hats, carpeting, furniture, canned & smoked fish, nails & spikes, etc.
Curiously, I don't see beef, pork, dairy or wheat products on the list.

The major items the (mainly) North imported internationally, which produced around $54 million in Federal tariff revenues, were woolens, brown sugar, coffee, molasses, iron manufactures, silks, tea and wines.

Overall, the 15 slaveholding states produced around 15% of the US total GDP of ~$4.4 billion in 1860.
Federal tariff revenues from Southern ports (including Baltimore and New Orleans) totaled around 6% of total US tariff revenues.

So, it wasn't just DiogenesLamp's "money flows from Europe" which helped drive American prosperity, it was also around $200 million in manufactured products "imported" by Southerners from the North.

[x]

Very true. Don’t forget also that the British and other Europeans were investing heavily in the US. The notion that whatever we spent on foreign goods had to come from cotton sales isn’t true.

[jeffersondem]

“The data we have says that US cotton exports in 1860 totaled roughly $200 million, which was about half of total US exports, including circa $60 million in specie.”

I need your help to understand this. How do you define specie and what, if anything, does specie exports have to do with cotton exports?

[HandyDandy]

I don’t want to put too fine a point on this but . . . the map (Industry and Agriculture in the North and South, 1860 below) provided by Professor Brother Joe clearly indicates manufacturing facilities existed in the South prewar.

Shall we take a closer look at what the widget manufacturing facilities icons on BJK’s map represent? Read on:

“The antebellum South was not all cotton plantations and riverboats. Small-scale industry did emerge in Southern towns such as Lynchburg, Virginia. By 1858 three railroad lines intersected there, and like railroad connections in the Midwest, the industrial infrastructure boosted manufacturing in the town. On the eve of the Civil War, Lynchburg held eleven grist mills, several coppersmiths, a fertilizer manufacturer, and four coachmakers—one of which employed twenty-five workers making freight and passenger railroad cars for the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad. Lynchburg’s most important industry, though, was tobacco manufacturing: in 1860 more than one thousand slaves and free blacks worked in tobacco factories—steaming, stemming, and dipping leaves in syrup, then spicing the tobacco, molding it into plugs, and packaging it for delivery to the North.”

“Grist mills?” “Tobacco manufacturing?” High tech stuff, that. Looks better on the map.

[BroJoeK]

Jeffersondem: "How do you define specie and what, if anything, does specie exports have to do with cotton exports?"

"Specie" is just a fancy word for California gold and Nevada silver.
We had lots of it and exported it to balance the books between total imports & exports.
For 1860, iirc, that number was around $60 million, just enough to make our imports & exports balance at around $400 million each.

So of the $400 million total exports in 1860, including the $60 million of specie, cotton represented half, at roughly $200 million.

I mention specie because we sometimes see it claimed that "The South" produced... take your pick... 70%, or 75% or 85% of all US exports.
Well, the only way you can reach percentages like those are by first, subtracting out specie from total exports and then adding in to "Southern Products" exports largely produced in Union States, notably tobacco.

To me a good test of which US exports were truly "Southern Products" is how much did those exports decline in 1861?
As you'd expect, U.S. cotton exports declined over 70%.
But tobacco declined very little, and some so-called "Southern Products" actually increased in exports.

Why all this is important is because it illustrates how important Southern exports were to the overall US economy.
And the answer is: VERY important, but not so very important that the Union could not quickly find other drivers of economic prosperity.

[jeffersondem]

““Grist mills?” “Tobacco manufacturing?” High tech stuff, that. Looks better on the map.”

Comes now the argument that compared to the North, southern manufacturing was not high-tech.

That is mostly true. You should have made that argument to begin with.

Tredegar notwithstanding.

[BroJoeK]

"Comes now the argument that compared to the North, southern manufacturing was not high-tech."

I've never been of a mind to belittle Southern technology because it seems to me they did a lot with what they had.
Consider, for examples, CSS Virginia and Hunley.
So the fact that the Confederate manufacturing base was smaller than the Union's doesn't mean they had none, or couldn't innovate as well as anyone.

But for any energetic Southerner in, say, 1850 or 1860, nothing could beat the long term profitability of plantation produced crops like cotton, sugar or rice.

And in a very large integrated economy like ours then, there was no particular reason why they should look elsewhere.

[DiogenesLamp]

The data we have says that US cotton exports in 1860 totaled roughly $200 million, which was about half of total US exports,

72%. I've posted the numbers often enough.

How much of that $200 million actually went to the Southern planters we don't know, but DiogenesLamp suggest that more than a third of revenues went to pay for "factors", shipping, warehousing, insurance, loan interest and the occasional night out on the town in NYC.

60% went to New York and DC.

Be that as it may, we also know that Southerners annually "imported" around $200 million in manufactured goods from the North,

Because the law forced them to do so rather than buy foreign products. This is "protectionism."

And my recollection is that the trade between North and South was 500 million.

[DiogenesLamp]

But for any energetic Southerner in, say, 1850 or 1860, nothing could beat the long term profitability of plantation produced crops like cotton, sugar or rice.

And pray tell which of these might be grown in the territories?

[DiogenesLamp]

Also, are the FBI the good guys here or are they the bad guys?

Friday evening in response to the newest release of “The Twitter Files” which showed that federal law enforcement officials were regularly flagging content for Twitter to take action against.

[HandyDandy]

BJK:”I've never been of a mind to belittle Southern technology because it seems to me they did a lot with what they had. Consider, for examples, CSS Virginia and Hunley.”

You do have a point there. Just the thought of the CSS Virginia heading up the Potomac kept Lincoln awake at night. The Hunley speaks for itself. First manned submersible to sink a ship in World history. It is still hard to believe it’s been recovered. But recall that the CSS Virginia was the rebuild of the USS Merrimack. Engines and hull of Union manufacture.

Southern technology could have at least been on par with Northern, but they chose a different path.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "72%. I've posted the numbers often enough."

Your numbers never add up.

The true figure is roughly 50%, but if you wish to say 72%, then you must first delete specie from the export numbers, that reduces exports from $400 million to $340 million.
Next, to the legitimate $200 million in cotton exports you must add $40 million as "Southern exports", exports that were actually produced outside Confederate States.

And one reason we know that $40 million were not genuinely "Southern Products" is because Civil War in 1861 had little or no effect on their numbers.
Tobacco, for example, claimed as a "Southern Product" saw very little reduction in export numbers in 1861, suggesting that nearly all US tobacco exported was produced in Union states.
Nor have I ever seen reports of tobacco shortages in the Union during the war.

Indeed, one famous Civil War cigar aficionado might have benefited from such a shortage, since mouth cancer is what killed him, many years later. Yes, U.S. Grant.

Finally, we have the fact that unlike the USA, the CSA seriously considered tariffs on EXPORTS, and when these were discussed in Confederate news articles, they readily admitted that their only export of any real value was cotton.
Nothing else could (or did) raise serious Confederate government revenues.

That's why the true number for Confederate States exports is around the $200 million in cotton only, which is 50% of the 1860 US total, including $60 million in specie, of around $400 million.

These $400 million represent just under 10% of total 1860 US GDP of $4.4 billion.
But $200 million in cotton exports represented at least half of Confederate state's GDP.
So while cotton was important to the Union, to the Confederacy cotton was a matter of economic survival.

DiogenesLamp: "60% went to New York and DC."

That is pure propaganda.
The real truth is, you have no legitimate numbers whatever to support such claims.
But, as a thought experiment, let's invent some numbers and see where they lead us.

Suppose a man born in, let's say Boston, wants to become a great Southern planter in, say, Georgia, and he's seen a beautiful plantation there, named Tara, with 20,000 acres, that he wants to buy ($5 per acre) and run.
So what does he do?
Well, first he visits a bank in New York and borrows $1 million to be paid back over, say, 15 years at 6% interest, meaning he will owe the bank roughly $100,000 per year, right?

Next, he buys Tara, but it needs repairs, farm equipment (i.e., a cotton gin) and workers, and let's say that costs him $100,000.
So, before he's produced his first bale of cotton, he's obligated to pay his bank and suppliers $200,000.

Now suppose our new Georgia planter has a banner year, producing 20,000 bales of cotton worth $1,000,000 when sold in Manchester, England, England, across the Atlantic sea.
So now appears a man called a "factor" who offers our planter $600,000 for his crop, cash right now, no other obligations.
Well, normally, a very high volume operator would want to make his own arrangements, and even travel with his crop to England to oversee warehousing and sale.
However, let's say our planter needs cash now and doesn't want the hassle of shipping & marketing, so he takes the $600,000 deal.

The "factor" then will experience the following costs $100,000 for shipping, $100,000 for warehousing, $100,000 for insurance and other financial costs (i.e. British import tariffs) and $100,000 for commissions, including his own.

So where do we stand now?
Our new Georgia planter, having produced $1 million worth of cotton has $600,000 in his hands, but right away he must pay his NY bank $100,000 and his suppliers another $100,000 and, so, yes, he's left with just $400,000 meaning, as you, DiogenesLamp would say "New York and Washington" "stole" $600,000 from a Bostonian now living at Tara in Georgia, right?

But wait, we're not done, far from it.
First, our new planter must keep up appearances to match his station, and so he orders not just repairs, but complete renovation of Tara, to include the best furniture and lovely new clothing for the women in his family, @$100,000.
Then, the townsfolk nearby want to build a new church and, seeking to make a good impression, he contributes $100,000.
Now businessmen from the state capital are building a railroad to run near his Tara plantation, and so he invests $100,000 in the railroad.
Are you keeping track?
Finally, he will need seed and workers for next year's crops and so he set aside a $100,000 cash reserve in a local bank.

Then one day, while reviewing his finances our planter discovers he's flat broke, and being now a DiogenesLamp-class patriotic Southern Fire Eater, he immediately blames "Black Republicans" ruling over New York and Washington.
And, he demands, the only remedy must be immediate secession and war against those wicked Northerners!

And that's the real story behind DiogenesLamp's supposed 60% of cotton money going to New York and Washington.

DiogenesLamp: "And my recollection is that the trade between North and South was 500 million."

I have actual numbers to support $200 million in 1860, the vast majority consisting of ordinary products I listed in a post above.
But my numbers do not include such items as beef, pork, dairy, wheat & corn products, which may well have been substantial.
However, that logically implies that Northerners "imported" equal volumes of produce from the South.
Those could well include raw cotton, tobacco, sugar, rice & hemp, though it's impossible to imagine 1860 Southern "exports" to the North as greater than their exports to Europe.

So, $500 million in Southern "imports" from the North per year, seems off to me by a factor of about two.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "And pray tell which of these might be grown in the territories?"

Referring to which which slave produced products were suitable for the U.S. 1860 western territories.

The answer is that virtually every industry could & did include jobs suitable for slaves.

1. At Tredgar Iron Works in Virginia, about half the workers were slaves.

2. Thousands of slaves were used in constructing Southern railroads.

3. In California before 1850, thousands of slaves were used to mine gold.

4. in New Mexico, Indian slaves were used to grow corn & wheat along the Rio Grande River.

5. In Border States like Maryland, slaves worked in many different kinds of factories.

6. In every state where slavery was legal a large percentage of slaves worked as domestic servants.

7. Finally, sometimes with irrigation, cotton can be grown from Nebraska and Oklahoma to New Mexico, Arizona and California, all but Nebraska of which saw Confederate Army or guerrilla forces invasions.
   So obviously, Confederates themselves believed there was a future for slavery in those territories.

Of course, your point here is political -- you claim it wasn't slavery Southerners expected from US western territories, rather it was representatives in Congress who supported slave state interests which dominated Southern demands.
And, sure, I "get" that.
But realistically, slavery was just as viable in a territory as it was in any Border State like Maryland or Delaware.
And the only certain way to protect slavery's interests was to encourage the maximum number of citizen slaveholders.

So I don't buy that Confederates had no interest in western territories, just as I know Southern "filibusters" had great interests in Caribbean and Central American countries.

[BroJoeK]

By the way, it turns out I do have actual numbers on "Southern Products" exports for 1860 and 1861, with me here.
These are the exact numbers DiogenesLamp uses to claim that "Southern Products" made up 72% of total US exports in 1860.
And, yes, if you take them at face value, using DiogenesLamp's methodology, that's exactly what they do say:

1. 1860 Southern Products exported = $229 million.
2. 1860 Total US exports, less specie = $316 million.
3. 1860 Southern percent of total = 72.4%

So, DiogenesLamp lamp stands vindicated, according to his methodology and the numbers on this particular report.
Take a moment to bask in a brief victory... ;-)

OK, that's enough basking for today.
Now let's get real.

For starters, gold & silver are just as much products as, for examples, iron, coal, copper & oil.
All come from the ground and all can be exported.
In 1860 gold & silver exports totaled around $57 million according to this particular report.
Another report says it was closer to $60 million.
That bring total US exports to $373 million, of which "Southern Products" are now reduced to 61%.
But we're just getting started.

Raw cotton exports totalled $191 million in 1860.
That's 51% of the $373 total exports reported, including gold and silver.
And in 1861 raw cotton exports fell by 82% to just $34 million -- so those numbers seem entirely legitimate.
Other commodities reported as "Southern Products" in 1860 totalled $38 million,
But these "Southern Products" exports only fell by 18% in 1861, to $31 million.
How can that be?

Well, it's simple if most of what was counted as "Southern Products" was actually produced in Union States.
Here are the major items:

1. Tobacco exports fell only 14% from 19.3 million to $16.5 million.
   Tobacco was mainly produced in Union Border States like Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri and Pennsylvania.

2. Manufactured cotton product exports fell only 27%, from $10.9 million to $7.9 million.
   Most cotton textiles were produced in New England and yet this report classified ALL cotton manufactures as "Southern Products"

3. Turpentine products fell 40% from $3.7 million to $2.2 million.
   Clearly turpentine producing trees grow mainly in Southern states.
   But just as clearly, some turpentine can be produced in non-Confederate States.

4. Rice exports fell $47% from $2.6 million to $1.4 million.
   Rice grows nowhere outside the Deep South that I know of, and yet somehow 1861 saw exports fall by less than 50%.

5. Now, consider Clover Seed, Hops and Brown Sugar, not normally thought of as "Southern Produces", but classified as such on this report, with 1861 combined export increases of 564%, from $736 thousand in 1860 to $3.4 million in 1861.

So, arguably, most or all of those products cannot have been produced in Confederate States, or even necessarily in slave States, Union or Confederate.

To top it all off, these particular numbers are based on government reports of the time.
More recent studies increase specie exports to over $59 million and total 1860 exports to $400 million.

Based on all that, a reasonable number for actual "Southern Products" 1860 exports is roughly 50% of total exports, counting in specie but excluding most exports which were not actually made in Confederate States.

[jeffersondem]

“In 1860 gold & silver exports totaled around $57 million according to this particular report.Another report says it was closer to $60 million.That bring total US exports to $373 million, of which “Southern Products” are now reduced to 61%.”

This seems to imply that gold and silver exports were all northern, and not southern. But was it?

I don’t know; haven’t seen any data on the subject.

But southern exporters could have accumulated gold by selling products in return for gold. (The accumulated gold could have come from North America or overseas.) On other occasions southern exporters, or their agents, could have used that gold to make purchases overseas.

Would gold shipped overseas as payment for product be considered export, or something else?