Posted on 12/27/2023 11:47:50 PM PST by Jonty30
Here is my question.
Was the North intending to end slavery to make growing cotton in the South untenable for the plantation owners in order to bankrupt them so that the Northern Textile barons could take over the land?
I know the South seceded because the North was trying to end slavery, which would have raised the cost of growing cotton because the plantation would now have to pay wages, instead of trading labour for bodily needs. This likely was not an affordable option for the landowners, because the North was not going to pay a penny more for cotton than they had to and they had the stronger hand, especially since the North was not going to allow the South to sell their cotton to the world and not to the North.
So, the question occurs to me. Why was the North so intent on ending slavery, knowing that it would bankrupt much of the South. The North knew this, but was willing to do it anyway.
The only conclusion that I can draw is that the North wanted to buy up the South for pennies, so they would own the land and be able to grow cotton at the lowest cost to them.
1860’s Carpetbaggers be like “I’ll give you 2 cents on the dollar for your 1,000 acres and not a penny more, or you can turn to cannibalism.”
Nah, never happened. Not in the OFFICIAL history books.
Ahem.
So true. War is always about two things, money and power. They usually try to dress it up in other explanations and the winner writes the history book.
At least they were in vocal defense of local rights when it suited their interests. A federal government responsible for finding, returning, and trying escaped slaves as enacted in the Compromise of 1850 and southern states were only too happy to invoke federal authority on behalf of The Cause.
The North could not support themselves without the income from the South - - so they could not let them separate. Everything else is window dressing.
There were a variety of reason for the southern states doing what they did.
Obviously, the institution of slavery was a strong motivator in that it would have changed the cost structure to cotton and sugar.
Also, making the (former) slaves equal to poor southern whites would have upset the power structure such that poor whites would have to compete with blacks for the work that was available. This would have changed the electoral prospects for the wealthy whites in the south as well.
The economics of the northern bankers and textile industries would have made land acquisition more feasible, but there is still the need for much unskilled (stoop) labor, that had not been addressed in the planting and harvest of cotton and sugar cane.
To a degree it was economic, but also political, and social as the society would have been reordered without slavery.
When has a powerful centralized government ever given up power without killing lots of ‘her’ people?
*****
It seems like we are headed in that direction again. Let’s hope not.
Not those hanging in DC as well a Abraham L.
Good point. The compromise of 1850 and the fugitive slave law it enacted often is overlooked in these discussions. While abolitionist sentiment existed in the North long before that, it was relatively limited and few people were overly concerned about slavery. The fugitive slave law was what really sparked a more widespread support for abolition.
It isn’t often discussed but it’s quite easy to ignore the plight of slaves when you never see any slaves, never really hear much about them and never really personally experience the result and consequences of slavery. There was no TV, internet or movies in the 19th century so few people were ever personally exposed to slavery and its actual effects. The fugitive slave law changes this. Escaped slaves were brought by abolitionists to cities like Boston and New York. People in those cities resented the southern owners who came to recapture their “property”. It is difficult for anyone with an ounce of compassion to see someone in such a desperate and hopeless situation escape from that situation and have to sit powerless while their own government allows them to be returned to that situation.
Besides the effect of the legitimate reclamation of escaped slaves another fact about this law is often ignored. The law set up a system where disputes over whether or not a slave was the legitimate property of a slave owner were to be decided by a federally appointed adjudicator. This adjudicator was to be paid per case, but his pay was based on his decision - he received double the pay when he decided in favor of the owner instead of the slave. Besides the fact that it would be very difficult for a free black person to provide evidence that he was not really a slave belonging to a plantation owner claiming him as escaped property, the financial incentive for the judge most often led to these cases being decided in favor of the owner. Essentially the fugitive slave law allowed de facto legal kidnapping and enslaving of free blacks living in the north.
Even still, abolition most certainly was not a majority position in the north, nor was it the motivation for fighting the war. The truth is that the North and South from the founding were really separate and distinct societies. The fact that they remained united as a single country had more to do with common external threats than anything else. The industrialization of the North led to an economically symbiotic relationship, with the South supplying raw materials for textile factories in the North. Those factory owners most certainly did not want to see abolition destroy their profitable system.
BTW OP, if the factory owners wanted land to grow cotton themselves, why would they not have just bought cheap land in undeveloped western states like Texas and Arkansas back in the 1840-1850 time frame? There would have been no need to go to war to get that land, and the cotton-growing lands further East were being depleted since cotton growing is very nutrient-draining on soil. The truth was that either secession or a complete overhaul of Southern society was inevitable. The South was surpassed by the North in every material way by 1860 -population, infrastructure, economic and industrial development etc. The only way secession could have worked is if the North was willing to allow it.
Don’t confuse results of the war with motivations for it. From the Northern perspective almost the sole motivation was preventing secession. Emancipation was a military and diplomatic measure (it ensured that Britain and France would not intervene for the CSA). Carpetbaggers infiltrating the Southern economy during Reconstruction likewise was a result of war, not a reason for it.
Cotton the south owned the market slavery was a front for the action to follow.
The fear of social equality of black people was a very big factor in secession. The majority of people in the South owned no slaves. There was no middle class to speak of in Southern society; there were a small minority of very rich plantation owners and their families, a much larger number of poor white subsistence farmers who basically survived by growing enough food to feed themselves and their families, and slaves. The plantation owners certainly did not want abolition obviously, but mostly for economic reasons - they were wealthy but lacked liquidity or investment capital. Almost all of their wealth was tied up in land and slaves. Ending slavery would have cost them a large portion of that wealth.
The poor white farmers who were the majority of Southerners also opposed abolition, but economics meant almost nothing to them. Freeing the slaves would not have either harmed or helped the poor subsistence farmers making up most of society. They were fearful of black equality. The wealthy plantation owners were harmed by abolition, but they still remained at the top of society. It was this class of poor whites who were most supportive of the Jim Crow laws and Black Codes that were developed after Reconstruction. These prevented true equality for black people and allowed the poor white people yo maintain their position in society.
Not really. Slavery was horribly expensive to maintain and actually on it’s way out after the invention of the cotton gin.
(US Grant’s wife’s slaves were HERs, dowery, but NOT “his property”
Not the case. Fredrick Dent, Julia’s father never, transferred legal title for those slaves to Julia. When ever she was in Missouri the same 4 slave women would tend to Julia and the Grant household. Dent would not allow those slaves to follow her when she left Missouri. Julia, in here writings often referred to “her slaves”; but in reality, they were on loan from he father while she was in Missouri.
Because there weren't any. I gave the names of all the commonly accepted American business moguls of the time.
I was asking the OP to back up his assertions with history, and he failed to do so (in fact, he avoided it completely). He provided an assumed effect and insisted on the cause, without ever proving that the effect actually happened.
-PJ
Kentucky and Delaware remained slave states until the XIII Amendment was ratified. Maryland ended slavery, by legislation, in late 1864.
When the War was over, Northern carpet baggers did buy up a lot of southern properties for pennies or less on the dollar. So in a way, that economic goal was attained.
But slavery and economics were not the only considerations. Years of newspaper and political party rhetoric had stirred up ill feelings and hatred on both sides. Rational behavior and thinking were hard to find. The country was a tinderbox waiting for a match. Gee, it must have seemed a lot like what we are experiencing today
No, because in 1860 Northern business interests weren’t united on policy towards the South. Many were closely connected to the South, especially through the cotton trade, and didn’t want anything to change. Some rich people (and many not rich people) were worried about slavery expansion, or opposed to slavery in principle. Others didn’t care one way or the other about slavery or what happened to the South, though once war started they may have wanted the Union to be preserved.
Once war started, the expectation and the wish on both sides was for a short, victorious war. If the the North won a short war slavery and the economic and environmental conditions in the South wouldn’t have changed. Everyone would know that slavery was eventually on the way out, but that would have taken time.
One thing that one or two precient souls predicted before the war was that abolishing slavery meant that wealthy Southerners could put their money into buying land, rather than slaves, resulting in a sharecropper system like the one that eventually did develop after the Civil War, but nobody was predicting that Northerners would sweep in and buy up all the land.
There were some Northerners who moved South after the war with political or economic or moralistic ambitions, the famous “carpetbaggers” in southern eyes. But even before 1860, Northerners moved South, Southerners moved North, and everybody moved West, seeking their fortunes. Though it’s forgotten now, Southerners helped settle the Midwest, and Northerners settled in the Lower Mississippi Valley and helped build up the cotton business.
I don’t know how old you are, but your views were also taught by defective public education years ago.
People who think they suddenly discovered the truth, are just repeating the propaganda that was drummed into earlier generations.
Wrong. It was fought over slavery.
im not choosing a side because there is no win in this arguement... even if everyone knew the exact facts. and to say there were no business moguls at the time I would say is as big a cop out as youre accusing others of.
its obviuos to anyone in the know that the original post asked surface questions. that again, cant be answered with the facts known. it boils down to southern states didnt want what was forced upon them. the rest is history...
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