I've read it. And? It says nothing about what their actual motivations for seceding were.
No doubt, but it would have lasted in the South many decades before it would have died out naturally.
It didn't last many decades anywhere else in the West. The most it lasted was 16 more years in Brazil. There is no reason to believe it would have uniquely carried on in the Southern states for decade after decade.
How much cotton can a single farmer produce on a 40 acre plot of land, vs. a planter with 1000 acres of land and a labor force of a couple of hundred slaves. The vast majority of that 5 million bales of cotton was not produced by men with 40 acres and a mule. Particularly when you consider that the yeoman farmer had to also feed his family for a year from that 40 acre plot.
but there were a lot more of those Yeoman farmers than there were Planters. No doubt the big plantations produced a lot of cash crops but the idea that they just utterly dominated agricultural production and that the majority of the White Southern population was just laying around not doing anything or producing anything is absurd.
The Brits were quite happy with Southern cotton. Their spinning technology was designed to use that product. In 1860 the bought 75% of their cotton from the South. The shift came when the supply of Southern cotton dried up in 1863. Then they were forced to buy as much cotton from other sources as possible. The other varieties of cotton did not work the same as Southern cotton, but it could be spun with some extra effort. Yes in the years in the future, the Brits would have sourced cotton from a wide variety other countries, but Southern cotton would have dominated their industry for a long time.
It didn't dominate their industry for a long time. They had every motivation to produce that cotton with their "slaves".....coolies, dirt poor Egyptians and Indians. The added benefit of this is that they would keep the money and the trade within their empire. Brits could profit on both ends - the production of the cash crop and the manufacture of textiles with it instead of only profiting on the manufacturing side. That was well worth some slight adjustments to textile factories. Also, profit margins for all commodities started really getting squeezed in the late 19th century.
Here are some of Lincoln’s blatantly racist public statements:
“I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races. I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people. And I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. … And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race. Abraham Lincoln
“Negro equality! Fudge! How long, in the government of a god, great enough to make and maintain this universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demagogue-ism as this?” Abraham Lincoln
“I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the Negro into our social and political life as our equal. . . We can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.” -Abraham Lincoln
“anything that argues me into . . . [the] idea of perfect social and political equality with the negro is but a specious and fantastic arrangement of words, by which a man can prove a horse chestnut to be a chestnut horse. . . . I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position. (Abraham Lincoln: Speeches and Writings 1832-1858, New York: The Library of America, 1989, edited by Don Fehrenbacher, pp. 511-512)
“Our republican system was meant for a homogeneous people. As long as blacks continue to live with the whites they constitute a threat to the national life. Family life may also collapse and the increase of mixed breed bastards may some day challenge the supremacy of the white man.” Abraham Lincoln
There is a natural disgust in the minds of nearly all white people to the idea of indiscriminate amalgamation of the white and black races ... A separation of the races is the only perfect preventive of amalgamation, but as an immediate separation is impossible, the next best thing is to keep them apart where they are not already together. If white and black people never get together in Kansas, they will never mix blood in Kansas ... Abraham Lincoln
“I’ve read it. And? It says nothing about what their actual motivations for seceding were.”
Never said it did. What it did was to provide iron clad protection for slavery much more than the U.S Constitution.
The protection of slavery was very much on their minds when they drafted that document.
Don’t care how long it lasted in Brazil. In 1860 it would have lasted a few more decades because it was profitable and the Southerners had showed a strong reluctance to industrialize.
But those yeomen farmers were growing a lot of things besides cotton. Wheat, oats corn were produced in large quantities in the South. These were not crops that made much of a profit, but were necessary to feed families and livestock. Never claimed anyone was laying around. Those people worked very hard, but they never made fortunes from farming cotton. I would bet that they did not produce the majority of the cotton crop that went to Europe or New England.
In 1860 75% of the cotton into Britain came from the U.S.
without secession and Civil War, that percentage would have lasted for many years. What Egypt and India could produce paled in significance to the cotton production of the South. Would it last, no, but Southern cotton would have been supplying the spinning mills in England a long time before it was supplanted by the product from India or Egypt.