The Upper South

Old Virginia Blog ^ | 06/02/2009 | Douglas Harper

[Davy Buck]

No one can deny the importance of slavery to the feud that split the United States, or that the CSA states made protection of slavery one of their central purposes. But the Southern confederacy -- that is, the national government of the CSA -- was no more built on slavery than was the Northern Union . . .

[Colonel Kangaroo]

If the world judges ALL of us by the words of the man elected by 51% of VOTERS then you and I are commies, no?

I do not see why you reb fans have any problems with the words of these men when y'all go to great length to justify their actions. If you accept their actions, then you must accept the words they offer to justify their actions. The rebs own words should end the debate as to motivation.

[American_Centurion]

Some of their words were their motivation, I simply pointed to you that some men don’t speak for all. I justify them in having multiple reasons for secession, not one that you argue.

Why some yankees can’t accept that there were economic, political, and societal reasons besides slavery that were straws on the broken back of their ties with the Union, I’ll never know. You folks won’t, CAN’T admit any wrongdoing on the part of the Union, is the ONLY logical reason.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

AS you can see here 30% of all farms in the south were over 100 acres.

When you're getting into farms of 100 acres or more, you're moving into slaveowning scale and thus the political motivation of slavery takes hold. Wasn't about 30% of Southern households' slaveowning householders?

[Colonel Kangaroo]

. You folks won’t, CAN’T admit any wrongdoing on the part of the Union, is the ONLY logical reason.

What wrongdoing?

What's wrong about passing a tariff? The Constitution that the Southern states agreed to provided for that.

What's wrong about electing Abraham Lincoln as president? The Constitution that the Southern states agreed to provided for that.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

Why some yankees can’t accept that there were economic, political, and societal reasons besides slavery that were straws on the broken back of their ties with the Union, I’ll never know.

I'm not saying that there were not any other irritants, but slavery was the dominating cause for the secession that led to the war.

[Ditto]

Midwestern farmers of the time were subsistence to local produce only. They exported exactly jack-chit.

You would be wrong on that. The Midwest had a vibrant trade of grain and meat with the both the East via railroad and the Great Lakes/Erie Canal as well as the South via the Mississippi. The Midwest could easily feed itself and export the surplus domestically and internationally.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

You would be wrong on that. The Midwest had a vibrant trade of grain and meat with the both the East via railroad and the Great Lakes/Erie Canal as well as the South via the Mississippi. The Midwest could easily feed itself and export the surplus domestically and internationally.

Thanks for introducing that. So maybe it's the mass of the Midwesterners rather than the typical Southerner who should have wanted to secede over tariffs?

[x]

Those are very dubious numbers.

Like I said, prices fluctuated, as did quality. But the years just prior to the Civil War were good times for cotton. Also there was more and more cotton produced every year without a drop in prices, so planters with much good land were doing very well in 1860. The bust came later after Britain's colonies got into cotton growing in earnest. That's when you got those 3 cent a pound prices.

We're talking about a time when a loaf of bread went for about a penny and a fancy woman's dress might have cost upwards of $30.00 to $40.00.

Most people would have made their own bread, usually out of the corn that they grew themselves. Many made their own clothing. But those who didn't probably didn't pay the fancy dress price for their everyday clothes.

My point here is that for poorer people the tariff didn't matter much. They made most of what they needed themselves. Large families might have favored the extra work that protection might bring to local workshops.

Rich planters were divided. Some of the richest didn't mind high tariffs. That was certainly the case for Louisiana sugar growers who benefited from sugar tariffs. But even wealthy cotton planters has other investments and might not have objected to higher tariffs.

Secessionist leaders often came from the wealthiest planters, but the rank and file were the people in the middle: smaller slaveowners who feared losing their property and people who aspired to own slaves someday. In general, areas with fewer slaves were less favorable to secession, certainly before Fort Sumter was fired on and the war began.

About the Scruggs article: he doesn't explain how he comes up with that figure of 87% of the tariff being paid for by the South. Some writers in the 1850s and 1860s came up with similar figures. In their writing they apportioned the tariff burden imposed on imports in accordance with the regions' shares of exports. Unfortunately, this doesn't take into account trade between North and South.

If a Southern planter earned money by exporting his cotton from abroad and then used the money to buy goods from the North or invested it with Northern bankers, he can't act as though those transactions didn't happen, as though Northerners contributed nothing to national productivity. That's spending money to buy things but claiming that the dollars are still yours.

The other problem has to do with causation. It wasn't that the tariff was so high that Southern states had no choice to secede. Rather the split of the Democrats along regional lines and the withdrawal of Southern Senators and Congressmen made the tariffs rise higher than would have been the case if Southern politicians had stayed in Washington and worked with their Northern colleagues. Taxes went up higher still because of the war. Before the war nobody intended that tariffs should rise as high as they did by war's end.

[x]

The north had the iron, the south didn’t.

Careful, there may be people from Alabama on this thread ...

Birmingham didn't get started until after the war, but the ore was certainly there before that.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Midwestern farmers of the time were subsistence to local produce only. They exported exactly jack-chit.

US farmers exported 60 million bushels of grain to Europe in 1860. One of the reasons that Britain wasn't particularly inclined to recognize the confederacy was that, while southern cotton was nice and kept the factories humming, midwestern grain was essential to keep the population fed.

[American_Centurion]

When you're getting into farms of 100 acres or more, you're moving into slaveowning scale and thus the political motivation of slavery takes hold. Wasn't about 30% of Southern households' slaveowning householders?

I don't see why on this line of arguing you came right back into slave owning, but your statement is true. So what? My point, if you were paying attention, was to show that Mid-west farms were small and southern farms exported vigorously. Another poster has claimed export of grain from mid-west farmers but other than his opinion I can not verify that, they did ship to the east, but international export was unlikely considering their crop was not rare internationally.

[American_Centurion]

I'm not saying that there were not any other irritants, but slavery was the dominating cause for the secession that led to the war.

Dominating, when the economic effect of removing that large of a labor force by writ is attached, then yes it was dominating. It was not so much the ridding of slavery as was the method of radically forcing the move on the south. Slavery as a central issue encircled by a host of strong handed and punitive laws flowing from the Northern contingent DID force the hand of the South.

Slavery would have died in its own right, as it should, but the relatively sudden change the North was trying to force on the South was the trigger. Radicals cause problems, even today.

[American_Centurion]

But there was no large scale industrial base to exploit it. So the south didn’t have iron.

[American_Centurion]

US farmers exported 60 million bushels of grain to Europe in 1860. One of the reasons that Britain wasn't particularly inclined to recognize the confederacy was that, while southern cotton was nice and kept the factories humming, midwestern grain was essential to keep the population fed.

60 million bushels doesn't really sound like enough to feed the population, IMO. I could be wrong. Still, one more sign of the uneven sided tariff, Gunny cloth is not useful for grain, only bulky things like cotton. Why make it uneven? Why lean on one region? Because they were in power and they could....until they couldn't (bang).

[x]

But there was no large scale industrial base to exploit it. So the south didn’t have iron.

True, but industry wasn't all that developed in the North before the Civil War either.

For better or for worse, there were more Northerners who wanted to build up industrial enterprises.

There were Southerners who wanted to do the same, but it was too easy to get worked up about slavery and the "Southern way of life."

There's something to be said for agrarianism, but it's hard nowadays to understand or justify choosing slavery over industrialization.

[American_Centurion]

There's something to be said for agrarianism, but it's hard nowadays to understand or justify choosing slavery over industrialization

That's because at that time, and for hundreds of years prior, slavery was not socially EVIL. It is and always has been wrong to enslave a fellow human being, don't misunderstand me please. There is a difference between wrong and evil, it wasn't until what 1830 there was a noticable movement for slavery being evil? So one can't expect a 30-35 year old plantation gentleman who was taught from birth that it was right. Social things can be hard to see from 150+ years too late.

It is just ignorant to place morals of 21st century humans on 19th century humans. It was a literally different world. To understand the subject, you can't view it with emotion, some folks here can't do that.

[x]

That’s sort of what I would have said years ago. But since I’ve gotten online I’ve run into so many people screaming about the evil Lincoln and the horrible, evil Yankees, that I decided to stop making up excuses for the other side.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

60 million bushels doesn't really sound like enough to feed the population, IMO. I could be wrong.

It's three bushels of wheat for every man woman and child in Britain (19 million in 1861), if that helps. At 60 pounds a standard bushel for wheat. Average grain consumption per person in the 19th Century was about 225 lbs/yr.

Industrialization had eroded British farming while causing a population boom. Ireland had been England's breadbasket, but the potato famine and resulting depopulation from death of emigration had deeply cut into that. Australian wheat would eventually become important, but wasn't a factor in 1860.

Why make it uneven? Why lean on one region? Because they were in power and they could....until they couldn't (bang).

So your position is that the main reason the south rebelled was the cost of burlap that they used to wrap the cotton bales? (Cotton wasn't shipped in gunny sacks. It was shipped in large bales weighing about 500 pounds.)

Then how come you can search long and hard for any mention of the cost of burlap in the secessionist literature, but I can pull 20 quotes from secessionist leaders in 1860-61 saying that it's all about slavery at the drop of a hat?

[WarriorPoet]

I don’t think Camp Douglas was retaliation—I think it was an independent atrocity...The north did NOT have complete moral superioriry in the Civil War. They had the capacity for brutality and mistreatment of prisoners, and while Sherman’s March to the Sea was a tactical necessity, some of his actions during it were not.

[investigateworld]

Totally agree.