Posted on 08/25/2017 10:16:25 AM PDT by SurfConservative
There's an old saying that "he who distinguishes well teaches well." In other words, if one's going to talk about an important subject, one should be able to define his terms and tell the difference between two things that are not the same.
This wisdom, unfortunately, is rarely embraced by modern pundits arguing about the causes of the American Civil War. A typical example can be found in this article at the Huffington Post in which the author opines: "This discussion [over the causes of the war] has led some people to question if the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War, was truly motivated by slavery."
Did you notice the huge logical mistake the author makes? It's right here: "...the Confederacy, and therefore the Civil War...."
The author acts as if the mere existence of the Confederacy inexorably caused the war that the North initiated in response to it. That is, the author merely assumes that if a state secedes from the United States, then war is an inevitable result. Moreover, she also wrongly assumes that the motivations behind secession were necessarily the same as the motivations behind the war.
But this does not follow logically at all. If California, for example, were to secede, is war therefore a certainty? Obviously not. The US government could elect to simply not invade California in response.
Moreover, were war to break out, the motivations behind a Californian secession are likely to be quite different from the motivations of the US government in launching a war. For the sake of argument, let's say the Californians secede because they couldn't stand the idea of being in the same country with a bunch of people they perceive to be intolerant rubes. But, what is a likely reason for the US to respond to secession with invasion? A US invasion of California is likely to be motivated by a desire to extract tax revenue from Californians, and to maintain control of military bases along the coast.
Evaluating causes of the Civil War is like containing a balloon — squeeze one place and it bulges out elsewhere. Ultimately its all the same old slavery balloon. Control of commerce and control of Congress ... to what end? To make slavery secure and profitable? What sort of commerce did they mean to control? Agricultural products made by slaves? Certainly there was constant angst over tariff rates and the required form of payment, which left the South bereft of hard money and dependent on Northern banks. The failure to anticipate the rise of Indian/Egyptian production and the resulting cotton glut suggests a fairly limited view of international trade.
A modern crop map is not evidence of what people thought or wanted to happen in the 1850’s, nor that their plans would be economically successful. They did know that cotton agriculture ruined land and required new territory.
The crop many wanted to move into was sugar, production of which tended to high mortality, and thus constant demand for new slaves and tropical territory. Filibustering, mentioned elsewhere in this thread, started almost with the founding (Burr and even Hamilton had visions of filibuster grandeur; the latter was smart enough not to act on it)Purpose of filibustering: slave-produced sugar. The US blocked such expansion. But an independent South could empty its excess slaves into the Caribbean Basin profitably (in theory, though a sugar glut would have wrecked that soon enough).
I've read some newspaper articles from that period between South Carolina declaring secession and the beginning of hostilities in April. The people to whom you refer were moving in to take advantage of the opportunities that were happening in Charleston. Hotels were booked. You could not find a room in the city. Warehousing was being constructed, and the business outlook was massively optimistic. Shipping companies were relocating to Charleston, and a whole host of Northern based industries were looking to get in on the action.
The money would have brought them.
But they would have remained Northern owned. The profits would have gone North.
No they didn't. More likely they were chanting "D@mn these people who invaded our lands and are trying to force us to submit to their will."
People like to summarize the economic issue as "tariffs" but that is a massive oversimplification of what was happening. Southern Ship building industry was destroyed by subsidizes for Northern Ship building industry. Northern shipping was protected and subsidized by laws such as the "navigation act of 1817." Prices on imported European goods were inflated by protectionism so as to force Southerners to purchase lower quality Northern manufactured products.
And I do think that the southern states had the right to secede.
I also believe that the slaves, free men and women in the eyes of God, had the right to overthrow their self-styled "owners", by force if necessary, and I would have supported that.
I believe that the slaves had a right to be free, and I would support their overthrowing of their masters by force if it weren't for the fact that it would have gotten them all killed, and probably a lot of other innocent slaves killed as well.
There is no easy answer to this. The only way this situation would have gotten resolved peacefully was by time and continuous social and economic pressure.
This is one of those situations where it is like the Computer said in "War Games."
"The only winning move is not to play." Letting slavery land on the continent was the first mistake.
You can't think of any reason why people would want to control commerce and control congress? Really?
What sort of commerce did they mean to control? Agricultural products made by slaves?
Yes, New York and Washington wanted to control the commerce created by agricultural products produced by slaves. It was a 200 million dollar part of a nearly 300 million dollar industry. The vast bulk of Northern shipping was employed transporting these Southern products to Europe.
The failure to anticipate the rise of Indian/Egyptian production and the resulting cotton glut suggests a fairly limited view of international trade.
It wasn't a failure. Interruption of cotton production caused by Lincoln's Blockade created those alternative sources of production. Had the South never been interrupted in their exports, those other markets may not have ever materialized. Presumably Indians and Egyptians have to be paid something, while slaves didn't.
A modern crop map is not evidence of what people thought or wanted to happen in the 1850’s, nor that their plans would be economically successful.
It proves that it was absolutely impossible to set up Plantations in the Western States. Now whether the agricultural people of that era understood that it was impossible is a different matter, but I think it was likely that they did. I've also been told that the land of those regions was simply unsuitable for cotton farming because it contained too much rocky soil.
They did know that cotton agriculture ruined land and required new territory.
The Western states territory wouldn't have done them any good.
I'm not following you here. Why must the profits go back to the North? You do not think such men would come and settle in the South permanently? Why?
I remember my trip to Europe. It was disappointing. The slaves didn't pick enough cotton to get me a room at the Ritz so I had to settle for some fleabag motel by the airport.
I haven't traveled overseas since. Tell me, when you change your dollars into foreign currency does the bank teller always remind you that the pounds, francs, marks, and pesetas really belong to Bill Gates and Steve Jobs?
Money is fungible. Money circulates. Money doesn't remember who supposedly got it across the ocean, especially since it may have already made several other trips across national borders. Please, take a class in economics or at least talk to an economist ASAP.
The products bought by Northerners from Europe were bought using money they had gotten from Southerners through intrastate trade that was deliberately pumped up by Washington's Protectionist policies.
Hmmm ... Mr. Globalist ... so domestic trade is somehow illegitimate in a way that supplying foreign manufacturers with raw materials isn't? So American production is always inferior or dishonest in a way that British production isn't? Interesting ideas from an advocate for keeping American a dependent colony of foreign powers.
The Greeks and Romans didn't grow much cotton either. I guess that means they didn't have slaves?
Seriously, slaves could be applied to other crops than cotton. They could also be used in mining, lumbering, grazing, construction, shipping, and manufacturing.
The ancients used slaves for many of those purposes. I'm pretty sure that New World slaveowners, many of whom knew Latin and Greek, were aware of that.
P.S. Cotton was being grown in Arizona something like 5000 years ago. Not much, probably, but some. In the Old World, the Egyptians were using irrigation to grow cotton at around the same time.
I don't get it -- the mechanical cotton harvester was supposedly just around the corner in 1865, but irrigation technology was beyond the means of 19th century man?
The truth is that cotton growing wasn't necessary for slavery to exist and slaveowners knew that. But if they absolutely wanted or needed to grow cotton in dry areas where the temperatures were suitable for cotton production, they'd find a way.
“Shipping companies were relocating to Charleston, and a whole host of Northern based industries were looking to get in on the action.” They were expanding into the South. Their center of operations would have remained up north.
Profits go to the Headquarters
Your answer to my question is snark? Does this not imply you are losing the actual debate on merit?
Hmmm ... Mr. Globalist ... so domestic trade is somehow illegitimate in a way that supplying foreign manufacturers with raw materials isn't?
Strawman tactics are also an implication that you can't address the points I have put forth. Machinery or Machined goods from Europe had high tariff's slapped on them to make the Northern produced products competitive. With the tariffs, it was cheaper for the Southerners to buy the Northern produced goods. Without the tariffs, it was cheaper to buy the European goods.
There is nothing wrong with domestic trade, but when the government puts it's thumb on the scale to favor some interests over others, it is not exactly fair trade.
I'm sure they could have, but if such usages were profitable, why didn't they? I don't know too many people who willingly leave money on the table. Most people try to maximize their investments.
You're not entirely wrong. Slavery needed a highly profitable application to be politically secure. That was cotton.
But once slavery was established, slaves would be used for a variety of other purposes. The fact that cotton-growing slave plantations were profitable didn't mean that tobacco or hemp or indigo or rice or sugar plantations didn't make profits working slaves. Plantation owners didn't just give up their slaves if they couldn't grow cotton.
In the slave states, small farmers used slaves to grow cotton and rise livestock. Slaves were also employed in homes and shops. They worked in early textile mills and iron foundries. Slaves worked in lead mines in and also in Illinois where slavery was illegal. Slaves provided most of the labor for Southern railroad construction. The fact that cotton growing was profitable didn't mean that those business also didn't make money. And there were enough slaves that not all of them could have worked in the cotton fields.
So it was to be expected that if slavery were politically secure, slaveowners would move to new areas and bring their slaves with them. When slavery was socially and culturally acceptable and politically secure, slaves were used in all kinds of businesses. Ranchers probably wouldn't want to rely on slaves, since it would be too hard to keep them from running away, but mine owners wouldn't have that problem.
Your big idea a few weeks back was that the Confederacy would be a roaring economic success, even to the point where Midwestern states would be tempted to join the CSA. That's nonsense, of course, but assume it were true. If the slave system was such a success, why wouldn't other states want to take it up?
Machinery or Machined goods from Europe had high tariff's slapped on them to make the Northern produced products competitive. With the tariffs, it was cheaper for the Southerners to buy the Northern produced goods. Without the tariffs, it was cheaper to buy the European goods.
Well, there too, you're not 100% wrong. Tariffs often help keep inefficient or second-rate manufacturers in business. But in the late 19th and early 20th century, tariff-protected US and German manufactured products were usually far superior to what the free trade British turned out.
Domestic competition drove US industries to improve their products while British innovation languished. I wouldn't assume that British products were always superior to American products even in the antebellum period.
The stereotype of the British Victorian Age is that it was always grim and bleak. That wasn't entirely true, but I wouldn't go to the other extreme and ignore that there were good reasons why we think of Victorian Britain in that "Dickensian" way. British industry succeeded in a "brute force" kind of way and this left the British less inclined to explore new methods of production and sales.
No, but they didn't break out into new territories ill suited for the profit making crop either. Setting up some kind of slave based farming in the western territories was simply not a very practical idea.
I've read some of George Washington's writings on the subject, and in them he describes his difficulties in finding enough productive work to keep everything in profit. Yes, slave owners would look for anything even moderately lucrative if they had no other choice, but as you said, the real money was in cotton production.
Your big idea a few weeks back was that the Confederacy would be a roaring economic success, even to the point where Midwestern states would be tempted to join the CSA.
I'm not the only one that saw things that way. The newspaper accounts of that era also voice that very concern, and worse, that it would ruin Northern industries.
If the slave system was such a success, why wouldn't other states want to take it up?
It worked with cotton. Presumably there were people in 1860 that knew a thing or two about cotton farming, and who also knew the climates of these other regions and the ground itself would not support this economic system in those areas.
But in the late 19th and early 20th century, tariff-protected US and German manufactured products were usually far superior to what the free trade British turned out.
German's have long produced superior quality goods, especially regarding machinery. I think it has something to do with the fanatical German mind. As far as the US goes, late 19th century would mean after the protectionism had sufficiently capitalized these industries.
Slaveowners moved to central Missouri to grow hemp and tobacco. Outside the core area of large plantations, others from the same part of the country settled on small farms with a slave or two to raise corn and livestock.
That model, tobacco and hemp plantations in the lowlands along the river and small farms with a slave or two in the surrounding areas was possible outside the Deep South and was being put into effect in neighboring Kansas.
Once slaveholding had a politically reliable core, slaveowners branched into other areas and activities. I told you that slaves were used in textile and iron production, in mining, in railroad construction. They were also used in shipbuilding, lumbering, potterymaking and other industries.
You just ignore what people post to you and repeat what you've already said and think that you've answered objections when you haven't even addressed them.
Okay, you are reading stuff into what I post that I never said. I never said there would be none, I said there would be no significant amounts of it because the profit wasn't there.
Of course if it was allowed, there would be some but nothing like that used in plantation farming.
Once slaveholding had a politically reliable core, slaveowners branched into other areas and activities. I told you that slaves were used in textile and iron production, in mining, in railroad construction. They were also used in shipbuilding, lumbering, potterymaking and other industries.
To some extent, but not on a large scale. If such a thing had been done on a large scale, it would have simply caused slavery to have even more opposition. The Northern whites were mostly opposed to slavery because they saw it as an unfair competition against their ability to earn wages. So long as they kept it down South on the farms doing jobs they didn't want, they would grumble about it, but if they saw it as taking large numbers of jobs away from them, they would have voiced an opposition verging on riot.
Moving slavery large scale into these other jobs in the territories would have stiffened and increased opposition to it even more than it was.
I will take a look.
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