Posted on 09/26/2019 7:28:51 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Recently there seem to be an increasing number of claims that American prosperity resulted from slavery. This is presented as justification for the renewed calls for reparations for slavery, which Democrats are using in an attempt to gain support as we approach the next presidential election. But did slavery actually create the wealth of the U.S.? Does this claim have any historical basis in fact, or is this a distortion of history to influence the views of voters?
We should all agree that slavery is an immoral institution in which people are treated as property and work, not for themselves, but for the benefit of their “owners.” It is an extractive economic system that shares some characteristics of feudalism and communism. They are all extractive in the sense that work is extracted from laborers who benefit very little from their own efforts, and as a result do not have much incentive to work hard, to make improvements, or to innovate, even though they may be faced with threats and coercion.
Lacking the motivating force of self-interest, such systems have proven to be highly inefficient, as well as inhumane, and hinder economic growth. So, while a small elite can live well through the efforts of others under these systems, the overall economy suffers, there are fewer opportunities, and a lower standard of living for members of society as a whole.
If we consider the historical experience of other nations involved in the slave trade, it could help our understanding of the issue.
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
More people should explore modern farming on YouTube to see what is actually going on in industrialized farming operations, fascinating as Spock would say.
Came D@mn close to winning, and that's despite the North having 4 times the population to draw soldiers from.
I think your theory is flawed. It may be correct, but the South's losing doesn't provide proof that it is. Any army that is outnumbered 4 to 1 tends to lose.
Just freeing the slaves destroyed 5 billion dollars worth of assets in the economic reality of that era. Deaths of 20% of their male population is worth quite a lot in economic value. Destruction of their industries and the rise of foreign competition (due to artificial economic conditions created by the Union blockade) also cost them a lot of future economic activity.
No, it overcame them with four times the population which could keep killing off it's young men at a rate far higher than the South could match.
Economics didn't win the war. Sheer numbers of able bodied men and a government willing to sacrifice them is what won the war.
Turned traitor to his own family and friends to help the invaders? I don’t wonder that they tried to kill him. Most people would do this to a family member that betrayed them to invaders.
That statement doesn't quite make sense. It was the North that had the 4 to 1 population advantage, and it was mostly the South that had the slaves. (There were five Union slave states.)
The South would have won if they didn’t have slaves, period.
Having five Union slave states didn't stop the Union from winning, so what makes you think having slaves made the difference between winning and losing?
I think having 4 times the population to feed into a murderous meat grinder is the deciding factor in winning a war like that.
But likewise there would never have been a war if they didn’t have slaves.
Well this is true, but not in the manner you would have us believe. The Union did not invade the South because of slavery, the Union invaded the South because the South was going to cut off the power brokers of the North from the income they had been receiving from slaves producing exports to Europe.
The Northern power brokers in New York and Washington DC (same evil vile bastards we are fighting against today) were receiving 60% of all the revenue produced by slave labor in the Southern states. Washington DC received *MOST* of it's revenue from export goods produced by slave labor in the South, and between the New York shipping, warehousing, banking, insurance and other industries then feeding off the slave produced goods, New York was getting about 40% of the total production value from the slaves, and Washington DC was collecting the other 20% in tariff values, almost all of which were collected at the port of New York.
So yeah, without the slaves, there would have been no money for the wealthy corporate interests in New York and the corrupt influence peddlers in Washington DC to fight over.
But it was primarily the money they were fighting over. Nobody had any intentions of freeing the slaves till nearly two years after the war had already started.
They wanted that money, and they didn't care about the slaves until it later became politically beneficial for them to do so.
You’re right...
Slaves created a slave culture, which diverted the South from the North. This is the perfect example of schisms that ultimately lead to war.
The reason the South would have won was their determination. With a few more resources Gettysburg would have swung in the other direction, Lincoln would have been forced to sue for peace, and the South would have left with a sovereign republic not unlike a Canada with a Southern drawl.
Regardless. Slavery wasn’t the ostensible reason for the war, but it was the reason for the loss.
BTW. Lincoln doesn’t deserve the canonization that history has given him. He always had the choice of allowing the South to leave the Union, even after the initial Southern aggression. There is no victory above the graves of 500,000 Americans.
That was going to be my point, too. For the small labor gains the US has paid trillions for it.
The South was systematically and intentionally backward.
- Railroads in the South did not cross state lines - by state government edict.
- There was one telegraph line in the South, at a time when the map of telegraph lines in the North looked like a spider web. Again, state law.
- For every factory worker in the South, there was a factory in the North.
Always, after the 1850s. Millard Fillmore (July 9, 1850—March 4, 1853). . Franklin Pierce (March 4, 1853—March 4, 1857) James Buchanan (March 4, 1857—March 4, 1861).All the presidents of the 1850s get, and to an extent deserve, a bad rap. But the net effect of their administrations was to keep the union intact throughout the decade. If the Civil War had started a decade earlier, the correlation of economic forces would have been quite different - and secession might very well have succeeded.
“Economics didn’t win the war. Sheer numbers of able bodied men and a government willing to sacrifice them is what won the war.
January 1865 there were 800,000 men serving in the Union Army and 200,000 men serving in the United States Navy.
The Springfield Arsenal produce more 58 caliber rifle muskets than all arsenals in the South could produce. Springfield along with 21 contactors produced 2,000,000 weapons during the war. The South could only produce 500,000 rifles, and was still buying them in England in April 1865. Tredegar in Richmond cast half the artillery pieces produced in the South. There were five iron works in the North that equaled or exceeded Tredegar capacity. There were seven more that approached Tredegar capacity. Northern Shipyards built over 600 ships for the Union Navy. Southern shipyards produced less than 50 ships for the Confederate Navy. In 1864 Every one of 800,000 Union soldiers received two complete uniforms a year (that’s 1,600,000 uniforms). Confederate soldiers were barefoot in rags.
A 4 to 1 manpower advantage is of little value unless the Government can provide them with the weapons, clothing, rations, horses, artillery, ships etc. Yes Economics does not by itself win a war. But the North’s success over the Confederacy was abetted substantially by it’s great industrial and agricultural capacity.
Do not dispute that at all, but it was their ability to replace losses that was primarily responsible for the win.
Not sure it's that simple. It is my understanding that most of the South was settled by Scottish and Irish people, while most of the North East was settled by English people. There were schisms built into the nation, and i've read a lot of claims that the Civil War was just a continuation of the English Civil War.
Regardless. Slavery wasn’t the ostensible reason for the war, but it was the reason for the loss.
I'm not grasping your point here. Why was slavery the reason for their loss?
BTW. Lincoln doesn’t deserve the canonization that history has given him. He always had the choice of allowing the South to leave the Union, even after the initial Southern aggression.
I hate to take up for Lincoln, but if you look at the situation he had to face, he pretty much had no choice but to start a war with the South. If he didn't, it would have caused massive economic devastation in the North. The North would have undergone an economic disaster, not only from the South eschewing their shipping, banking, insurance and other industries, but from the flood of cheaper European products that would have displaced their markets in the South, the Midwest, and along all the border states.
Southern independence would have been a massive economic catastrophe to Northern economic interests.
Oh, and the initial aggression was on the part of Lincoln. A lot of people have never been informed that what triggered the attack on Ft. Sumter was the arrival of the first few ships of a War Fleet Lincoln had sent to force his will on the people of South Carolina. The Confederates knew the warships were coming, and they knew what their orders were, and it was in an effort to prevent having to wage a battle where they were being attacked both from the Sea and from the Fort, that they reluctantly decided to neutralize the fort before the Ship's firepower could be brought to bear on them.
There is no victory above the graves of 500,000 Americans.
Best survey of the casualties so far puts the numbers at closer to 750,000, but you are right. Killing that many people to subjugate other states was just wrong. It should have never happened.
To clarify... The war wasn’t started because slavery existed in the South. But because slavery existed, and because slavery was actually preventing the South from modernizing, they lost.
Of course, the Confederacy ignored 1 million man pool that could have been used to replace their losses. The Southerners preferred to keep them slaves. The North used these same men to fill their ranks and man their ships.
You may be shocked to learn that Lincoln was pushing for an amendment that would make it (slavery) virtually permanent.
It is stuff like this that has caused me to stop believing all the things I had been told about the Civil War for my entire life.
This is mostly true. There were efforts to start using slaves as combatants but by the time they started getting serious about the idea, it was already too late.
Of course Nathan Bedford Forest actually did use about 26 of his own slaves as cavalrymen and promised them all their freedom at the end of the war, no matter which side won. 25 of them remained with him throughout the war with only one deserter.
I found a wonderful essay on the topic a year or so ago, and I wish I had saved it or a link to it. It also said that Nathan Bedford Forest actually wrote out all the manumission papers before the eve of one of his battles, so that if he was killed in the action, his promise would still be kept.
But yes, the Confederates hamstrung themselves by some of their own social ideas, and failing to use their slaves to staunch the loss of manpower was one of them. The idea not only didn't fit into their social structure, there was probably a great deal of fear of the idea in terms of armed slaves initiating a revolt.
Just the fact of slave soldiers would have inspired others who remained on the plantations, and it might have destroyed their system anyways.
Since the Civil War children in this country were taught that Washington and Lincoln were the epitomes of the presidential lineage. Lincoln’s legacy was strongly burnished by the education establishment that flourished late in the 19th century. The Civil War was a myth-making vehicle for them, and they needed a patron saint to justify the carnage.
It is entirely debatable whether the immigrant wage slavery of the north differed much from the chattel slavery of the south.
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