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.
“You forget that the north greatly profited from the institution of slavery, while bearing none of the consequences...”
They are bearing the consequences now.
Re: 112 - good post.
Of course, Federal assistance and requirements to return fugitive slaves ramped up even more slaves being given assistance to go to Canada, being hidden, and some states making return of fugitive skates as time consuming as possible.
That’s not to say that slaves should not have tried to escape, or rebel, or States should not have fought the return of fugitive slaves. Those did occur, were encouraged and should have been.
Re: 161 - which means… what? Not following.
They didn’t start the war either.
And these people are the primary beneficiaries of the Hamiltonian view of government. Did you notice how many connections there are between liberals and big government?
I am confused. You asserted that paid labor systems are so much more efficient that they can easily overcome a forced labor system such as slavery.
I point out that no such paid labor system to produce cotton existed (successfully) until the forced labor system was blockaded out of the market.
It seems to me we have an adequate control group in this Universe.
I point out that China uses slave labor, and they undercut a lot of other markets in the world in manufacturing products, such as IPhones, Shoes, etc.
I think it is wishful thinking to believe that paid labor can actually compete with forced labor in labor intensive production. I think forced labor has a distinct economic advantage if you just ignore human rights issues surrounding it.
And so many people are perfectly content to ignore the morality of it so long as they make a profit.
An ugly truth which most people don't know is that the Northern states had an intense hatred of black people, and much of their opposition to slavery was not based on the immorality of forcing black people to work, it was because slavery brought black people into their communities and they wanted them absolutely kept out.
The primary opposition to slavery in the Northern states was the economic fear that a slave could do their job and thus render them unable to earn a living. This hatred for slavery is based on self-interest, and not on any concern for the slave.
Only a small contingent of what were at the time regarded as "kooks", opposed slavery on moral grounds. The vast majority of people in the North opposed it for the economic threat they saw it as to their working class, and the presence of black people it brought into their communities.
Not at all what we have all been taught.
Egypt also used forced labor, a small percent sub Saharan slaves but mostly local townspeople coerced to work large estates (aka peasants in a feudal system.) I doubt the pay was that great.
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“ I point out that no such paid labor system to produce cotton existed (successfully) until the forced labor system was blockaded out of the market.”
That’s not exactly what you said. You said:
“ So why did England have to wait until the Union navy blockaded the South to open their paid labor cotton plantations in Egypt and India?
The control group would be a South that was never blockaded and changed to wage labor voluntarily. If that had happened would the English plantations have been competitively viable?
Obviously they are viable if a competing business, slave or wage, is physically shut down.
After the Civil War Brazil didn’t become King of Cotton. In fact the South did. Textile Mills even moved from New England to the South so all aspects of the industry became Southern.
You obviously make a good point about specific benefits slave labor or near slave labor can provide certain industries. Today robotics is an analogous situation.
But there is always a greater context and other costs associated with offshore manufacturing. Would iPhones made locally necessarily end up being that much more or less profitable? Hard to say.
I do too. It doesn't surprise me at all that it was nearly slavery.
That’s not exactly what you said. You said:
“ So why did England have to wait until the Union navy blockaded the South to open their paid labor cotton plantations in Egypt and India?
You don't see those sentences as meaning the same thing? They are identical in meaning to me.
The control group would be a South that was never blockaded and changed to wage labor voluntarily. If that had happened would the English plantations have been competitively viable?
That is completely dodging the question as to whether a paid system can compete with a slave labor system. You still have two paid systems. That isn't the issue in dispute.
Obviously they are viable if a competing business, slave or wage, is physically shut down.
Yes, which is the only reason Britain managed to get it's alternate suppliers off the ground.
After the Civil War Brazil didn’t become King of Cotton. In fact the South did. Textile Mills even moved from New England to the South so all aspects of the industry became Southern.
They still had the largest cotton producing system in the world at the time. It just cost everyone a lot more for the finished product than it did before.
You obviously make a good point about specific benefits slave labor or near slave labor can provide certain industries. Today robotics is an analogous situation.
Yes, Robots are the new slaves, but they don't mind, and nobody cares if they are treated bad. :)
Yes, he paid a fortune for books while in Europe and before- and he never forgave his mother for not rescuing the library contents from the family home Shadwell burned to the ground. She took out the furniture. The books were worth a fortune, law books etc. Because of his high debt it is ironic that slaves had to be sold to pay off the estate. Such was the legality at that time. The removal of the original passage of the Decl. of Independence is a very telling pre-Revolution and Constitution event. Jefferson knew then that intergenerationally this would result in the end of the Republic within perhaps 50 years.
Re: 167 - I wanted to ask if you might pass along some references made in the post, as it would be interesting reading. Thanks.
I will have to find them. The only issue where I tried to keep a collection of links to provide references was the issue of "natural born citizen", and I no longer even have that collection of links. Many of them simply stopped working, and are stored on another machine anyway.
I work from memory of the things i've read, and when I see something I consider significant, I make a point to remember it. Unfortunately this has not been working out so well as it used to. My memory was much better before all the bouts with COVID.
I do remember a couple of items that I can probably find you right now. Here is one.
SOURCE: Lerone Bennett, Jr., Forced Into Glory, Copr 1999, 6th printing 2002, pp. 184-8. (footnotes deleted)The man Lincoln called his special friend, Ward Hill Lamon, had no particular sympathy for Blacks, but even he decried the laws of the state, saying that the Illinois Black Code was "of the most preposterous and cruel severity, -- a code that would have been a disgrace to a Slave state, and was simply an infamy in a free one. It borrowed the provisions of the most revolting laws known among men, for exiling, selling, beating, bedeviling, and torturing Negroes, whether bond or free."
The "revolting" Illinois Black Laws didn't seem to bother Lamon while he was living there. Nor did they bother Lincoln, who never said a word against the Black Laws, although they were enforced in Illinois every year he lived there and were not repealed until 1865.
Under provisions of this code, one of the severest in a Northern state, Illinois Blacks had no legal rights White people were bound to respect. It was a crime for them to settle in Illinois unless they could prove their freedom and post a $1,000 bond. John Jones, the most prominent Black in Illinois in Lincoln's day, pointed out that these provisions were in violation of the Illinois constitution, which declared "that all men are born free and independent and have an indefeasible right to enjoy liberty and pursue their own happiness." It was also, Jones noted, "a gross violation" of the United States Constitution which said "that the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens of the several States."
None of this disturbed Lincoln, who lived, without audible distress, with a Black Code, commonly called Black Laws, which said that any Black found without a certificate of freedom was considered a runaway slave and could be apprehended by any White and auctioned off by the sheriff to pay the cost of his confinement.
If a Black had a certificate of freedom, he and his family were required to meet reporting and registration procedures reminiscent of a totalitarian state. The head of the family had to register all family members and provide detailed descriptions to the supervisor of the poor, who could expel the whole family at any moment.
Blacks who met these requirements were under constant surveillance and could be disciplined or arrested by any White. They could not vote, sue, or testify in court.
No Negro was safe.
No Negro was secure.
Any Negro without certified freedom papers on his person was legitimate prey of kidnappers who roamed the streets of Lincoln's Springfield and other Illinois cities and towns. By the 1850s, and especially after passage of the Compromise of 1850, which Lincoln supported, kidnapping Negroes, with the aid and support of the state and the White population, had become a profitable business.
The way it worked, N. Dwight Harris said, was that two or three White men would form a Black-hunting gang. "One would establish himself at St. Louis, or at one of the other border towns, and work up a reputation as a seller of slaves. The others would move about the Illinois counties on the lookout for Negroes -- slave or free. The freebooters never stopped to inquire whether a colored person was free or not. The question simply was, could he be carried off in safety."
If the kidnappers didn't get him, the state would.
With Lincoln's active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks poor. Most trades and occupations were closed to them, and laws and customs made it difficult for them to acquire real estate.
With Lincoln's active and passive support, the state used violence to keep Blacks ignorant. Schools and colleges were for the most part closed to Blacks. A law on the apprenticeship of children said "that the master or mistress to whom such child shall be bound as aforesaid shall cause such child to be taught to read and write and the ground rules of arithmetic... except when such apprentice is a negro or mulatto."
To make matters worse, the state taxed Blacks to support public schools that were closed by law -- and by the vote of Abraham Lincoln -- to Black children. The law, which Lincoln supported, specified that the school fund should be distributed on the basis of “the number of white persons under 20 years of age.” This disturbed a number of very conservative Illinois White people. In 1853, a year before Lincoln's Peoria Declaration, the Alton Telegraph praised Ohio for establishing schools for Black children and criticized Illinois for taking money from Blacks to educate White children. No one in the legislature paid any attention to this criticism, and Lincoln, the state's most powerful Whig politician, said nothing.
During all the years of what some historians call Lincoln's rehearsal for greatness, indentured servants, “a polite phrase,” Elmer Gertz said, "for the northern brand of slaves," were hemmed in by laws and restrictions similar to the ones in Southern states. They could be whipped for being lazy, disorderly or disrespectful to the "master, or master's family." As for the pursuit of happiness, which Lincoln occasionally paid tribute to, Blacks could not play percussion instruments, and any White could apprehend any slave or servant for "riots, routs, unlawful assemblies, trespasses and seditious speeches." It was a crime for any person to permit "any slave or slaves, servant or servants of color, to the number of three or more, to assemble in his, her or their house, out house, yard or shed for the purpose of dancing or revelling, either by night or by day…."
What did Abraham Lincoln say about these violations of government of the people, et cetera, et cetera?
He said he was in favor of the violations -- that's what he said. Not only did he back the Black Laws, but he voted to keep the suffrage lily-White and to tax Blacks to support White schools Black children couldn't, in general, attend.
In 1848 Illinois adopted a new constitution that denied Blacks the right to vote and to serve in the state militia. To make sure everyone got the message, the constitution authorized the state legislature to pass legislation barring slaves and free Negroes from settling in the state. Article XIV of the new constitution read:
The General Assembly shall at its first session under the amended constitution pass such laws as will effectually prohibit free persons of color from immigrating to and settling in this state, and to effectually prevent the owners of slaves from bringing them into this state, for the purpose of setting them free. In February 1853, one year before Abraham Lincoln praised the "White man's" Declaration of Independence at Peoria, the legislature made it a high crime punishable by a fine for a Black to settle in the state. If a Black violator couldn't pay the fine, he or she could be sold by the sheriff to pay court costs, making some Whites fear that the new law would bring back slavery.
The architect of this Negro Exclusion Law, which was, Eugene H. Berwanger said, "undoubtedly the most severe anti-Negro measure passed by a free state," was John A. Logan, who introduced the measure "solely to improve his political stature." During debate on the issue, Logan attacked White critics of his bill, which was called "An Act To Prevent the Immigration of Free Negroes into the State." Logan said he could not understand "how it is that men can become so fanatical in their notions as to forget that they are white. Forget that sympathy over the white man and have his bosom heaving with it for those persons of color." Logan looked around the hall and said words that many of his compatriots would say in the 1990s: "It has almost become an offense to be a white man."
Neither this speech nor his Negro Exclusion Law hurt the reputation of "Black Jack" Logan, who was later named a major general by Abraham Lincoln and who is celebrated today all over Chicago as a Civil War icon.
Most Illinois Whites supported the provisions of Logan's Negro Exclusion Law, but twenty-two legislators, eleven Whigs and eleven Democrats, voted against it in the lower house. There was also strong opposition in fourteen Northern counties, particularly from Quakers, Presbyterians, Congregationalists, and New England immigrants.
The severity of the Negro Exclusion Law shocked antislavery forces. Frederick Douglass was outraged by the "enormity" of an act that "coolly" proposed to "sell the bodies and souls of the blacks to increase the intelligence and refinement of the whites [and] to rob every black stranger who ventures among them to increase their literary fund." It seemed to Douglass that "the men who enacted that law had not only banished from their minds all sense of justice, but all sense of shame." Another editor who felt that way was Horace Greeley, who said in the New York Tribune that it was "punishment enough" for Blacks "to live among such cruel, inhospitable beings" as the White residents of Illinois, not to mention the additional burden of having to live under such a law. The New Orleans Bee said the law was "an act of special and savage ruthlessness." The Jonesboro Gazette in the land of Lincoln asked: "How long will the people of this hitherto Tree State' suffer this shameful enaction to disgrace their statute book?"
What did Lincoln say?
He didn't say a mumblin' word.
Despite his Jim Crow votes and Jim Crow style, Lincoln got up on platforms and said he believed that the Declaration of Independence gave Blacks the right to some of the rights enumerated in that document, including life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If he believed this -- and the evidence goes the other way -- it was news to Illinois Blacks, who were denied the right to pursue anything in Lincoln's Illinois, except poor-paying jobs that Whites shunned until economic crises lowered the color of their expectations.in' word.
Another that I can find easily is the statement by Charles Dickens, who had toured the US for an extended period, meeting with people in both the North and the South. Here is what Charles Dickens said in 1862.
Every reasonable creature may know, if willing, that the North hates the Negro, and that until it was convenient to make a pretence that sympathy with him was the cause of the War, it hated the abolitionists and derided them up hill and down dale. For the rest, there is not a pin to choose between the two parties. They will both rant and lie and fight until they come to a compromise; and the slave may be thrown into that compromise or thrown out of it, just as it happens.
There are a whole host of writings about the public sentiment in the North against black people, and references to the need to keep the territories only for white people, but I will have to run across them again.
Articles about the New York riots is another example where you can read of how much hatred there was for black people.
As for fear of the possibility of slaves taking their jobs, these articles can be found if you look for them.
"That leads to the question of why would all of those non-slave-owning citizens march off to die for something they didn't have anyway?"
Some time ago, I ended up in a long discussion here on this topic, and it forced me to look further and learn more. What I found challenged what I'd long believed. For example, I long believed that slaveholders were a teeny-tiny percentage of the population and that impoverished Confederate soldiers were forced to fight a war for the wealthy few. But, in checking further, I came across articles that said the percentage of slaveholders was larger. In addition to plantation owners with many slaves, some families would purchase, say, one slave, and small-time farmers might hold a few slaves. So, even the people who did not personally "own" a slave often were connected to people who did - sometimes in their own families. The purchase of a slave was a big investment, so one reason slaveholders did not want to free their slaves was financial.
Another reason was that generations of people were accustomed to a way of life that involved slavery, and they didn't want it to change. Plus, as the Southern Democrats (who controlled those states) declared in their written reasons for secession, they feared what might happen if the slaves were freed. There were still some slaves held up North at the time (if what I read is correct), but in a couple of southern states, the slaves outnumbered the free people.
Some people believe they seceded over a tariff, but I don't recall seeing a tariff mentioned specifically in writing as a reason for secession. But, Southern Dems could see their power in the federal government would diminish, if more "free" states were admitted to the union.
Below are the links I kept for the official documents. As you noted before, these documents give slavery as the main reason for secession. Then, when the CSA wrote its constitution, they enshrined slavery in it. Crazy. Sheesh, those poor slaves...
Secession Acts of the Thirteen Confederate States
Declarations:
South Carolina
Mississippi
Georgia
Texas
Resolutions:
The ccp plans to take hawaii tywan and our west coast w the help of the wef ... ccp lazered lahina ... and lithium is sprayed on US imo
It's teeny-tiny in my mind, too, but when I was looking for more information, I found articles stating that somewhere between 20% to 30% of families held slaves - in some states an even greater percentage. IIRC, the lower percentage counts only the named slaveholders, whereas the higher percentage is the percentage of households.
Here's a source that gives both percentages based on the 1860 Census: "While nearly one-third of Southern families owned slaves, the number of slave owners named in the slave schedules is 1.7 percent of the total population (in 1860)."
So, suppose the father of a family was a slaveholder. If I understand correctly, the lower percentage counts only him as a slaveholder. His wife and sons and daughters would count as non-slaveholders. But, in reality, the whole family was holding a slave or slaves. So, when you calculate the percentage of households (instead of individuals), the percentage is much higher. If a slaveholder's son went off to fight for the Confederacy, he himself might not have been named as a slaveholder in the slave schedule, but he lived in a household that kept slaves.
Then, consider that slaveholders hired out their slaves to non-slaveholders and that the social hierarchy was based on slave and free, and it's apparent that many people were connected to slavery in some way.
"I truly do believe that the punitive tariffs, etc. that had been imposed by the North were unfair, and that unfairness was a strong motivator."
We'll have to agree to disagree. I read that, before the war, the richest people in the southern states were far wealthier than the richest people in the northern states. The southern states could've blocked the Morrill Tariff if they hadn't seceded and, instead, had stayed in Congress to vote against it. They wanted the Brits to side with them, so they tried to convince the Brits that they were seceding over a tariff. It was all a ruse.
"there is no reason to expect that the reasons for fighting on both sides of a war are the same (or actually mirror images of each other)."
Good point. I agree.
"I think that by the time they mobilized in the North, slavery had become a main reason for getting soldiers to march off to war."
AFAIK, that seems to be the case. Lincoln opposed slavery, but he believed keeping the Union together was more important.
"But I think - perhaps because of propaganda - the issue of State's Rights is what the South used to motivate its own forces."
I don't know... Is there any evidence that Confederate soldiers weren't fighting to keep people enslaved? The whole state's rights argument was about keeping slavery. If a Confederate soldier opposed slavery, wouldn't he have been forced to fight, anyway? It's difficult to comprehend 160 years later.
IMHO, we should remember the Confederates were Democrats. The Republican party opposed slavery, as their 1860 platform made clear. The Democratic Party has been behind many evils in this nation's history from slavery onward. But, the southern states are no longer Democrat-strongholds. Now, the Dems rule the northeast and the west coast.
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