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.
Yes, ending slavery would have bankrupted the plantation owners, because the North was not going to pay any more for their cotton, but the land owners would have had to pay more to keep the workers.
Basic economics. Wages becoming more costly in relation to flat revenues results in bankrupt operations. Bankrupt plantations means plantations that can be bought up. Think of it as inhousing the growing of cotton for the Northern textile mills.
“ Yes, ending slavery would have bankrupted the plantation owners, because the North was not going to pay any more for their cotton”
What?
That doesn’t make any sense.
Slavery didn’t have to end to not buy cotton.
IMO, the war was principally one of economics in that the North wanted to keep agricultural South as its own for better terms, dictated prices and in a captive-producer situation. They didn’t want the South to sell produce to other countries and their majority legislation made it difficult for the South.
To complicate things, slavery was used as moral tool even through the majority of farmers, etc. in the South didn’t own them - couldn’t afford them. Slavey was for big plantations and rich Southerners.
To have a Second Civil War today would be difficult because there isn’t just one Ft. Sumpter. There are dozens. Name any Democrat city in the South.
You’re overthinking it.
The north didn’t want to end slavery or punish the south per se. The North had its interests and the south had their interests. Slavery was certainly a part of it, but in the lead up to the war, Northern interests were much more in containing slavery than ending it. The southern interests were heavily against this containment strategy because containing slavery meant restricting a commodity that they had cornered the market on.
Somehow that story doesn’t get told much, history written by the victors I guess, but as northern-aligned states ended their slavery practices, slavers in those areas often sold their slaves to plantation owners in the deep south rather than free them because they didn’t just suddenly get religion about Negroes being people all of a sudden. A freed slave is worth nothing, but a slave who is going to be freed if he stays where he is can still be worth money if he’s sold in a southern slave market.
The North didn’t secede from the South, it was mostly ok with the status quo (and remember that the terms “north” and “south” are only really the political classes and business leaders of each section of the country, most of America in both the north and the south were ignorant to (or disinterested in) what was going on in those days with slavery, and even folks like Lincoln who morally opposed slavery from a young age would be considered quite racist by modern measures.
The North controlled the price of cotton within America. They weren’t going to pay more out of the goodness of their heart. They weren’t going to allow the South to deny them that cotton by allowing the South to sell the cotton for the world price at the time on an open market.
For the North, the best way to make more money in that situation is to eliminate the plantation owners and buy up the land. That way the North has their reliable access to cotton and only paying what they have to for it.
I don’t know why that doesn’t make sense to you. On the plantation, under slavery, the only costs to the plantation owner was food and clothing and incidentals. Their rent was all in house. If they switched to wages, the costs for food and clothing and incidentals would have had to be covered, as well as rent.
The costs go up. The revenue is flat. No business can pay increased wages and have their revenues remain flat and stay a going concern. You’re the only one who doesn’t get that, I think.
In your second sentence, you said: "I know the South seceded because the North was trying to end slavery..." so I presumed you were tying the Civil War to the North's desire to end slavery, hence your question about ending slavery as a crass tactic to acquire southern land.
I'm suggesting that it was a moral motivation from the very beginning.
In 1860, I have to consider the possibility that there was a monetary interest in ending slavery
Why? The post-Revolution abolitionism began in earnest in the 1830s. It had its roots in fundamentalist Quaker movements going back to the late 1600s. New York passed a law making slavey illegal in 1827.
If there was a monetary interest in ending slavery, that's because there was a monetary interest in keeping slavery, too. But the larger, more consequential motivations to end slavery have been brewing for over 100 years by then.
A monetary desire to use the ending slavery to buy up cheap southern land as the main reason for it is not supported by history. Now, carpetbaggers from the north during Reconstruction who used the end of slavery to cheat people out of their property is a different matter.
-PJ
I know the Founding Fathers would have liked to have ended slavery as part of the Founding of the country, but they would not have been able to unite the country if they had tried. So, they laid the foundation for its end through the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
The common person of the North may have been more purely intentioned, but the Power interests of the country, I think, were using the virtue of ending slavery out of self-interests because they knew the South could not keep their plantations running without the slaves.
otoh you cannot ignore south carolinas declaration of indepence specifically names slavery as a key reason for their leaving the union.
The civil war didnt happen over night, nor was it just about the outlawing of slavery.
Ill just say if the south would have known what was going to happen, they would have picked their own cotton.
And if they had, the north would have still tried to crush the southern states will to be independent of northern rule thru legislation and economic strangulation.
The U.S. was part of a worldwide movement to end slavery. By worldwide, I mean the parts of the world ruled by Europeans. In 1834, slavery was ended in the British colonies. In 1848, slavery was abolished in the French colonies. Slavery was ended in most of Latin America by 1850, and in Cuba and Brazil in the 1880s. Serfdom, a close cousin to slavery, was ended in Russia in 1861.
Toward the end of the century, there was a convention to end slavery joined in by the Christian and Muslim nations, and also the independent nations of Africa. There were some holdouts in Asia. In 1848, the U.N. abolished slavery worldwide.
Seen in this context, slavery was under siege not only here, but throughout the world. The slave states of the U.S. felt isolated and threatened. Their way of life, as they saw it, was being questioned, and they were being accused of being immoral to own slaves.
Positions hardened on both sides. Instead of viewing the problem as an economic problem, slavery was viewed as a moral problem. In the north, slavery had been ended following our gaining independence from England mostly through gradual emancipation. In the British commonwealth, it was ended through compensated emancipation. These methods of ending slavery softened the economic blow to slave-owners. But, with the hardening of positions, civil war became more and more inevitable.
I’ll talk a little bit about tariffs. Yes, there was the tariff issue. But this was overblown. In the south, everything was blamed on the tariff. The north was growing in population, in industry and in railroads, in banks and financial capital. Why? The tariff! Yes, the tariff favored the north (and domestic manufacturers) at the expense of the south (and also other agricultural regions). The tariff contributed to the Civil War, but wasn’t the primary cause.
Analogously, after the Civil War, every problem of the south was blamed on carpetbaggers and their allied scalawags and free Negroes. So, instead of joining in the emerging world order of capitalism and free and equal citizens, the South created a Jim Crow system, and condemned itself to poverty relative to the rest of the country for another hundred years.
You raise fair points.
You raise fair points.
I tend to be very cynical about any acts of virtue that “coincidentally” financially favours those throating virtue.
There was also the issue of increased population due to immigration.
A slave only works as hard as he needs to in order to avoid punishment. A free man working his own land will be more productive. He can out-bid the slave owner for land.
Slavery was only economically viable as long as land was cheap. That’s why slave owners wanted new western territories, with new unsettled land, to become slave states.
I don’t think that principle was understood at the time, otherwise some of the slave owners might have chosen to form some sort of cooperative profit sharing with the slaves, where the slave’s profits would either be turned over to them as income or invest in them to prepare them for the day when they would no longer be slaves.
I agree with it, but I think it was well understood at the time.
So "Sixteen Tons" was just a song. Correct?
Still, you ask Why was the North so intent on ending slavery...? as if your idea that the intent was foremost a profit motive was the driving factor. History shows other factors dating much further back in time as the impetus for the Civil War.
Can you point to incidents in history to back up your supposition? What northern "Power interests" that encouraged the Civil War actually profited during Reconstruction by the acquisition of southern properties? Can you suggest a few to back up your assertion, or are you asking a question and rejecting negative answers out of ignorance?
Please enlighten me as to the power interests that you have in mind as the secret illuminati behind the Civil War?
Was it the rail barons, who already had mature lines into the south but were focused on expanding west?
Was it the shipping lines, who were more focused on European commerce?
Was it the coal companies? What about oil companies?
Or maybe it was the textile companies? Big Agriculture?
Who can you find in history that had the power to manipulate the United States into war with itself in order to profit from it?
JP Morgan? He was only 24 years old when the Civil War broke out and was just learning the banking business.
Cornelius Vanderbilt? He donated his largest steamship to the northern war effort after first being rejected. He received a Congressional Gold Medal for his support. Post-war, Vanderbilt focused on the New York railways and built Grand Central Station.
John D. Rockefeller? He was 22 at the start of the Civil War and in the produce business. He did make a lot of money selling food to the Union Army, but post-war he moved onto the oil business.
Andrew Carnagie? He started out as a telegraph operator who was hired by Thomas A. Scott of the Pennsylvania Railroad when he was 18 years old. Scott eventually became Assistant Secretary of War in charge of military transportation during the Civil War and appointed Carnagie to be Superintendent of the Military Railways and the Union Government's telegraph lines in the East when he was 22.
So who did you have in mind?
-PJ
Because in 1860, the motives were different. The North wanted absolute domination of the country. What better way to dominate the country than to put the South out of business and buy up their land?
Weaponization of virtue out of self interest is an old trick. The modern liberal claims to want socialism out of kindness, to mitigate poverty. When in reality, because it results in people working for free to no benefit for themselves, the liberal really wants a slave class.
I can see the power classes of the north weaponizing the slave issue for a short-term loss because, in the long-term, they can own the land of the South. It’s hard for the South to argue against that because they have to argue for slavery which puts them at a disadvantage. The South gives in, because they can’t win. Their costs go up, because they are now paying wages, they lose thwir plantations. Suddenly, the North goes, “Hey, look at all this land for sale cheap!”
I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
BOOM! that mic drop just blew some minds open. but only those who still have critical thinking abilities!
there are still far too many kids being indoctrinated by lincoln revisionist / public schools into the " slavery was the only reason discussed in this school, for the U.S. civil war, lincoln was a hero" blind/ no thought education.
You forget that the north greatly profited from the institution of slavery, while bearing none of the consequences. ALL those slave ships that disgorged thousands of Africans, (sold to them by their own kinsman) on the American continent were owned by Northerners. Once laws were passed prohibiting further importation of slaves, they became abolitionists. Yankees make me ill, such hypocrisy! Many of the wealthiest New England families owe their wealth to the slave trade.
From a celestial view, God was not going to allow human slavery to despoil this nation any longer.
I agree that about God and slavery.
God counts slavery as one of the sins that He promises to not overlook when it comes time to judging us.
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