Civil War weekend to include author (Book: Burning Rails As We Pleased)

Author Barbara Smith of Washington, N.C. will sign her book, "Burning Rails As We Pleased," at the Civil War Living History Weekend scheduled for Saturday, Feb. 14, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, Feb. 15 (10 a.m. to 3 p.m.) at Roanoke Island Festival Park.

She will be in The Museum Store Saturday from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. and return in the afternoon 1-4 p.m. The book is a compilation of letters her great-grandfather wrote to his family during the Civil War.

Her late grandmother who had them in a box labeled "Mom's Stuff" passed on the letters to her. As a child, Smith spent a part of every summer with her grandmother. She recalls, with tender excitement, how "she would get out this box full of letters and she would read them to me. It became a special summer ritual and it was sort of our cozy little thing." After her grandmother died in 1955, "A piece of my life was just cut out and they remained in the closet."

Many years later, while visiting a civil war battlefield with her daughter, she told her for the first time about her great-grandfather, his letters and the box. This led to Smith's 2002 New Years resolution--to transcribe the letters in the box marked "Mom's Stuff."

The project became an obsession and she often spent 12 to 14 hours a day scanning the letters on her computer. It was obvious that a book was in the making!

The letters of William Garrigues Bentley begin the day he enlisted as a 19 year-old Quaker boy from an Ohio farm. He marched through Kentucky and Tennessee and on to Georgia and the Carolinas. His firsthand account of events proves to be compelling and often graphic in detail. Smith alludes to his recounting of the Battle of Franklin, one of the bloodiest battles of the entire war, as so upsetting she could not eat for the rest of the day.

Bentley tells his brother, who was three years younger, not to enlist. According to Smith, "nobody understood really what they were fighting for. Both the North and the South, when they would talk to their prisoners, really thought they were fighting for the same thing. He tells of the harsh winters, one in which his company had to burn fence rails to stay warm. Food was scarce."

Smith will not give the ending of Burning Rails As We Pleased but shared that it was a sad one. "It'll make you sit there and cry," she said.

From all the research she has done, Smith has a new insight on war." War hasn't changed. The very same things that meant so much to them in the Civil War are the same things that mean so much to the boys that are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now-home, packages, letters."

Smith already has plans for another book- one that will be about her own life and history.

The Civil War Living History Weekend will feature re-enactors of Union and Confederate soldiers and Civil-War Era sailors, artillery demonstrations, blacksmithing, rope making, woodworking, lectures, presentations, performances and children's activities. Venues will be both inside and outside. The event is funded, in part, by the Tourism Assistance Grant Program of the Outer Banks Visitors Bureau and is open to the public.

For additional information, call (252) 475-1500 or visit online at http://www.roanokeisland.com .

"If the confederacy was free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing after the rebellion then why didn't they trade with the world without using Northeastern shipping and warehousing before the rebellion?"

The wording of your question begs a simple answer. But it was not a simple matter.

Federal regulations, enacted over decades, enabled Northern ports, shipping companies, and businesses to dominate trade.
Being out of the Union would allow for free trade with Europe.

Here is how it came about to be in 1860.

The success of the shipping trade of New England in the early 19th century was a deliberate effort of mercantilism, in which the South at first willingly participated.

The federal government set out at first to deliberately encourage the commercial trades there, especially ship-building and shipping. The raw material for Northern factories, and the cargoes of Northern merchantmen, would come from the South.

The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. But in addition to the new duties, it reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving in American craft.

It also required domestic construction for American ship registry. Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.

This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States, and specifically the Northeast.

The navigation act of 1817 had made it official, providing "that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power."

The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels. American ship owners' annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.

New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, in part because the British had been feeding cargoes to Boston all through the war to encourage anti-war sentiment in New England. New York was the more starved, therefore it became the port of choice.

The dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. In the decades to come. New Yorkers made the most of the situation.

Four Northern and Mid-Atlantic ports still had the lion's share of the shipping. But Boston and Baltimore mainly served regional markets. Philadelphia's shipping interest had built up trade with the major seaports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially as Pennsylvania's coal regions opened up in the 1820s. But New York was king. Its merchants had the ready money, it had a superior harbor, it kept freight rates down, and by 1825 some 4,000 coastal trade vessels per year arrived there. In 1828 it was estimated that the clearances from New York to ports on the Delaware Bay alone were 16,508 tons, and to the Chesapeake Bay 51,000 tons.

Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on "packet lines" -- groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the Atlantic.

The reason for success was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.

So American vessels, owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.

Since this "triangle trade" involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition.

By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it.

This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way.

To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.

Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.

The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. This was a triangle trade. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.

As for the cotton ports themselves, sufficient demand began to justify packet lines in 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.

Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.

U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.

This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.

New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, was able to control the movement of Southern goods.

"And? The goods bound for northern consumers would still go to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Only that small percentage bound for southern consumers would have headed south."

Let's do the math.

You constantly claim, without the data, that the amount of goods consumed in the South was small.

According to US Treasury data, in 1860, the South imported $346 million dollars worth of products. The entire imports of all the United States was $10 million less than the imports of the South.

Of this list of goods, $240 million came from the Northern manufacturers and suppliers, and imported goods bought by the South was $106 million.

With direct trade, the $240 million from the North would now have to compete with overseas goods. They had been protected industries since the beginning of the tariff laws.

That is why the Mayor of the City of New York proposed secession from the Union in 1861.

Mayor Fernando Wood made a formal demand in a speech to the Common Council that since disunion was a “fixed fact”, that New York should herself secede and become a free city with but a nominal duty upon imports. He said,

“With our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States, we have friendly relations and a common sympathy. We have not participated in the warfare upon their constitutional rights, or their domestic institutions.

“It would seem that a dissolution of the federal Union is inevitable . . . It cannot be preserved by coercion or held together by force. A resort of this last dreadful alternative would of itself destroy not only the government but the lives and property of the people....

“Why should not New York City, instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two- thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent? . . . If the confederacy is broken up . . . it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

“Being the child of the Union . . . when deprived of her maternal advantages, we must rely upon our own resources and assume a position predicated upon the new phase which public affairs will present, and upon the inherent strength which our geographical, commercial, political, and financial preeminence imparts to us.

“The legislature has become an instrument by which we are plundered to enrich their speculators, lobby agents, and Abolition politicians. Thus the political connection between the people of the city and the State has been used by the latter to our injury.

“It is, however, folly to disguise the fact that, judging from the past, New York may have more cause of apprehension from the aggressive legislation of our own State than from external dangers. For the past five years, our interests and corporate rights have been repeatedly trampled upon.

“Why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and
corrupt master?

“It is certain that a dissolution cannot be peacefully accomplished except by the consent of the legislature itself [which] is, in my judgment, doubtful....

“But I am not prepared to recommend the violence implicit in these views. In stating this argument in favor of freedom, ‘peacefully I we can, forcibly if we must,’ let me not be misunderstood.

“We must provide for the new relations which will necessarily grow out of the new conditions of public affairs."

The Mayor proposed that New York secede and form a separate free city composed of the three islands, Long, Staten, and Manhattan. Wood envisioned New York City as a capitalist oasis, a free port trading with both Northern and Southern states.

Other serious secession movements occurred in the Middle-Atlantic states, particularly in Maryland and New Jersey. The common element in these movements was to avoid Union with the New England states, and a strong central government.

First, let me congratulate you on avoiding the question so well. Nicely done.

So you have explained how the coastal traffic was, by law, almost entirely in the hands of U.S. lines. No big surprise there, I'm sure that coastal traffic in France and England were done almost exclusively by their own shippers. Even today domestic airline traffic is handled by domestic companies.

But that doesn't explain exports. In your scenario, the coastal packets aren't really coastal packets. They are part of a transatlantic triangle, moving cotton from the south to Europe, goods from Europe to New York where almost all of them were then sent south. Leaving aside the obvious question of what use are coastal packets on the transatlatic runs, why not cut out the middle man and send the goods directly south on the same ships that took the cotton to Europe? After all, almost none of that cotton passed through New York. In the year prior to the rebellion only 248,000 bales of cotton were exported from New York, 8% of the total exports. This compared to exports of 1,784,000 bales fron New Orleans alone. So all easbound cotton did not flow through New York. That begs the question, yet again, of why those ships came to the southern ports empty when the vast majority of all imports were destined for southern consumers? You claim that the European ships were excluded from the domestic leg. Fine, that makes sense. So why not cut out the domestic leg altogether and ship direct? It also begs the question, yet again, of why the southern ports would magically become major warehousing centers after southern independence when they couldn't be bothered to become major warehousing centers before the war? Why not cut out the middle man and bring them to Charleston and Mobile and New Orleans if there was so much in the way of imports? If it made sense after the war why not make sense before the war? Why not, Pea?

BTW, cotton export figures are from "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War" by Stephen Wise. Appendix 3.

The how about the opinions of people who were there?

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

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