Posted on 04/04/2003 11:09:24 AM PST by WhiskeyPapa
OK, you lost me when you made the connection between pig iron and locomotives. Ho about a little more detail on that, like the tariff on locomotives.
Also, according to the census of 1860 California alone had more capital invested in manufacturing than any single southern state other than Virginia, so the idea that the south was on the road to becoming some sort of maufacturing powerhouse is ridiculous.
The law of comparative advantages says that a country's economy gains the most when it produces in a sector or good where it has a comparative advantage. The south had a comparative advantage in agriculture just like the north had one in manufacturing. Therefore the south produced agriculture and the north produced manufactured goods. It's basic capitalism at work.
In your opinion, that is.
The D of I says:
"...and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do."
Were the rebels states doing those things? What were the total exports of the rebel states 1862-65? How long did they hold Nashville, or New Orleans?
The guys in the outhouse republic in Texas did about as well.
Walt
Too bad the good doctor has absolutely zero credentials in the field of economics...
They are a lot better than a certain professor of economics' are in history. You know, the one that quoted President Lincoln as saying that the federal government predated the Revolution, when what President Lincoln -really- said was that the -Union- predated the Revolution.
Didn't -you- post that particular piece of claptrap?
Walt
The south chose to socially engineer a society based on slavery instead of one based on the free market, and free workers.
"In all social systems there must be a class to do the mean duties. ... It constitutes the very mudsills of society... Fortunately for the South, she found a race adapted for that purpose. We use them for that purpose and call them slaves.
-- Senator Hammond of South Carolina (1858)
Did a search on "mudsill":
Quoting from the book Tupelo (first published in 1888) by Reverend John Aughey:
"In the year of our Lord, 1856, I listened to an address pronounced by Col. Jefferson Davis, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, in which he strongly and unequivocally avowed secession sentiments, and urged his auditors to make due preparation for it, as it was an event greatly to be desired and would be an accomplished fact in the near future, as sure as fate. He thus spoke:
'The people of the North and South are not homogeneous and they never have been. From the first the Union was an alliance between two peoples as diverse in habits, manners and customs, and modes of thought as in their climates and productions. The South has always been restive under this bond. There are strong contrasts between the characteristics and idiosyncrasies of the people of each section. These existed in the mother country. The chivalric Norman Cavaliers settled the South. The Puritans of Saxon origin, exiled and poverty stricken, settled on the cold, rugged, bleak, and inhospitable shores of New England. When I contemplate the hostility of their descendants to our peculiar, patriarchal, popular, and truly beneficent institution--an institution so essential to southern prosperity, and the conservation and development of a high type of civilization, I can look with great leniency upon the persecution and banishment by our ancestors of a people so superstitious, hypocritical, inappreciative, meddlesome, and refractory. They brought the same spirit with them to the new world. They envy us our superior civilization and many advantages.
The Norman and the Saxon can never coalesce. They can never live under the same government on terms of equality. The Norman, by his ancestral traditions, by his intellectual superiority and restless ambition, aspires to bear rule and hold the reins of government. And this consummation of his hopes and aims he eventually secures. All history proves this. The Cavaliers have always been the rulers. The Puritans the ruled. There is no common bond of sympathy, no affinity by which to cement the heterogeneous elements into homogeneity. Slavery gives us superiority so patent that the world readily recognizes it. When our citizens travel abroad they are accorded honors never bestowed upon Yankee travelers. Labor to wring by the sweat of the face a bare subsistence out of a barren glebe, leaves upon the features the ineffaceable marks of their plebeian condition and origin. I have seen them abroad aping the manners of the refined and cultured Southron, and northern mudsills is the whispered comment of the courtly European, who cannot be deceived by the exhibition of the stolen livery. The ass's ears protrude from the lion's skin.
'They threaten war if we secede. We would have secession, peaceably if we can, forcibly if we must. If they force war upon us because we spurn with contempt governmental association with them, let them come. We will welcome them with bloody hands to hospitable graves. There is, however, no necessity for any fear that the Yankees will attempt to retain us by force in a Union which we will sever whatever may be the consequences. I will volunteer to shed all the blood from my own veins that will be necessary to be shed because of the secession of Mississippi from the Union. We have submitted too long to Yankee insolence and domination. I long to enjoy the sweets of liberty, and to see my fellow-citizens of Mississippi in the enjoyment of them. I was educated in the North and I regard it as the greatest misfortune my life. I fear that during my sojourn there I adopted insensibly some of their brusque manners and imbibed some of the modes of thought of an inferior people. I think, however, I have gotten quit of them, but it required extraordinary and persistent effort to do so. I would advise our people to patronize no longer teachers and ministers from the North. They insidiously instill sentiments hostile to southern interests. Their students and parishioners are in peril so long as they are under the mental and moral instruction of men born and bred in the abolition states. Our slave-holding population not subject to the necessity of manual labor have all their time to devote to literary pursuits, to the rites of hospitality, and to social and convivial pleasures and recreations. This is impossible among a people toiling for a livelihood, their minds engrossed with the problems connected with the daily supply of their physical necessities, taking thought in regard to what they shall eat, what they shall drink, and wherewithal they shall be clothed. Physical drudgery is their predestined lot, and concomitant mental anxiety attending it precludes the possibility of a high degree of culture and refinement. The otium cum dignitate is found alone in southern society. Slavery removes us far from the untoward condition that militates against advanced thought.
'The slave, the serf, the peasant, the mudsills of society, will always exist to toil and perform necessary physical drudgery. Providence has so ordained it, and has so constituted society. There are the ruler and the ruled, the noble and the peasant, the slave and his master, the employé and the employer. Those who toil and moil, and those who enjoy the fruit of their labor. And we do not wish to rebel at the allotments of Divine Providence. Providence has been kind to us, and we must not surrender our birthright. Cotton is king, and we must see to it that he is not dethroned. We can rule the North better out of the Union than in it. New England avarice will bow the supple knee to our king. They must have cotton. Subvert their manufacturing interests and they perish. They will perforce become tributary to us, and it will be a happy sight to behold the Yankee cringing at our feet, supplicating us for permission to live--his insolence all gone, his moral ideas radically changed, and his hostility to slavery merged into professed love for our peculiar institution. I am not a prophet, nor a prophet's son, but I will venture the prediction that another decade will not pass until all these things will be fulfilled. Heaven speed the day of their complete consummation. Coming events cast their shadows before.'"
And this guy is a hero?
Walt
Funny thing for a cross dresser to say.
Walt
"Here are some documented historical facts:
First, the basic issue was industiralization.
The North wanted tariffs to protect its infant industries from British monopoly competition. The South opposed tariffs because it did not want to industrialize, but merely exploit its farm economy and its slave labor. It wanted cheap manufactures for itself and it didn't care about the North. It portrayed honest Northern workers as "greasy mudsills and rude mechanics" (Quote from James McPherson, "Battle Cry of Freedom".)
The central government was puny, but tariffs were one of the few areas that it legitimately held authority over. Tariffs must be enforced by a central government. The political fight was about tariffs, not central governments. No reds under the beds here.
Second, contrary to your implication that the South made no trouble and just wanted to "remain a loose coalition", the "foreign" policty of the slave states was very aggressive.
Numerous episodes of Central American "filibustering" (attempts to carve new slave states out of places like Nicaragua) embarrassed the national government in international eyes.
States rights was constantly invoked by the South to intrude upon the North. The fugitive slave act allowed bounty hunters to kidnap freed slaves in the North and transport them back home. Is states rights worth not being safe from kidnappers from other states?
Just as the North decried Southern slavery, the South refered to Northern workers as "wage slaves". The game was played down and dirty from both directions for a long time before the war. Does some arch-conservative want to square the honorable south with the same rhetoric used by Karl Marx?
Third, the slavery issue was not raised by the government; it was raised by ministers who found slavery an affront against God and man.
The government, and especially Lincoln, realized that an appeal in the North to fight a war to free slaves would fail. Contrary to your opinion, the common man was profoundly dis-aroused to fight for the freeing of slaves. It was only after two years of war that the logic of the war, i.e. the constant capture of territory containing slaves, forced the government to state a policy about these slaves freed by military action.
Fourth, the draft was instituted after the war had been going on. There was no diabolical plot (first we draft the masses, then we smash the South). The South also resorted to drafts. There is nothing notably sinister here.
You won't find me wasting any more time reading this thread. You guys don't collectively know history from a hole in the ground. Call me if you want to talk about history instead of projecting today's politics backwards."
[end]
Walt
Since 75% of American exports were Southern produced, and 98% of the US Treasury was funded by import tariffs, it would seem that your above sentence also described the entire US Treasury. ...."Our slaves are clothed with northern manufactured goods [and] work with Northern hoes, ploughs, and other implements...The slave holder dresses in Northern goods, rides in a Northern saddle....reads Northern books...In Northern vessels his products are carried to market..amd on Northern paper, with Northern ink, he resolves in regards to his rights."
From "Battle Cry of Freedom, James McPherson. Quotes from Alabama Newspaper quoted in Robert Royal Russell, Economic Aspects of Southern Sectionalism, 1840-61 (Urbana 1923)
Walt
mac_truck => as in hit by one.
Tell yourself that all you desire, Walt, but without substantiation, it is of no use here. In reality, the southern society was based on agriculture. It was based on agriculture because that is where it had a comparitive advantage. As any credible economist will tell you, slavery was a single labor attribute of some parts of that economy.
In fact, the only "economists" who assert otherwise are the same ones who reduce everything to a labor attribute, called labor reductionism. Though not an economist himself, Mr. McPherson is a follower of these fallacious and uncredible views, not to mention the bearded German guy who developed them.
...made from Southern cotton.
Looks like undocumented and erronious opinion to me.
The North wanted tariffs to protect its infant industries from British monopoly competition.
As any economist will tell you, the so-called "infant industry" claim is nonsense. It is nonsense for two reasons - first because the tariffs that "protect" it do more net harm to the economy than is gained from any of those industriess, and second because in 1860 the north was anything about as "infant" as a 35 year old unemployed son still living in his mother's basement. In fact, prior to 1845 those same industries had enjoyed several decades of "infant industry" protection through high tariffs.
The South opposed tariffs because it did not want to industrialize, but merely exploit its farm economy and its slave labor. Nonsense. Applying Ockham's razor and the laws of economics, one discovers that the southern opposition to tariffs was far more simple than some silly conspiracy against industrialization and for slavery. Simply put, the south was an export economy and when barriers to trade are erected by the government, exports die off. Since no man wants to adopt a policy that kills off his own livlihood, the south opposed the tariff.
It wanted cheap manufactures for itself and it didn't care about the North.
Pure economic bullsh*t of the AFL-CIO demagogue type. First off, the southern economy was self sufficient in its production - it could and did operate successfully under conditions of the free market. That the north was not and instead desired handouts in the form of subsidies and tariffs to compete is not a legitimate obligation of care for the south or ANY adherent to the free market system. Second, even if they DID care about the northern economy, the very best thing they could have done for it is open the borders to trade and induce efficiency by way of competition. In a sense, Walt, you just repeated the 19th century equivalent of "Conservatives only want money for themselves and don't care about the poor people on welfare."
It portrayed honest Northern workers as "greasy mudsills and rude mechanics" (Quote from James McPherson, "Battle Cry of Freedom".)
Calling the 19th century tariff and subsidy leaches of the north either of those things is no less applicable than calling a modern leach off the government today a "welfare queen" or "handout whore." Perhaps that is why "Noam" McPherson takes such exception to the term.
The central government was puny
...by today's standards, but nevertheless larger and more intrusive than the government envisioned by the founders. Claiming that the compartively smaller government back then was tolerable due to that comparison is akin to claiming that Slobodan Milosevic is tolerable since the number of people he killed is small in comparison to Hitler.
but tariffs were one of the few areas that it legitimately held authority over.
That they were, but enacting tariffs that disproportionately harmed one region to the benefit of the other were illegitimate.
Numerous episodes of Central American "filibustering" (attempts to carve new slave states out of places like Nicaragua) embarrassed the national government in international eyes.
All the more reason to simply let the south go about its own way. No south, no more foreign policy of that nature.
States rights was constantly invoked by the South to intrude upon the North. The fugitive slave act allowed bounty hunters to kidnap freed slaves in the North and transport them back home.
Unfortunate as it was, the constitution contained a clause to that effect. The best and easiest way for the north to escape it was simply let the south go. No south, no more obligation to return fugitives.
Just as the North decried Southern slavery, the South refered to Northern workers as "wage slaves". The game was played down and dirty from both directions for a long time before the war. Does some arch-conservative want to square the honorable south with the same rhetoric used by Karl Marx?
Considering that Marx himself was an enthusiastic supporter of the North who practically worshipped Lincoln to a degree unseen till the day Wlat was born, and considering that Marx's own words about the war heavily mirrored those of the north and seldom if ever resembled anything said by the south, such an association of the South to Marx is false, dishonest, and fundamentally ignorant.
Not really. The study of economics, by its very nature, entails the understanding of economic history. By comparison, the study of history, as Professor McPhernut so amply demonstrates, does not necessarily entail the understanding of economics.
"The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience" by Emory M. Thomas.
A few selected quotes:
"The hallmark of a centralized, national state is and was the bureaucracy which implements the government's policies. Bureaucrats had been scarce in the antebellum South, which adhered to the maxim 'the government which governs least governs best.' Nevertheless, by 1863 confederate civil servants were 70,000 strong. Ironically the Richmond government employed more civil servants than its counterpart in Washington...Taken as a whole the activities of the Davis administration constituted a genuine revolution in Southern Politics. During the few harried years of its life span the Confederate government raised and sustained a national army and initiated conscription a full year before its enemy began the practice. The Davis administration suspended habeas corpus and used martial law to create police states in some localities. The government directly and indirectly managed broad segments of the Southern economy and engaged in income and confiscatory taxation." Page 70
"The Confederates sacrificed a states rights polity and embraced centralized nationalism. The Davis Administration outdid its northern counterpart in organizing for total war. Economically, the nation founded by planters and to preserve commercial, plantation agrarianism became, within the limits of its ability, urbanized and industrialized. A nation of farmers knew the frustration of going hungry, but southern industry made great strides." Page 134
Walt
Yeah, Walt, cause they were fighting a massive war for their own survival. Governments tend to grow temporarily during war because of the necessity of fighting that war. And even when Davis overreached, the stronger members of the confederate congress fought him tooth and nail. That's what led to the famed split between former friends Davis and Wigfall, with the latter taking up a staunch states rights position in the Senate and thwarting efforts at centralization. Pendleton Murrah road into office as Governor of Texas on a states rights platform that sought to counteract wartime trends toward centralization.
Some of the same happened up north with critics of Lincoln like Taney and Vallandigham, but rather than accepting their role in the government as Davis did with the states-rights crowd in his own government, Lincoln simply ignored their authority or had them arrested and deported.
Great post. To me, it seems the national socialist nature of the confederacy is part of the weird attraction for these latter day neo-secessionists. Cheers.
How can you say Davis overreached? What controls were there on him? This is, after all, the man who once said "...the true and only test is to enquire whether the law is intended to and calculated to carry out the object...If the answer be in the affirmative, the law is constitutional."
Some of the same happened up north with critics of Lincoln like Taney and Vallandigham, but rather than accepting their role in the government as Davis did with the states-rights crowd in his own government, Lincoln simply ignored their authority or had them arrested and deported.
It's true that Wigfall and Stephens and Toombs remained out of jail to fuss and plot but thousands of others spent much of the war in jail thanks to the habeas corpus commissioners who were a part of virtually every village and town. They were a big part of the confederate bureaucracy that you don't have a problem with, individuals who had the power, under the act which suspended habeas corpus throughout the south, to jail someone without trial or due process. So Davis didn't deport people like Vallandigham, he just let them rot in the slammer.
But when that colony section allows it's economy to become totally dependent on that single sector, to the almost total disregard of other sectors of the economy then they are taking basic capitalism and making it work against them.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.