Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
To match the Confederates who already had 100,000 men in their army. Virginia had already been "invaded" by a foreign army when the Governor invited Confederate troops from Texas and other deep south states into his state over a month before they voted to seceed.
My guess if about 50 to 75 years, absent the southern rebellion.
No doubt you would have included the declaration of 1776 in that description as well.
I'll have to check that chronology. Nevertheless, in retrospect, we can clearly see that the north was the invader. The south wanted to be left alone and they stated as much many times. Jackson and Lee both fought to defend their homes - no other reason. The north committed many atrocities and I tire of watching people paint the north white and south black. The north was the aggressor, and Lincoln intimated in his 2nd inaugural that the judgmeent of God had fallen on the ENTIRE nation, not just the south.
Why not since he gave clear explanation for the purpose of the trip? He didn't sugar coat anything. He made it clear that they were there to land food only. To maintain the status-quo. Not to force anything. They were not out to invade Charleston or take any hostile actions, unless hostile actions were taken by the south first. That was made perfectly clear in the letter to Governor Pickens. But the status-quo was not in the Davis regime's interest. And the only inherent hostility was on the part of the southern forces, who shot at anything flying the Stars and Stripes.
He sent both.
Why refuse to meet with negotiators who had sought to resolve the thing peacefully?
Because their demands were unacceptable. The so-called negotiators were there to gain recognition of the legitimacy of the southern rebellion, something Lincoln would not do.
I'll take your word for it. It doesn't change the fact the the north was the invader, nor that the north committed many atrocities, beginning with the constitutional atrocity of suspension of the writ of Habeus Corpus, and violation of the revolutionary war principles of "VOLUNTARY UNION." I haven't seen any historian make a good case yet that the southern states could not legally secede from the union. Might made it right, eh. PC history classes like to focuse on the evil south but conveniently ignore nothern evils.
The south was the insurgent. The United States Army could not invade itself. They have the right, duty and sworn obligation to go anywhere in this nation to put down an armed insurrection.
I doubt very many southerners fought to defend slavery. They fought to defend their states, their way of life, their families, their culture. Slavery was a part of that culture, but very few confederates who fought in the war owned slaves.
As to the thesis of the authors, I agree that all wars are primarily economic in nature. But that does not denigrate one bit the blood spilled by the honorable men on both sides of the civil war. They did their duty as they saw fit, and all the cotton brokers and railroard builders in North America at that time did not have the moral standing of cockroaches in comparison to the men who endured Shiloh, Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Atlanta and the cold winters in between.
The father of the Constitution called unilateral secession a "violation of a faith solemnly pledged." The commander of the Army of Northern Virginia called it "nonsense", and a insult to the memory of the Framers.
I can't understand the need for the Lost Cause cult to attempt to wrap a transparent legal fig leaf around what was nothing but Revolution. If the damnyankees were as evil and oppressive as your mythology insists, rebellion would be a perfectly honorable and moral action. You just have to show us how the damnyankees were oppressing the people of the south.
Really? You mean Madison? I would like to see the full text because I have just read the "Christian History of the Constitution" by Verna M. Hall, a compilation of many writings from that period, and in all I read, union is always voluntary - it's part and parcel of the judeo-Christian worldview, a worldview held by 95% of the founding fathers. The Constitution gives no authority to the Federal govt to enforce union. Unless you have a "legal" argument, you don't have a leg to stand on. And by legal, I mean a Constitutional one. Good luck.
Both sides committed evils. The north was not this benevolent freer of the slaves my friend. The north certainly didn't want the freed slaves to come up there, did they? Both sides had good men, both sides had evil men. Lee and Jackson were Christian men (Jackson taught sunday school to slave children). The radical Republicans extended the Civil War by 12 years out of their EVIL HATRED of southerners...men like Thaddeus Stevens...so much for "malice toward none and charity towards all."
The actual quotation, from which your garbled version springs, from has a much different meaning.
"Neither let us be slandered from our duty by false accusations against us, nor frightened from it by menaces of destruction to the government, nor dungeons to ourselves. Let us have faith that right makes might , and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it." -- Abraham Lincoln Feb 27, 1860 Cooper Union
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