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I’ve been browsing Kettel. Interesting book, though his intent is obviously to argue a case, not describe reality, so I suspect a lot of his conclusions need to be taken with considerable sodium chloride.

Thanks, PR, for providing this resource.

For instance, as BJK notes, he separates the West from the North but combines the entire South, as a way of making the South’s contribution to the economy loom larger.

More importantly, a lot of what he has to say is extremely interesting for what it says about the attitude of southern apologists in 1858. I found it fascinating that he essentially agrees with today’s leftists who demand reparations for slavery. Kettel was essentially a vulgar reverse Marxist, believing that all capital and all wealth is generated by enslaving others and stealing most of the value of the work they do. Except of course he believes this to be a good thing and the basis of all civilization.

So far from believing that slavery was on its last legs and shortly to disappear, he was boundlessly optimistic about its survival and expansion. He thought the only result of a conflict between North and South would be the utter destruction of the Northern economy. (May have been a little over-optimistic there.)

It is also interesting where he draws the line between North (and West) and South. The only criterion he apparently considers for “South” is the presence of slavery. And his complaints about the North are largely, though not exclusively, focused on its opposition to the Peculiar Institution.

He constantly harps on the basic theme of the inequality of men and the positive good of slavery, much like Stephens in his Cornerstone speech a couple of years later.

I would say Kettell was a physiocrat -- a believer that all wealth originated in land and agriculture. For him, however many times goods and money circulate in the real economy and however long ago the farmer -- or more likely, the landowner -- parted with his money he still has some moral right to the money.

I'd also call him a mercantilist, since he apparently believes that currency and bullion are more important than the goods and services for which they are exchanged in the real economy. That's a little more controversial -- some people see "mercantilism" as opposition to free trade and free markets and assume that anyone so friendly to slaveowning plantation economies can't be opposed to free trade and free markets -- but these labels are more or less metaphors since different people living at different times don't subscribe to the exact same ideologies.

See Stephen Colwell's Five Cotton States and New York for a rebuttal of Kettell's main argument.

Interesting commentary, but you are very short on logic. Kettell does argue his case but does not fail to document his conclusions with extensive data...not his...but US Treasury and Census. You may think that the data can be taken with a grain of salt, but you would be overlooking obvious facts that do in fact puncture most of your favorite biases.

“For instance,...he separates the West from the North but combines the entire South, as a way of making the South’s contribution to the economy loom larger".

Combining the data for West and North does not change any of the facts on import/export data or productions affected by tariffs. It does allow for a more incisive analysis of relative economic positions by being much more specific than any of his peers or subsequent historians.

Your characterizations of him and his work are not supported by facts, but merely your effort to call him a racist...modern tactic of the left...and to try to reduce his work because it is the antithesis of your world view and biases.

He produces a thorough work which proves that practically all northern industry was dependent on the productions of the South. He also demonstrates that the political system favored the North, and enabled its manufacturing to progress at the expense of other regions. He very clearly estabishes the facts surrounding the massive growth of the Southern economy just as the tariff system of the North was about to become an albatross around its own neck.