[DiogenesLamp]

I raised the issue on a prior thread. You were unable or unwilling to substantiate your claim then either. You can rest assured that every time you claim Government subsidization of Northern railroads or shipping activity, I will ask for the legislation that authorized that action.

Having previously seen the proof of it, I am a lot less anxious about finding it than you. I am confident that I will eventually run across it again, but I don't feel motivated to look for it right now. I much prefer the back and forth in which I am currently engaging.

I also perceive you really don't care about the proof, you just want to challenge everything and slow down the discussion by insisting on proof of which you already should be aware.

I will also continue to use the statistics on the slave trade from “slavevoyages.org” every time you make the claim that Northern ships carried all the slaves to the Western Hemisphere.

That's fine. Clearly Northern US ships only carried slaves after 1776, and therefore they are obviously not responsible for all the slaves carried prior to that.

I can speculate that if they went their own way. that the 200,000,000 would have been spent to buy more slaves and land to grow more cotton and tobacco.

Well there's actually proof that they wouldn't have done that. I've also shown it to you before, and since it is easy to find, here it is again.

Nothing to the west of Mid Texas could have been plantation farmed in the 19th century because cotton only grows there through modern irrigation practices. So no, they couldn't have grown any more than they were already growing. There was no land or climate that would support it.

To RinaseaofDs. Here is a graphic I use a lot. It proves that it was impossible to have plantation slavery in any of the territories because Cotton won't grow (much) in any territory north of Oklahoma, and it can't grow in West Texas or further west without modern irrigation.

The point here is to demonstrate that the concern about expanding slavery to the territories was probably astroturn nonsense created by a propaganda organization created in New York (of course) called "The free Soil Party."

You couldn't have any significant plantation farming in Kansas because you can't even do very much cotton farming in Kansas today.

The "expansion of slavery in the territories" appears to be made up astroturf intended to keep the Northern coalition of states in control of Congress.

They were using that majority in congress to make sure legislation kept money coming out of the South into their pockets. That's why they were so adamant about keeping control of Congress. They didn't really give a crap about the slaves.

[Bull Snipe]

Thanks for the graphic. very instructional. I do not believe that it proves your argument. Consider this, how much of the cotton growing area east of west Texas was actually planted in cotton. Just because cotton will grow in an area does not mean that cotton is being grown there. Some of the land just could not be used, swamps, bayous etc. Someone had to grow food, and that takes land. Some of the cotton growing area had been under cultivation for decades. What condition were the fields in those area, soil depletion would reduce the output and at some time the fields may be abandoned. Edwin Ruffin was experimenting with crop rotation at his plantation on the James River. Some of the things that he learned could help revitalize those worn out depleted fields. Obliviously the cotton growing region in West Texas would not be available for some years. The Confederate Army had to force the Kiowa and Comanche’s to abandon the area. Then fairly lengthy roads or railroads had to be built to get the cotton to the Gulf Coast or to the closest rivers connecting to the Mississippi. I could easily see another twenty or more years where cotton would be the premier crop in the South. So for that period of time, little of that money available would have gone to industrialization. That shift would have started the output of cotton started to drop and the value of the exports dropped due to completion from India, Egypt and Brazil. You are substantially correct when you say that cotton agriculture would be replaced as the South/s economic base. The question is how long would the planters hold on to the past and embrace a future that was not based on the production of cotton. In my opinion Cotton would remain king in the South for another twenty years