Ther is not a single thing in this thread worth responding to. You have no facts, no figures. You don't cite the historical record, or depend on it, because you cannot.
Let's try again:
Dr. McPherson:
"Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sxth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..."
Now compare this text:
"To buy at home or abroad the the goods the army needed was one thing; to move them to the places where the army wanted them was quite another. Lacking a financial and industrial system equal to the demands of a large war, the South lacked also a proper transportation system. It had many railroads but no real railroad network, because hardly any of its railroads had been built with through traffic in mind. Most of them had been conceived of as feeder lines, to move cotton to the wharves at river towns or at seaports
...This handicap, to be sure, existed also in the north, but there it was not so serious. It had been recognized earlier, and it was being removed; and the significant point was that in the North it could be removed, and in the South, it could not.
The South was almost helpless in this respect. Nearly all its locomotives, spikes, car wheels, car bodies annd other items of equipment had come from the north...
As the nation's need for an adequate transportation increased, the system would grow weaker and weaker, and there was no earthly help for it....these problems , indeed, were so grave and pointed so surely towards final defeat that one is faced to wonder how the founding fathers of the Confederacy could possibly have overlooked them. The answer perhaps is that theproblems were not so much unsen as uncomprehended. At bottom they were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention oif aristocrats who who were familiar with valor, the classics and heroric atttitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it....Essentially, this was the reliance of a group that knew a little of the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough. It ran exactly parallel to Mr. Davis's magnificent statement that the duration of the war could be left up to the enemy--the war would go on until the enemy gave up, and it did not matter how far off that day might be.
The trouble was it did matter. It mattered enormously."
[I bolded one passage; other emphasis is the author's]
GOPcap, you are the poor man's McCarthy. Have you no shame?
Address the data, not the person who presents it.
Walt
Fibbing about the history of this thread won't get you anywhere, Walter. What's truly baffling is that you think you can get away with it when the opposite of what you purport as truth may be seen as clear as day.
Come now, pull your head out of your backside, remove the cotton from your ears, take off that blindfold, and try reading the thread.
You will find a fully documented step by step refutation of McPherson's sloppily written article on the "causes of the war" that he wrote for the History Channel website. As always, I invite you to debate the record and defend your hero. But first you must take the time to actually read before you shoot your mouth off.
Dr. McPherson: "Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sxth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..."
And as I said in an earlier post rebutting that which you similarly ignored, McPherson's economic analysis is fraudulent and sloppy. He carefully adopts as his standard a carefully selected and narrowly defined set of economic strengths for the north, applies that standard to the south, and declares the south the "loser" because of it. It's a sham argument from which the outcome is determined before the statistics are even considered because it is designed to promote the north while simultaneously, and I dare say willfully, ignoring southern economic strengths in agriculture among other things.
In short, you have provided a perfect example of McPherson's radically slanted, biased, and outright fraudulent version of history - he presents a carefully selected set of "evidence" to promote the northern side while simultaneously neglecting everything that makes his argument look bad. No wonder you like the guy so much, Walt!
GOPcap, you are the poor man's McCarthy. Have you no shame?
You should consider looking in the mirror, Walt, before shooting your mouth off like that.
I am interested however in knowing what grounds you make the above accusation upon. Are you attempting to accuse me of McCarthyism for outing McPherson as an avowed left wing south hater with openly Marxist political activism? If so, you fail to meet the burden of establishing McCarthyism as, unlike McCarthy's often made-up charges, every one of these facts about McPherson has been thoroughly documented in great detail. You have had more than one opportunity to refute any one of them and to defend your oft-stated claim that McPherson is "fair and balanced" and all that other debunked nonsense about objectivity. You have refused every one of them and continue to spread the LIE that McPherson is fair and balanced. As long as you continue to fib about him I will continue to reveal the truth about his marxist political affiliations, left wing activism, and extensive public record of south hating.
Address the data, not the person who presents it.
I find it much more applicable to address both as I have done here and elsewhere with thorough documentation refuting the man's historical writings and similarly thorough documentation of his anti-southern and far left wing political activism.
This is important especially when persons such as yourself regularly build your arguments not only on McPherson's data but also his supposed "authority."
But in the end you cannot escape the facts about your "historian" of choice - his arguments are fraudulent and his objective authority is suspect.