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This book directly addresses the question. Slavery in the South was key to cotton, & cotton largely drove the economic development of the North - finance, ship building, insurance, crews, cordage, sails, provisions & on & on:
I have to strongly disagree. If that is fully accurate, you would have had the economy of the north destroyed as a result of the collapse of the institution of slavery (after the civil war). It didn't, in fact it flourished. Slavery was gone, the south was in ruins, the north grew rich. That pretty much destroys the theory of this author. Now, the south per-civil war in some respects acted like a feudal society - land ownership by the few, and economic benifit based on labor of the land (i.e. slaves). It was not money invested, it was not based on development. Like I said previously, it was a self-defeating economic model. There was no development, no diversification, no industry.
Cotton needs a few things to make a profit - the right land, labor, a trade network, and transportation. The land was in the south, the labor was provided by slaves, the trade network was to Europe - primarily Britian and France who would weave them into usable items, the transportation network was via southern ports. And the profits? You had rich plantation owners in the south. They were some of the wealthiest men in the US at the time. Yes you had some spinoff services like insurance, etc. But really it was minor according to the industrial might of the north. The cotton money stayed in the south.
The north on the other hand was becoming more urban, more industrialized, factories were developed, skills were developed - ship building, railroads, steamboats - all the helped westward expansion and futher development. Iron, coal, lumber...the mineral wealth of the US. Immigration - our population growth also fueled the economy. All those are contributing to great economic wealth and development and have very little, if anything to do with the institution of slavery.
I have to strongly disagree. If that is fully accurate, you would have had the economy of the north destroyed as a result of the collapse of the institution of slavery (after the civil war). It didn't, in fact it flourished. Slavery was gone, the south was in ruins, the north grew rich. That pretty much destroys the theory of this author. Now, the south per-civil war in some respects acted like a feudal society - land ownership by the few, and economic benifit based on labor of the land (i.e. slaves). It was not money invested, it was not based on development. Like I said previously, it was a self-defeating economic model. There was no development, no diversification, no industry.
Cotton needs a few things to make a profit - the right land, labor, a trade network, and transportation. The land was in the south, the labor was provided by slaves, the trade network was to Europe - primarily Britian and France who would weave them into usable items, the transportation network was via southern ports. And the profits? You had rich plantation owners in the south. They were some of the wealthiest men in the US at the time. Yes you had some spinoff services like insurance, etc. But really it was minor according to the industrial might of the north. The cotton money stayed in the south.
The north on the other hand was becoming more urban, more industrialized, factories were developed, skills were developed - ship building, railroads, steamboats - all the helped westward expansion and futher development. Iron, coal, lumber...the mineral wealth of the US. Immigration - our population growth also fueled the economy. All those are contributing to great economic wealth and development and have very little, if anything to do with the institution of slavery.
You said it first. The argument that slavery is even mostly responsible for the economic success of the United States is a dicey one. If this were the case, outlawing of slavery would then have been a body blow to the economic development of the United States. In the South, it was just one of the miseries compounding each other, but for the rest of the country? No. And countries such as Brazil, which had slavery a couple of decades after the United States would be economic powerhouses as well.
The north had survived without slave labor for quite a few years by 1860, and had developed a much more mechanized/engine-driven industrial base. That's why the sudden loss of slavery in the south had little impact on them, while producing economic devastation in the south that lingers until the present day.
The Emancipation Proclamation did squat. It freed slaves in the states that had seceded from the Union, which of course weren't going to listen to any proclamation from the Union in the first place. It didn't free any of the slaves that were still being held in the Union states.
I think you might be confusing it with the 13th Amendment, which abolished slavery and was passed in 1865.
The point is, slavery ended over 150 years ago. Time to move on.
However, in one sense slavery built the entire world. North American, South America, Africa, India, Europe, and Asia. All had a slavery economic component in history. The slave trade was a major part of European economies from the 15th to 17th century.
For the US - well slavery was part of the agrarian economy of the south. But who was eventually victorious? The agrarian society of the south failed the south, it was self-defeating and short-sighted as it sacrificed insdustrial development, transportation development, etc. There were no focused urban centers of commerce or development. It wasn't agriculture and the cotton trade, it was the industrial might of the north that was victorious.
The industry of a free people built the US, not slavery.
You do realize that slavery happened all over the country, not just in the South? By the time of the Civil War, it had been outlawed in many parts of the US, but it had existed earlier.
And as far as an agrarian economy failing....if it fails, nobody eats.
You do realize that slavery happened all over the country, not just in the South? By the time of the Civil War, it had been outlawed in many parts of the US, but it had existed earlier.
And as far as an agrarian economy failing....if it fails, nobody eats.
Of course, but it was outlawed in most of the northern US States by the early 1800s. I think New Jersey was the last - 1804. Some of the original colonies outlawed it even before they gained there independence from Great Britain. It existed in the South because indeed of the agrarian society there. It was not beneficial where skilled labor was needed (in the north), but were manual labor was needed.
But this brings up the European influence and impact on slavery. The Europeans brought the slave trade to the Americas to exploit the riches of the New World, particularly the Spanish (many many more slaves were brought to the Caribbean and south america, where they died in droves and were simply replace by more slaves, that's after of course they tried to use Indians as slaves and they died even faster). It might be more appropriate to say the slavery enriched, not America, but Europe - Spain, Portugal, Britain, France, The Dutch who got filthy rich from the slave trade, which in turn kept the European powers of the 16th and 17th century fat and happy. It was left up to the US to extinguish this practice.
I believe the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1862, to be effective on January 1, 1863, pretty much as an Executive Order. I suppose under some war powers interpretation, Lincoln may have had the authority to do that, but it had little effect.
I believe the Emancipation Proclamation was signed in 1862, to be effective on January 1, 1863, pretty much as an Executive Order. I suppose under some war powers interpretation, Lincoln may have had the authority to do that, but it had little effect.
There was never a question of President Lincoln having the authority to issue the Emancipation Proclamation as a war measure. He could not have done so had there been no war, so there is a certain irony in that secession which was motivated by a desire to protect slavery, provided that war that made the proclamation possible.
Little effect? It changed the war from one limited to preserving the union, to one which now also was dedicated to ending slavery. This put an end to southern hopes that England and France would intervene on their behalf. England, which had led the European anti-slavery movement, was not going to assist in preventing the liberation of America's slaves. France would make no move without English support.
Last edited by Grandstander; 10-12-2018 at 09:59 PM..
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