I'm going back through older messages (in reverse order) that required a bit more thought to answer, now that I have a few minutes. Here's the first:
> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > On Behalf Of Robert Seeberger > Sent: Monday, August 13, 2007 9:35 PM > To: Killer Bs Discussion > Subject: Re: Civil WAr >> that great. First of all, they could still have the labor of the >> slaves....just as tenant farmers...as they did later. > > And they certainly did, but at the cost of their former affluence, so > I don't think you can minimize the impact of freeing the slaves. How > many decades did it take for the agricultural South to recover? It took decades, but there was a lot more than the freeing of the slaves involved. There was a devastating war of attrition that was fought, for the most part, in the South (think of Sherman's march to the sea). The South pored their capital into the war effort, and would have taken years to recover even if Lincoln had lost the 1864 election and the North sued for peace. Then there was 14 years of occupation: Reconstruction. According to economic historians, the South was making a lot of money off agriculture and the industry associated with it. Those made wealthy by that industry (this wealth was fairly well concentrated) would not have been impoverished by a gradual elimination of slavery (the most likely scenario if the South willingly remained in the Union). Gradual transition are almost always less disruptive than abrupt ones. > http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/ransom.civil.war.us > Quote: > "Whatever the effects of the war on industrial growth, economic > historians agree that the war had a profound effect on the South. The > destruction of slavery meant that the entire Southern economy had to > be rebuilt. This turned out to be a monumental task; far larger than > anyone at the time imagined. As noted above in the discussion of the > indirect costs of the war, Southerners bore a disproportionate share > of those costs and the burden persisted long after the war had ended. > The failure of the postbellum Southern economy to recover has spawned > a huge literature that goes well beyond the effects of the war. " I don't differ a great deal with that quote, because it doesn't address the potential impact of a gradual cessation of slavery. As I said above, the > To avoid wandering too far from the original point, I think you have > to understand the reasons why the political and economic entities of > the South decided to fight in order to understand why there was such > patriotic fervor (Confederate) in the region and why it persisted for > so long. I'm not sure that's true. The patriotic fever for years afterwards wasn't a result of the people in the antebellum South considering the socioeconomic conditions in 1860, and the rational, ethical decisions available at the time. I'd argue that a set of beliefs, which were codified by the "Lost Cause" historians would be sufficient. I'll give one recent example from Texas. About 6 years ago, there was a column by Laura Bush in the Houston Chronicle's editorial page. It listed the familiar Lost Cause mythology as historical fact, and stated that folks who didn't accept that were just ignorant of history. Here column pretty well summed up what I have been hearing from patriotic Southerners. It was, of course, mythology, and inconsistent with a careful analysis of the writings of the leaders of the South, or a socioeconomic historical analysis of the times. But, I think it was a good reflection of the patriotic fervor. The South started and lost the Civil War. It did so, not because the Republicans were about to outlaw slavery (how could they get a 3/4 majority of states to do so?), but because they saw the election of Republicans as marking the start of the decline of slavery as a critical part of the US. (The 1850s were a high point for the recognition of slavery with laws like the fugitive slave act being enacted). It then lost a devastating war of attrition. It was humiliated after the war, and forced to petition for re-entry into the Union. It saw its leaders excluded from the Senate and Congress, and had to endure former slaves (the best of whom was considered inherently inferior to the lowest white) as its "representatives" in Congress. It was subjected to years of occupation, which was only ended as part of a deal to elect Garfield as president in the Electoral College. Given this, I'd submit that the Southerners did not do a rigorous objective analysis of the events leading up to the Civil War, but engaged in collective denial. The war wasn't over slavery, it was over "States Rights", and fundamentally the rights listed in the Declaration of Independence. Those evil Republicans wanted to rule the South against their will, and the rights listed in the preamble of the Declaration of Independence. The Southern leaders, who came from good families, were the most honorable of men. This stood in stark contrast to the common rabble represented by the Republican party. Just look at Lincoln, he certainly didn't come from a prominent family. (as an aside, one problem with leadership in the South is that it was bloodline based, not ability based.) So, a mythology was built up, to counter the devastating psychological blow of being utterly defeated and occupied. While this is unprecedented in the US, it's not uncommon in the world. One example is the mythology of groups like AQ, who misidentify the reasons for the relative weakness of Islam vs. the West. Another is the mythology surrounding the loss of WWI preached by Hitler and willingly accepted by the overwhelming majority of Germans. > > "Until the Civil War, however, most White House servants were slaves. > " The White House was in the South. It took a unilateral suspension of habeas corpus by Lincoln to keep Maryland from joining the Confederacy. Remember, through the '50s, the Democrats were most concerned with preserving the Union by appeasing the South's insistence on slavery. I'd guess that, with a Republican regime, White House slavery would have ended...even without a war. > http://www.newstatesman.com/200607100033 > Quote: > "The atmosphere was such that black people were still being bought and > sold as property in Georgetown as late as November 1861 Washington was in the South, no doubt. > > I know that is "official", but not strictly accurate: > http://www.slavenorth.com/index.html > Quote: > "Slavery in the North never approached the numbers of the South. It > was, numerically, a drop in the bucket compared to the South. But the > South, comparatively, was itself a drop in the bucket of New World > slavery. I won't argue with the numbers...but I don't draw the same point from it. Look at the fraction of the population that were slaves in 1860 in: http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/wahl.slavery.us You can see that, in South Carolina and Mississippi, most of the population was in slavery. In 4 more Southern states, the number was between 40% and 50%, and was above 30% in 3 more states. Overall, about 1/3rd of the population was in slavery in the South. Delaware is the "Northern" state that had some slaves, but it was only about 2% of the population and was in decline. As one goes South, to Maryland (13% slave), one sees that slaves become a greater part of the population. I'd argue that the greater fear in the Deep South, where the slave population was over 40%, that the greatest fear was not that there would be financial loss if slaves became tenant farmers. Rather, there was the fear expressed by Jefferson "we are riding a tiger. Justice states that we should get off, prudence states that we should stay on." In conclusion, I'd argue that the patriotic fervor of Southerners for the Confederacy is rooted in a mythology that denies the actual history leading up to the Civil War. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
