Confederate Veteran John Mosby Knew the Lost Cause Was Bull

War is Boring ^ | May 1, 2017 | Kevin Knodell

[C19fan]

John S. Mosby, known as the “Gray Ghost,” was a Virginian who became legendary for his leadership of Mosby’s Rangers—a band of Confederate guerrilla fighters that harassed the Union Army and went toe-to-toe with George Armstrong Custer in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mosby is still highly regarded as a strategist and tactician and is studied to this day by practitioners of unconventional warfare. He lived a long life, dying early in the 20th century, and was also a lawyer, a diplomat and author who wrote about his experiences during the war.

[OIFVeteran]

There you go again with the false equivalency. I have answered your questions while posing my own, but you refuse to answer them. Before I answer anymore of your questions I respectfully request you answer this one.

Do you believe that a person or group of person(s) who believe that all men should be free have a morally superior position to a person or group of person(s) who believe that some men should not be free and their natural state is to be in bondage?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The numbers I see tell me that can't possibly be true, because New York wasn't selling much to the Europeans, so they couldn't be buying much from them."

Your basic problem is you believe that 75% or 87% of US exports came from "Products of the South" meaning, without them, New York City has nothing to trade with the world.
And yet we know that cannot be true because, among other reasons, when Confederates stopped 100% of their exports through New York, the overall effect was far less than 75% or 87%.
Yes, Federal import revenues did decline 22% in 1861 but then increased dramatically in each following year, more than doubling by war's end.

And this despite the new Morrill Tariff, intended to reduce imports and encourage domestic US manufacturing.
(So Morrill wanted to make America great again, the dastard. </sarc>)

Here's the real truth of this matter: raw Southern cotton alone was about 50% of US exports in 1860 and cotton alone was grown exclusively in the Deep Confederate South.
So cotton exports alone could be shut-off by Confederate edict or voluntary embargo.
And it was.
That certainly caused major problems in Northern cities, but everything else considered "Products of the South" could be and was produced elsewhere, including Southern Union states, and so the other 50% of US exports were not stopped.

Both Union exports and imports continued growing throughout the war, such that by 1865 were much higher than ever before.

It turned out that "Products of the South" were not as important as Confederates then and pro-Confederates today imagined.
In the end, New York and other Northern cities got along just fine without them.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "That is what your heavily biased opinion will admit to, but the numbers I show in that book work out to something like 73%, and I believe others have posted numbers showing the South's contribution to exports to be as much as 82%."

As I have explained before, your numbers include as "Products of the South" items which could be and were produced outside the Deep Cotton South, including Southern Union states like Kentucky.
Therefore, when the Confederacy embargoed its exports in 1861, the result was nothing like a 73% or 82% reduction in Northern cities trade.
Even with then the new Morrill Tariff -- intended to reduce imports and encourage US manufacturing -- Union trade still expanded during the 1860s.

So your whole hypothesis is falsified by actual numbers, and that should cause you some pause.
But it doesn't, of course.

DiogenesLamp: "By using the Military to cut the financial trade of their competitor.
I keep saying this.
Without a war, the North would not have been prosperous because the South would have sucked up most of their trade. "

But the Union did not "cut the financial trade", Confederates did that all by their little selves -- they renounced their debts and embargoed exports!
In today's terminology, Confederate state credit scores went from near perfect 800s to about 300 overnight, and fell from there.
And all that was long before the Union blockade began to have serious effects.

Further, there was no cotton for cities like New York to export, and no Southern planters to buy imports and yet Northern export-import business first survived, then thrived.

So you exaggerate the importance of Deep South Cotton to the overall US economy during the 1860s.

DiogenesLamp: "The *ONLY* way the North could get out of this without massive economic devastation was to stop the South's trade with Europe at all costs. "

Union General Winfield Scott's "Anaconda Plan" for dealing with Southern rebellion was developed many years before 1860 and so was familiar to people like the former Union Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis.
It was basically the same thing Brits did to us during the Revolution and War of 1812.
People well understood that blockades were necessary, inevitable and also not necessarily ruinous.
After all, the US managed to survive British blockades through two long wars, so why shouldn't the Confederacy also?

And in the beginning, the Union blockade didn't amount to much, Confederates could have shipped & received whatever they wanted, but as it turned out, they didn't.
Not because of a blockade, but by their own choices.

DiogenesLamp: "This is my entire point about why a war was absolutely necessary for the North.
Without it, they would have faced a trade competition for European money that they would have lost."

Like any good Marxist, you are utterly fixated on economic factors, aka "dialectical materialism", to the exclusion of higher reasons.
No Union leader claimed or admitted to what you here state as absolute undeniable truth.
So DiogenesLamp & other pro-Confederates today are in the astonishing position of saying Confederate leaders lied when they said it was all about slavery, and Union leaders lied when they said it was all about first, preserving the Union and then freeing slaves.

I think your efforts to impose on our ancestors motivations they themselves never claimed is, well, misguided.

[BroJoeK]

OIFVeteran to jeffersondem: "Do you believe that a person or group of person(s) who believe that all men should be free have a morally superior position to a person or group of person(s) who believe that some men should not be free and their natural state is to be in bondage?"

What do you think, should I hold my breath waiting for an honest response?

Me neither.

[BroJoeK]

OIFVeteran: "There is a reason that Southerners called Republicans, Black republicans."

jeffersondem: "Let's be clear, what you are doing here is playing the 2017 Race Card on the South in order to make another group of whites look good.
You want to freight Lincoln's War with charity."

But facts of history are what they are, regardless of whether jeffersondem likes them or not.
In this case it's a fact that Slave Power secessionists referred to "Ape" Lincoln and his "Black Republicans".

The significance is that regardless of how hard jeffersondem tries to spin it, Confederates considered Republicans "soft on slavery" and pro-abolition.
So jeffersondem may claim all you wish that Northerners were "just as racist" as Southerners, but Fire Eater secessionists at the time took a very different view.

[Rockingham]

Good points. The unreality of Southern thinking on trade issues is also suggested by the Confederacy’s “King Cotton” strategy of trying to gain French and British support through the embargo of cotton exports. As it was, France and Britain were not willing to be coerced and met their needs by drawing down stockpiles and securing alternative suppliers of cotton. The end result was mostly that the Confederate government antagonized Europe and lost trade earnings essential to financing their war effort.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: " Pennsylvania is a Northern state.
Your earlier attempt to define it as something other than northern still baffles me.
It is just one example of statements that undermine my confidence in your judgement relating to Lincoln’s War."

Pennsylvania was before 1860 a Northern state which nearly always allied with Southern Democrats.
That did make it "something other" than typical northern states.
So why this should be a sticking point for jeffersondem is beyond me.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Mr. Lincoln’s War "

It reminds me of how Patrick Buchanan can be so despicable it hurts.
Buchanan also blamed Winston Churchill for World War II!!
I have that book.

In this particular case Buchanan is highly worthy of his namesake, our Doughfaced Northern Democrat President James Buchanan.

With leaders like that we would be the DRA -- Disunited Regions of America -- instead of USA.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "But all Southern states fought to stop the invasion."

And Jefferson Davis could have ended his war on any day before April 1865 on much better terms than the "Unconditional Surrender" the Confederacy fought on and on and on to accept.

[BroJoeK]

Rockingham: "Granted, with no import tariff, or only a minimal one, the South might sometimes realize better dockside prices and terms for European goods than it had gotten before attaining independence."

Thanks for a great post!

The original Confederate tariff rates were basically the same as Union pre-Morrill rates, which were marginally lower than the new Morrill rates.
But our pro-Confederates like jeffersondem and DiogenesLamp fantasize that marginally lower Confederate rates would somehow force the redirection of international trade with Northern cities to Confederate ports.
This is false because:

1. Imports intended for Eastern, Northern & Western US customers (80% of US population) would not want to pay tariffs at both Confederate and Union borders.

2. Deep South exports while important (50%+ of US totals), were not the 75% or 87% sometimes claimed and the differences between those numbers could be made up by producers in other regions of the Union.
   In short, while the Union benefitted from such Southern exports it was not dependent on them, as proved during the period 1861 - 1865.

3. The Union's new Morrill Tariff was intended to reduce imports, increase domestic production and, ahem, make America great again.
   It did that, with overall US GDP doubling between 1860 and 1865 and international trade still expanded.

Our FRiends DiogenesLamp & jeffersondem make much of the Union blockade, but certainly in the first year or two it amounted to very little:

1862 cartoon mocking the Union blockade:

[jeffersondem]

“I have seen this same argument used by some liberals with our internment of the Japanese during WWII. They will claim that yes the Nazi’s were bad but we were just as bad because we put our Japanese-Americans into camps.”

My post 295 confronted you for playing the 2017 Race Card on the South, while you ignore the 9/13 apportionment of responsibility for slavery being voted into the Constitution of the United States.

From there it took you exactly five sentences to play the Nazi Card. Five sentences to snappage.

Having read your autobiography, I guess I'm a little surprised at the contempt you show for West Pointers like Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Thomas Jackson - and Ulysses S. Grant. Yes, slave owners all.

[jeffersondem]

“I have answered your questions while posing my own, but you refuse to answer them.”

You make the claim that you have answered my questions. Is that actually a true statement?

I have not seen your answer to a recent question of mine:
“OIFVeteran, in plain language do you believe the signers of the DOI intended the concept of “all men are created equal” to apply to native Americans? Did the signers intend for the merciless Indian Savages to be voters, jurors and to enjoy other equal rights under the DOI, and later the constitution?”

Please direct me to the post in which you answered.

[Ohioan]

Do not want to get in the middle of an ongoing fight, late in a thread. But your #332 response seems to imply that you may have misread what Jefferson meant in the preamble to the Declaration of Independence, where in dealing with the right of revolution, he mentions the equality of men at Creation. He was certainly not an advocate of an egalitarian society, where everyone is assumed to be equal. The reference is an answer to the notion that the existing Government or King rules by divine mandate, not by a social compact.

For an analysis of the Declaration:

Declaration Of Independence--With Study Guide

The Declaration was not some sort of Jacobin or Marxist treatise, however academics may misinterpret it to suit their wished for narrative.

[DoodleDawg]

Are you suggesting that Leroy Walker issued the order without first consulting Davis?

[WVMnteer]

So, does that mean that the treatment of slaves and Indians should have continued into perpetuity?

[jeffersondem]

“With leaders like that we would be the DRA — Disunited Regions of America — instead of USA.”

When you write “we WOULD BE the DRA - Disunited Regions of America” what are you talking about?

Have you looked at the 2016 election map? Are you aware of what is happening in California right now? Do you know why liberals run to one federal circus judge and not the other? Have you ever heard of the contrast between “coastal elites” and “fly-over country”?

The U.S. is, right now, the Disunited Regions of America.

[jeffersondem]

“So, does that mean that the treatment of slaves and Indians should have continued into perpetuity?”

No. The beauty of the U.S. Constitution is that it provides for a way to amend the founding document - peacefully.

[DiogenesLamp]

You do realize that New York isn't in New England, don't you?

Yes, but it's too troublesome to keep writing "New York and New England" and since they are close enough together as to make not much difference, I usually just short-hand it by saying either "New York" or "New England" instead of both.

Ships were built in New England and the region had shipping business and banking interests, but so far as I know they weren't heavily involved in shipping cotton to Europe.

They were. Virtually all of it was shipped by ships under their control.

New York was the commercial center of the country and Boston and other New England ports were slipping into secondary or tertiary status. Insurance companies in Boston and Hartford played a role in trade, but it's not like the economy depended on their ties to the cotton-slave economy.

It may not have depended upon it, but it made a substantial amount of money from it. What level of losses to your income would you accept?

New England was involved in buying cotton for its own factories, and that was big business. That was one big reason why, a few idealists aside, manufacturers didn't want war. Neither did most New York bankers and shippers. You don't want to hear it, but they were smarter than you. They recognized that the South wasn't suddenly going to develop a shipping fleet or highly sophisticated banking arrangements all on its own.

The South didn't need to develop a shipping fleet. With independence, the law (navigation act of 1817) that made it ruinously expensive to use foreign ships and crew would disappear, and suddenly it was cost effective to do so. They had a ready made shipping fleet already in existence that would serve their needs more cheaply than the North Eastern Fleet under the control of New York/New England.

If you had read up on this you would know that the North Eastern shippers had set their prices just below what it cost to use Foreign Ships and Crew under the penalties imposed by that aforementioned law. They were gouging.

For the foreseeable future an independent Southern Confederacy was still going to rely on British, or European, or Northern commercial and financial institutions, and that meant that a war based entirely on economics wouldn't happen.

That is a non sequitur. You remove 200-250 million per year from the New York economy and you don't think that's a good enough reason to go to war to stop it?

Also, as BroJoeK pointed out, the Northern economy recovered from temporary losses related to secession relatively quickly.

I make a point to not read very much of what BroJoeK writes, but to address this point, when you blockade your competitor's trade, and force all shipping into your ports, you have a captive market, and you are not feeling the financial forces that would be exerted upon you if you had a competitive market.

Participation in the slave trade was the original sin in New England economic history (or one of them), but the region had already grown beyond the point where shipping (or financing the shipping) of cotton to Britain or Europe was a major factor.

When you have a port city that relies on trade, and someone disrupts 3/4ths of your trade, that's a pretty major factor.

"Losing" some foreign trade wasn't necessarily regarded as a bad thing if it meant more American manufactures and a stronger economy. But of course, any losses wouldn't be permanent.

Losing 3/4ths of your trade would seem like a pretty bad thing to me. And do not mistake me when I say "losing 3/4ths of your trade." It means that the Europeans would be sailing their ships to the South instead of to New York, and they would be buying the Southern products instead of what the Northern states had to offer.

Without forcing them into Northern ports, they would have spent their money in the South, so what the Northern ports experienced as a result of the blockade was much better for them than what they would have experienced without the US Navy forcing foreign commerce northward.

The Northern economy was resilient enough to take a blow and come back stronger.

It didn't take that blow. That blow was prevented by the use of Union Warships to make sure potential competition for that European trade never happened.

[WVMnteer]

Which gets us back to the fundamental issue. The expansion of slavery.

[WVMnteer]

“When you blockade your competitor’s trade, and force all shipping into your ports, you have a captive market, and you are not feeling the financial forces that would be exerted upon you if you had a competitive market”

But you’ve just spent pages explaining how all the trade was based on the South’s cotton.

What was being traded without the cotton?

You have created a North that was completely reliant on Southern plantations but that could also turn off the flow of goods from those plantations without a hiccup in their own economy.

The north was forcing the south to use its ships and factories and then spending the money made from those ships and factories to buy more goods made with southern cotton. This is perpetual motion machine, not an economy.