The Economics of the Civil War

The reasons that politicians go to war for are generally not the reasons that individuals are motivated to go to war for.Economic reasons are generally the reasons that bring on war but the publicity is for God and Country and that is what the soldiers fight for.

You're welcome - I like the flash presentation as well.

Here are two damnyankee apologists, Jefferson Davis and Alexander Stephans (President and Vice President of the Confederacy) had to say on the matter. I have enshrined it on my home page whenever revisionists try this game.

The following is from the message to the Confederate Congress April 29th 1861 from Jefferson Davis:

" As soon as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves... Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra-fanaticicsm and whose business was... to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister states, by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp pairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, which the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public common acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States. In the meantime the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000 at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race, their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South;... and the productions in the South of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."
GAME. SET. MATCH.

This is for extra credit. It comes from a speech in Savannah on March 21st 1861 by Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy.

" The (Confederate) Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions- African slavery as it exists among us- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split" He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it- when the "Storm came and the wind blew, it fell." Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth......It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material- the granite- then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them.

I like to think of them both as leading liberals of their time. And, just like all liberals the moment they were exposed and undone the lies started that continue to this day. Since the "inferior race" was enshrined in the constitution of the confederacy, just when would the South have freed the slaves? Or would those fine revisionists on Free Republic be defending their ownership today-calling those that would free them trolls and liberals. What if the Confederacy had reached a cease fire in the 1860's? If America was split in half like many here seem to want, how many slaves would they own? Technological advances did not free the slaves. The Cotton Gin only made them more valuable. Would today the South be a booming tech hub since the labor would be free? With modern medical and farming advances just imagine the labor pool you could breed. It would be practically free and technology including DNA would virtually prevent the economic loss of runaway slaves.
Oh, back to your post.
the ONLY MAIN issue was FREEDOM for dixie.
that is the plain unvarnished TRUTH.

the damnyankee apologists want to say that chattel slavery was the issue, as it makes their merciless,hateFILLED,imperialist war against the new dixie republic and the THOUSANDS of atrocities against innocent civilians & helpless CSA POWs look better. the damnedyankee apologists,otoh, KNOW better.

Freedom for the whites only. And, we will just pretend that Davis and Stephens never admitted the truth.

tell me, Irish, do YOU think the MERCILESS WAR waged against the INNOCENT, UNarmed civilians of dixie (like the SLAUGHTER of MY family, for example) and the MURDER/torute/abuse of TENS of THOUSANDS of helpLESS CSA prisoners of war was PERFECTLY OK??? (a simple YES/NO answer,stripped of NONSENSE, PLEASE.)

fyi, Jeff Davis/ Alexander H Stephens, despite their offices, did NOT speak for the POOR/COMMON people of the southland (like MY family for example.).

the TRUTH is that i'm NO FAN of the "plantation aristocracy", as the "Big House" was as distant financially/socially/educationally from MY family as the MOON.

"common folks" like MY family simply wanted OUT of the union, inasmuch as they believed that the federal government was NOT, and would NOT act in the foreseeable future, acting in THEIR interests. IF getting their FREEDOM & their own NATION meant supporting the aristocrats FOR A WHILE, then "so be it".

it's really no more complicated than that= they simply wanted to be FREE.

free dixie,sw

Let's take your post in reverse order. The Confederacy had a similar form of central government. So your ANCESTORS traded one form of government for the same form. And lest we forget the elected president and vice president of said new government based it on owning four million people. What your REFUSE to address in your response....

"common folks" like MY family simply wanted OUT of the union, inasmuch as they believed that the federal government was NOT, and would NOT act in the foreseeable future, acting in THEIR interests. IF getting their FREEDOM & their own NATION meant supporting the aristocrats FOR A WHILE, then "so be it".
it's really no more complicated than that= they simply wanted to be FREE."

Secondly, you completely ignore the slavery part of the post and the statements by the leaders of the confederacy. As do all revisionists. They have to. It is what makes you all so irrational. (I.E. you talking about your 'family' as if it is in the here and now and not your 'ancestors' of a hundred and forty years ago.)

Finally, your first paragraph:

tell me, Irish, do YOU think the MERCILESS WAR waged against the INNOCENT, UNarmed civilians of dixie (like the SLAUGHTER of MY family, for example) and the MURDER/torute/abuse of TENS of THOUSANDS of helpLESS CSA prisoners of war was PERFECTLY OK??? (a simple YES/NO answer,stripped of NONSENSE, PLEASE.)

This is known as a "When did you stop beating your wife" question and is the rankest form of amateurism. Since all of your premises are false the only response is:
"Yes, a war to repress an illegal rebellion by traitors and free four million human beings from the horrors of their degrading slave masters and to prevent the murders, rapes, and torture they suffered under the whips of vile racist American hating liars and scum, was the most noble end of the Revolutionary War. For it was here that America once and for all became a nation where all were equal and only those who would still enslave others and prefer rape and sodomy and living off of the sweat of others could think otherwise."
Do you think otherwise? How many slaves do you want to own?

See, the "When did you stop beating your wife" tactic only depends on the person asking the question and does nothing to move the discussion forward.
Instead of such simplistic mudslinging let's go back to my post where the President and the Vice-President of the Confederacy in speeches proclaimed that slavery and it's continuation was the reason for the war. That, and only that, needs to be discussed in the context of the thread if you really want to have a discussion. What happened to your ANCESTORS or the comparison of treatment in CSA prisoner of war camps vs. Union prisoner of war camps doesn't play into it. For every personal example you might bring in there might be an equal number on the opposite side. So you can see where in discussing history that gets us nowhere.

in other words, you are UNwilling to say, YES or NO, whether slaughtering helpless POWs by the TENS of THOUSANDS was WRONG or not??

and/or whether you consider RAPING/TORTURING/ROBBING/MURDERING civilians was OK, especially since the VAST majority of the victims were "persons other than white".

140 years ago or 140 minutes ago, the question is the SAME.

so let's hear your opinion.

btw, can you get it through your head that:

1. that REVISIONIST historiography is a heresy of traditional scholarship, out of the most extreme LEFTIST/socialist, lunatic fringe of NORTHeastern academia &

2. that even the DAMNyankees, until AFTER the war, said that slavery was NOT the issue. after the war, when it became known what "preserving the union" had ACTUALLY cost in human lives/suffering, THEN the war became a "crusade against slavery". that is called SELF-delusion & DISHONESTY.

free dixie,sw

Did you even read my response? You are demanding an answer to a "When did you stop beating your wife" question and I told you I wouldn't play your silly kid's game. I then re framed it from the other side and you SURE DIDN'T WANT TO ANSWER THAT DID YOU!

As for 140 years ago or 140 minutes ago that is stupid. Just plain stupid. If you really want to go there then you must agree with slavery reparations at which point you and your family owe the descendants of slavery money for their enslavement. It doesn't matter if your ANCESTORS owned them or not they supported the people that did and so benefited from that condition.
So, how much do you owe? See how silly you are when the question is re framed?

Finally, I hate to hold your nose to reality but once again you cannot and will not address the speeches by the two duly elected heads of the Confederacy as to the reasons for the war.

The only lunatic revisionism here is on your part. The speeches were given at the beginning of the war and not after when the traitors lost. Either address the speeches which were the topic or admit you can't.

YES, i read your "line of bull". i'm just smart enough to know it's BILGE & PROPAGANDA.

i'm truly sorry but REVISIONISM in regard to the WBTS period is the SOLE property of the LEFTISTS of DAMNyankee, elitist,northeastern/left coast academia.

southerners neither now, nor in the past, have been DUMB enough to believe that BILGE out of the "poison ivy league" & "berkley".

PITY that you don't know THAT much about REVISIONIST histioigraphy.

pardon me, but your hatefulness & ignorance of FACTS of the period is also showing;imVo, you've been LIED TO and "played for a fool", by lying academic LEFTISTS.

no matter how much you may wish to believe it, slavery was NEVER even a MAJOR cause of the WBTS, much less the ONLY main cause, as the DAMNyanklee/leftist/REVISIONISTS insist. that, frankly, is a KNOWING lie on THEIR part. (the REVISIONISTS "laugh behind their well-manicured hands" AT anyone, who is clueLESS enough to believe their KNOWING/arrogant lies.)

also, inasmuch as you choose NOT to say whether what was done in dixie, by "the filth that flowed down from the north", means that i have nothing more to say to you. those who are UNwilling or Unable to say whether CRIMES AGAINST PREACE, CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY & WAR CRIMES, of the sort ROUTINELY committed against POWs & innocent civilians in the south, are NOT "decent persons", imVho.

i'll thank you not to respond.

free dixie,sw

(I find it kind of funny that the so-called abolitionist states allowed the practice of "crimp gangs" well into the 20th Century, when Seaman's Unions gained power)

Can't take it can you? Facts are stubborn things.
Let's just review what you are afraid of:
1. The President and the Vice President of the Confederacy stated the Secession was about slavery. You did not and can not refute their statements. Would you like me to repeat that? Oh, well sure. The President and Vice President of the Confederacy stated the Secession was about SLAVERY. Until you admit it you are only lying to yourself.
2. You demand to treat the civil war like the here and now but then avoid the issue of slave reparations that would arise from that perspective.
3. You demand that this is a...LEFTIST DAMNYANKEE ELITIST NORTHEASTERN/LEFT COAST etc. etc. but cannot see that the Confederacy chose a system similar to the one they left but one based on protecting slavery.
4. You cannot and will not reference the 4 million slaves referred to in the speech because otherwise you would have to admit you are promoting their enslavement and the desire to have preserved that enslavement.

You throw out the "Revisionist" label but only YOU are the one revising history. It is why you CANNOT talk about the speeches. Otherwise you cannot promote your revisionism.

YOU ARE EXPOSED!

No wonder you don't want me to respond.

like i said, i'm NOT going to let you get away with that LIE.

REVISIONIST historiography is a LEFTIST, statist, heresy of traditional scholarship, which is out of the most extreme,lunatic fringe of northeastern academia.

southerners (for whatever our other problems may be) are NOT revisionists.

traditional scholarship on TWBTS is PRO-southern or NEUTRAL in outlook.

only the HATERS out of the LEFTIST portion of the political spectrum would agree with your SELF-righteous nonsense. the TRUTH is that you have been LIED TO & "made a fool of" by the REVISIONIST LEFT.

as for the elitist, plantation aristocracy, I'm NO fan of their attachment to "protecting slavery". nonetheless, the opinions of the 5-6% of southerners/NORTHERNERS, who owned slaves, is NOT germane to this discussion.

btw, what part of my comment about the "common folks" of dixie being willing to ally with the elites FOR A WHILE to get FREEDOM, did you NOT understand??? had our dixie ancestors won the war,the aristocrats might well have been NEXT on the list of enemies of FREEDOM.

you keep avoiding answering my original question about the WIDESPREAD ATROCITIES of the DAMNyankee invaders (most of which were committed against "persons other than white", prisoners of war, religious minorities & the "poorest of the poor whites"). were those ATROCITIES acceptable to YOU or NOT??? (a really simple answer, YES/NO is the ONLY acceptable answer. IF you are UNwilling to answer that with one word,we have nothing further to discuss.)

free dixie,sw

imVho, you don't KNOW reality. your head is filled with DY propaganda, foolishness & REVISIONIST, south-HATING LIES.

when you've done some DEEP reading, from other than LEFTIST/REVISIONIST sources, come back & let's talk.

saying what i asked is "a silly kid's game" is TYPICAL of the DAMNyankees, "know it all", sanctimonious, SELF-righteous BIGOTRY and a pitifully weak "DODGE" to try to change the subject to something that makes the DAMNyankee elitists look less BAD than they demonstrably were/ARE.

free dixie,sw

you might also find this thread of interest.

free dixie HUGS,sw

"imVho, you don't KNOW reality. your head is filled with DY propaganda, foolishness & REVISIONIST, south-HATING LIES.
when you've done some DEEP reading, from other than LEFTIST/REVISIONIST sources, come back & let's talk.
saying what i asked is "a silly kid's game" is TYPICAL of the DAMNyankees"

So when did the President and vice president of the Confederacy become purveyors of "propaganda, foolishness & revisionist, south hating lies"?

"This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth......It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material- the granite- then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them."

Can't get away from that can you? Like the Germans with the "Just following orders" This is what you cannot face.
Since post 1,103 you have squirmed and wiggled and threw in anything to distract from WHAT YOU KNOW IS THE TRUTH! You tried and tried to twist and squirm with the "When did you stop beating your wife" questions but couldn't face it when it was turned around. You demand that 140 years ago is the same as 140 minutes but then refuse to address slave reparations and the money you would owe for supporting a slave regime. You have attempted to pass this off as something from the North East and DamnYankee when I am not from there. You cannot get away from the speeches that were given at the beginning of the war, not at the end when the whining of traitors was heard.

You are caught and exposed. Either address the speeches by the heads of the Confederacy or admit your inability to do so. Squirm all you like. The facts will not go away.

Just in case you need them again to review here are the speeches from those DAMNYANKEE REVISIONISTS Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, and Alexander Stephans, the Vice President of the Confederacy:
The following is from the message to the Confederate Congress April 29th 1861 from Jefferson Davis:

" As soon as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves... Senators and Representatives were sent to the common councils of the nation, whose chief title to this distinction consisted in the display of a spirit of ultra-fanaticicsm and whose business was... to awaken the bitterest hatred against the citizens of sister states, by violent denunciation of their institutions; the transaction of public affairs was impeded by repeated efforts to usurp pairing the security of property in slaves, and reducing those States which held slaves to a condition of inferiority. Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government, which the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public common acquired by all the States in common, whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of thus rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless, and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party, thus organized, succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States. In the meantime the African slaves had augmented in number from about 600,000 at the date of the adoption of the constitutional compact to upward of 4,000,000. In moral and social condition they had been elevated from brutal savages into docile, intelligent, and civilized agricultural laborers, and supplied not only with bodily comforts but with careful religious instruction. Under the supervision of a superior race, their labor had been so directed as not only to allow a gradual and marked amelioration of their own condition, but to convert hundreds of thousands of square miles of the wilderness into cultivated lands covered with a prosperous people; towns and cities had sprung into existence, and had rapidly increased in wealth and population under the social system of the South;... and the productions in the South of cotton, rice, sugar, and tobacco, for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable had swollen to an amount which formed nearly three-fourths of the exports of the whole United States and had become absolutely necessary to the wants of civilized man. With interests of such overwhelming magnitude imperiled, the people of the Southern States were driven by the conduct of the North to the adoption of some course of action to avert the danger with which they were openly menaced."
GAME. SET. MATCH.

This is for extra credit. It comes from a speech in Savannah on March 21st 1861 by Alexander Stephens, VP of the Confederacy.

" The (Confederate) Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions- African slavery as it exists among us- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split" He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away...Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it- when the "Storm came and the wind blew, it fell." Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth......It is the first government ever instituted upon principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many Governments have been founded upon the principles of certain classes; but the classes thus enslaved were of the same race, and in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. The negro by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material- the granite- then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is the best, not only for the superior but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed in conformity with the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of His ordinances or to question them.

You might want to put a band aid on that.

self-ping

How in the WORLD did this get pulled out from 3(THREE) years ago!?

The Pennsylvania Railroad won the war for the Union and led directly to the American Industrial Revolution.

How? I was looking for what took place in the 1990’s were around 13 states trying to add more to their list threaded secession.

I still can not find it.

in other words, you CANNOT address what i asked you directly without looking like either a DUNCE or a BIGOT???

is that what i'm seeing, since you keep posting what Jeff Davis said, rather than whether you think that massive numbers of WAR CRIMES against INNOCENT civilians & CSA POWs was OK or not???

the ONLY "game,set, match" in this discussion is that evidently you aren't willing to give YOUR opinion on the HUNDREDS of THOUSANDS of ATROCITIES committed by the invading DAMNyankee army.

instead you "duck, dive & disappear" & HOPE that NOBODY notices your deceptions & evasions. PITY that you will NOT simply say," What was done by the union army was a series of atrocities, which were visited on the racial minorities, the poorest of the poor, helpLESS prisoners of war & religious minority groups. furthermore, i'm saddened & shamed that those things happened".

imVho, that would be the HONEST & HONORABLE thing for you to do.

free dixie,sw