Posted on 01/13/2004 9:01:35 AM PST by Aurelius
Dust jackets for most books about the American Civil War depict generals, politicians, battle scenes, cavalry charges, cannons[sic] firing, photographs or fields of dead soldiers, or perhaps a battle between ironclads. In contrast our book {[url=http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?userid=2XGHOEK4JT&isbn=0842029613&itm=7]Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War Mark Thornton, Steven E. Woodworth (Editor), Robert B. Ekelund[/url]features a painting by Edgar Degas entitled the "Cotton Exchange" which depicts several calm businessmen and clerks, some of them Degas’s relatives, going about the business of buying and selling cotton at the New Orleans Cotton Exchange. The focus of this book is thus on the economic rationality of seemingly senseless events of the Civil War – a critical period in American history.
What caused the war? Why did the Union defeat the Confederacy? What were the consequences of the War? The premise of the book is that historians have a comparative advantage in describing such events, but economists have the tools to help explain these events.
We use traditional economic analysis, some of it of the Austrian and Public Choice variety, to address these principal questions and our conclusions generally run counter to the interpretations of historians. In contrast to historians who emphasize the land war and military strategy, we show that the most important battle took place at sea. One side, the blockade runners, did not wear uniforms or fire weapons at their opponents. The other side, the blockading fleet, was composed of sailors who had weapons and guns but they rarely fired their cannons in hopes of damaging their opponents. Their pay was based on the valued of captured ships. Historians often have argued that the Confederacy lost because it was overly reluctant to use government power and economic controls, but we show the exact opposite. Big Confederate government brought the Confederacy to its knees.
Some now teach that slavery was the sole cause of the Civil War – an explanation that historians have developed in the twentieth century. However, this analysis does not explain why the war started in 1861 (rather than 1851 or 1841) and it fails to explain why slavery was abolished elsewhere without such horrendous carnage.
We emphasize economics and politics as major factors leading to war. The Republicans who came to power in 1860 supported a mercantilist economic agenda of protectionism, inflation, public works, and big government. High tariffs would have been a boon to manufacturing and mining in the north, but would have been paid largely by those in the export-oriented agriculture economy.
Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union. The war was clearly related to slavery, but mainly in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry (especially Yankee textiles and iron manufacturing). Southerners would also have lost out in terms of public works projects, government land giveaways, and inflation.
The real truth about wars is that they are not started over principle, but over power. Wars however, are not won by power on the battlefield, but by the workings and incentives of men who go to work in fields and factories, to those who transport, store and sell consumer goods, and most especially to the entrepreneurs and middlemen who make markets work and adapt to change. This emphasis and this economic account of tariffs, blockade and inflation, like the focus of Degas’s "Cotton Exchange" reveals the most important and least understood aspect of war.
The similarity was in the effect it had on public opinion, of course.
Walt
I'll get off of mine as soon as you fall off of yours. You claim no bias, no leanings towards one side or the other. Yet I have yet to see a single criticizm directed towards the south or the Davis regime. So why should I, or anyone else, accept your claim of neutrality?
Why stop there? We could go back to Northern violations of the Constitution with respect to the return of fugitive slaves. Or to the actions of John Brown at Pottawatomie Creek and Harper's Ferry. Or the killing of an Abolitionist editor or the killing of someone legally trying to recover his slaves. Or mistreatment of slaves by the occasional cruel slave owner. Or the institution of slavery itself. Or the Constitutional bargain (slavery traded for Northern interests in navigation and commerce) that permitted the Union to be formed in the first place. And so on and so on...
Both sides were at fault.
But in the end the captain was released and the boat returned to him unharmed. The same can't be said for the property seized by the southern forces.
Tell that to the owners of fugitive slaves not returned by Northern states.
If we lived in a republic.. Al Gore would be the moneyman behind the Mayor of some speed trap somewhere outside of Memphis..
That is why I enjoy having a wheel on my mouse - I can scroll past his posts without even having to move my hand.
intelligent people on FR are on to your game.
you KNOW better, you just don't want to admit the TRUTH about the lust for dixie freedom having NOTHING to do with slavery (with the obvious exception of the 5-6% of southerners who actually owned slaves.).
as the Minister of Damnyankee Propaganda, it is your job to tell FALSEHOODS!
free dixie,sw
that you cannot ever admit!
nonetheless it is the TRUTH!
free dixie NOW,sw
there are, otoh,MANY THOUSANDS of PALEO-Confederates, who will never forget what a creep lincoln demonstrably was. AND we still are struggling for the TRUTH to be told about the war & our ancestor's struggle for LIBERTY!
we'll quit talking about him in that fashion, when the damnedyankees start looking at him ONLY as a CHEAP, SCHEMING politician, not any different that wee wille klintoon, rather than a saint!
free dixie,sw
'ole Nate said of his black troops,
"no better rebels ever drew breathe!"
trust an expert!
free dixie,sw
lincoln is worthy of NO adulation imVho. only a damnFOOL would, after reading his own words, would believe that he was anything but a cheap, scheming politician of the WORST sort.
free the south,sw
why can't you damnedyankees do so NOW??? (perhaps Nate was/is smarter than all damnyankees!)
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
I would say it was the major issue, but not the only one. Had this issue been resolved peacefully it might have been possible to resolve the others peacefully as well. And it could have been resolved peacefully, the british managed to abolish slavery without fighting each other.
Ah well, if a frog had pockets it would carry a .38. The war happened. It was disastrous for both sides but particularly for the south. The southern states wound up back in the union and very much worse off than before. The only good thing that came out of it was the abolition of slavery, the price for that was apx. 600,000 dead.
You post that time and time again, and yet your own namesake was apparently in the war for just that reason, as well as to get back at a faction of his own tribe, those who hated him for selling them out of their land in the southeast and putting them on the Trail of Tears (see post 132, which I posted tongue in cheek at first, but I'm starting to wonder if I wasn't on to something). If "southron" historians are pointing out that he was a slaveowner and fought for slavery and to take out John Ross, why are you blaming Lincoln? Why are you saying slavery played NO PART whatsoever? I'm exceeding curious from where that hatred stems, because from the viewpoint of a person relatively new to these Civil War threads, you appear juuuuust a tad irrational when it comes to Lincoln. I have to admit, though, it's fun to see the different viewpoints, the polarization, and all that sort of thing.
tick, tick, tick...
http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llcg&fileName=056/llcg056.db&recNum=474
That is exactly the issue at hand and also the reason why one must take care to date the start of the Civil War itself to the events at Fort Sumter. For purposes of clarity, it is the first event out of which there is a clear succession of armed conflict through the war's known conclusion in 1865. Prior to Sumter one can find isolated events, mob actions, abolitionist insurrections and any number of other loosely relevant pre-war events involving arms.
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