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No offense taken. The best head-to-head comparison of the two societies is in a book called "Yankee Leviathan" by political scientist Richard Bensel.

Thank you kindly, Sir, for this reference. I'll be sure to check it out the next chance I'm at the library (which should be in a week or so).

completely excluding from the argument slaves and any actions taken toward slaves in the South, which, I think we would agree, would always fall on the "oppression" side of government.

I would tend to put it right up there with the barbarity of instigating a servile war, so yes, I suppose on those terms we could agree. :)

(for one, the south took ALL the private gold in the private banks at the outset of the war---the north did not); that tax rates were higher; and so on.

This is a claim I had not heard before. I'll definitely research that - Thank you for the pointer!

Further, Lee had the advantage of victories early in the war, which tended to generate little editorial criticism---his criticism came largely after Gettysburg, and by that time, he was too busy running from Grant to worry about his own editors.

Jeff Davis leaves the reader with the impression that anti-war sentiments were fairly prevalent throughout the South. To clarify, in terms of the onset of war, that Southerners in general were reluctant to consider that the Northern government would even begin a war, and when the war continued to last longer than the few weeks that Southern intellectuals considered it would last, that Southerners began to criticize the Government for allowing things to stretch on.

He complains of being lambasted by the Confederate Congress and by the newspapermen in Richmond after Lee didn't march on Washington immediately following first Manassas, yet he doesn't recount any efforts to suppress these opinions.

I'll be sure to check out your reference to see what kinds of events the author recounts.

IMHO, BOTH OF THEM should have shut down papers that were treasonous.

Perhaps.. I think the standards of dissent have fallen so far today, that it's very easy to say, as modern observers, that all dissent is treason. However, back in the Civil War, I'd say that dissent could not necessarily be equated with "treason" in all cases. (That's not to say that there weren' cases where it would be considered "treason," but I'd tend to say that those instances are far less numerous than they are today, in the face of a morally bankrupt opposition.)

As always, Sir, it is an utmost honor to be able to seek your input on these issues. I will continue to hold you,

Most respectfully,
~dt~

For the gold, see my book, "Banking in the American South, from the Age of Jackson to Reconstruction." It's interesting that Lincoln destroyed the southern economy largely by yanking the financial basis out from under it with the Emancipation Proc. Most southern banks had only two forms of collateral on the books: land and slaves. But the land was worthless without the slaves. When Lincoln announced that slavery was over in the south---whether it was in reality or not---the uncertainty associated with the possibility finished off what the Confederate government started with its confiscation of all gold in early 1861 (which was the only other form of reserve any banks had). So, ironically, the two presidents utterly destroyed the once-strong southern banking system.

In fact, the southern banks were stronger/more stable than the northern banks going into the war (though not nearly as large) because of branch banking in the south; but typically Davis destroyed their note-issuing function by taking their gold and printing Confederate notes, whereas in the north, Lincoln utilized an inferior system of "unit" banks by allowing them to retain their note-issue function, thus the number of "greenbacks" peaked at only $450m, and never constituted any major source of money in the north. More to the point, northern currencty held its value (supported by gold) while Confederate notes plummeted. (See "Graybacks and Gold," by James Morgan).

I would take what Jeff Davis said with a grain of salt. He had his own agenda. All one needs to know about the unpopularity of the war from the get-go in the south was that more southerners fought for the Union than northerners fought for the south---a lot more. In addition to the more than 80,000 black troops from seceded states who fought in blue, 100,000 white southerners (40,000 from Tenn.) fought for the Union, including the 4th Ark. Infantry, the 1st Mississippi Mounted Rifles, the 2nd Florida Cavalry, and the 1st Alabama Infantry.

Stanley Legergott, a well-known economic historian, has written an article in the Journal of Am. History in which he traced the quiet rebellion of the merchant and business classes against the Confed. government over the cotton embargo and high taxation, and found that by 1863, the blockade runners---who were operating under the financial support of these groups---were only bringing in jewelry, fancy clothes, combs, etc., which the merchants could sell at high premiums, NOT guns or ammo that were needed by the army.