Doesn't everybody know by now that Northerners participated in the slave trade? So did the other maritime powers of the Western World. So did Southerners, though they weren't building and sailing their own ships to the extent that Northerners, or Britons, or French or Dutch or Spanish or Portuguese were. Don't be the person who pretends he's just discovered what everybody else has known for years. The point here is that the Northerners DOMINATED the slave Trade, and thereafter DOMINATED the cotton (produce of slaves) trade. They were up to their eyeballs in profit from slavery, and their main objection was that their profits would stop.
That is why I am preoccupied with this map.
It shows the money coming in, but it doesn't show the money going out. (In the form of Cotton and other goods being shipped to Europe.)
Somewhere i've seen tallies of shipments going out from various Southern ports, and If I can find that info again, and plot their values on the map, I believe it will show the value going out to be upside down of that Map posted above, with the Dominant value going out being exported from the Southern States, while the Northern states with four times the population, were only producing 25% of the total export value.
To simplify the point, the North was making huge profits off of slavery through their control of the import and export traffic and through their control of the laws.
The vote at the Constitutional Convention was on whether the slave trade could not be abolished until 1808. It was intended as a concession to Georgia and South Carolina (and some sources say North Carolina).
That is contrary to what this book is alleging. This book is making it clear that the importation concession was to "New England" interests.
The point here is that the Northerners DOMINATED the slave Trade, and thereafter DOMINATED the cotton (produce of slaves) trade. They were up to their eyeballs in profit from slavery, and their main objection was that their profits would stop.
But they didn't actually. They were a part of the slave trade and a part of the cotton trade, but they never dominated either. Both were international and there were plenty of other players who had a larger role in both.
That is why I am preoccupied with this map.
Obsessed is more like it.
That is contrary to what this book is alleging. This book is making it clear that the importation concession was to "New England" interests.
So you believe your book rather than the people who were actually there in the room when the Constitution was being debated and voted on? Go here for example.
Southern Wealth and Northern Profits by Thomas Prentice Kettell was a tract that purported to show that Northern wealth depended on the cotton planters. Stephen Colwell examined the same data in Five Cotton States and New York and came to the conclusion that it was the cotton states that were dependent on New York.
Planters from the Deep South states bought things from New York and invested their money there and acted like they hadn't actually given the Northerners money for the things they bought. They wanted to have their cake and eat it too.
The bigger picture is that the regions were interdependent, but the physiocratic or mercantilist idea that agriculture or foreign exchange was the sole root of wealth is seriously flawed.
Anyway, all this stuff is old hat. Everything has been discussed to death over the years and nothing you've said is particularly new or interesting or valuable.
DiogenesLamp:
"The point here is that the Northerners DOMINATED the slave Trade, and thereafter DOMINATED the cotton (produce of slaves) trade.
They were up to their eyeballs in profit from slavery, and their main objection was that their profits would stop." Obviously some confusion on this subject, so let's look at the timeline here:
- 1794: The United States bans American ships from the international slave trade and prohibits export by foreign ships in the Slave Trade Act.[28]
- 1800: The United States bans its citizens' investment and employment in the international slave trade in an additional Slave Trade Act.
- 1806: In a message to Congress, US President Thomas Jefferson calls for criminalizing the international slave trade, asking Congress to "withdraw the citizens of the United States from all further participation in those violations of human rights … which the morality, the reputation, and the best of our country have long been eager to proscribe."
- 1807, 2 March: The US makes international slave trade a felony in Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves; this act takes effect on 1 January 1808.[44]
- 1808: The US makes it a crime to import or export slaves.[48]
- 1820: Compromise of 1820 in US prohibits slavery north of a line (36°30′).
- 1822: Liberia founded by American Colonization Society (USA) as a colony for emancipated slaves.
- 1863: In the United States, Abraham Lincoln issues the presidential order the Emancipation Proclamation declaring slaves in Confederate-controlled areas to be freed.
Most slaves in "border states" are freed by state action; separate law freed the slaves in Washington, D.C.
- 1865, December: US abolishes slavery with the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution; about 40,000 remaining slaves are affected.[77]
Point here is: after 1794 no US citizens, period, lawfully engaged in the international slave trade.
Note to those who pretend Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation accomplished nothing, by late 1865 of four million 1860 slaves, only 40,000 remained slaves and needed to be freed by the 13th Amendment.
Bottom line: after 1794 there was no lawful US participation in international slave shipments, whether the ships were Northern or Southern owned.
And 1794 was the very year Eli Whitney patented his cotton gin, and a time when US cotton exports were near zero.
This source shows US cotton production was:
- 1790: 1.5 million pounds = 750 tons, if exported enough to fill two small ships.
- 1800: 35 million pounds = 17,500 tons, when exported enough to fill a dozen large square rigged cargo ships.
Cotton exports in 1800 were about $5 million, accounting for 7% of total US export revenues.
- 1810: 85 million pounds = 42,500 tons, enough to fill dozens of large sailing cargo ships.
Cotton exports in 1810 increased to 22% of US exports, valued at $15 million.
- 1820: 160 million pounds = 80,000 tons, enough to fill a hundred large ships of that time, worth $22 million and 32% of total US exports.
- 1830: 331 million pounds = 165,000 tons, enough to fill a hundred larger steam ships, worth $30 million and 41% of US exports.
- 1840: 834 million pounds = 417,000 tons enough to fill a hundred of the day's increasingly larger steam powered ships, worth $61 million and 54% of total US exports.
- 1850: one billion pounds = 500,000 tons, enough to fill hundreds of the day's cargo ships, worth $72 million and 49% of US exports.
- 1860: 2.8 billion pounds = 1.4 million tons, enough to fill many hundreds of larger ocean-going cargo ships, worth $192 million and 57% of total US exports.
I think that figure of 57% is high, because they don't include all US exports, but it's still huge compared to previous decades, especially in 1794, after which US citizens could not legally transport slaves internationally.
DiogenesLamp: "If I can find that info again, and plot their values on the map, I believe it will show the value going out to be upside down of that Map posted above, with the Dominant value going out being exported from the Southern States, while the Northern states with four times the population, were only producing 25% of the total export value. "
Remember first, as a percent of total exports, cotton first approached 50% in 1840, and while cotton exports grew from then on, so did other US exports.
Second, New Orleans reported in 1857 shipping about half the total US cotton crop that year.
That implies Southern producers were not as bound to Northerners as you like to pretend.
Third, New York & other Northern merchants who purchased cotton from small Southeastern ports for consolidation and shipment from Northern ports still had to pay prices competitive with international values.
One guarantor of this was the Southern rail system which linked all major ports to each other:
DiogenesLamp: "To simplify the point, the North was making huge profits off of slavery through their control of the import and export traffic and through their control of the laws."
But after 1800, "the North" never really "controlled the laws", Southern Democrats did, almost continuously from 1801 through 1860.
In 88% of those 59 years Democrats, controlled by Southerners, controlled both houses of Congress, the Presidency and Supreme Court..
So for you to claim that, in fact the majority Democrats were somehow under the thumbs of minority Northerners is just silly, FRiend.
DiogenesLamp: "This book is making it clear that the importation concession was to "New England" interests."
Regardless of who conceded to whom, the historical fact is that Washington, DC began to outlaw US citizens participation in international shipments of slaves in 1794, at a time when cotton was barely 5% of total US exports.
So, by 1860 any alleged "Northern profits from the slave trade" were 66 years in the past.