Fibbing about the history of this thread won't get you anywhere, Walter. What's truly baffling is that you think you can get away with it when the opposite of what you purport as truth may be seen as clear as day.
Come now, pull your head out of your backside, remove the cotton from your ears, take off that blindfold, and try reading the thread.
You will find a fully documented step by step refutation of McPherson's sloppily written article on the "causes of the war" that he wrote for the History Channel website. As always, I invite you to debate the record and defend your hero. But first you must take the time to actually read before you shoot your mouth off.
Dr. McPherson: "Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sxth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..."
And as I said in an earlier post rebutting that which you similarly ignored, McPherson's economic analysis is fraudulent and sloppy. He carefully adopts as his standard a carefully selected and narrowly defined set of economic strengths for the north, applies that standard to the south, and declares the south the "loser" because of it. It's a sham argument from which the outcome is determined before the statistics are even considered because it is designed to promote the north while simultaneously, and I dare say willfully, ignoring southern economic strengths in agriculture among other things.
In short, you have provided a perfect example of McPherson's radically slanted, biased, and outright fraudulent version of history - he presents a carefully selected set of "evidence" to promote the northern side while simultaneously neglecting everything that makes his argument look bad. No wonder you like the guy so much, Walt!
GOPcap, you are the poor man's McCarthy. Have you no shame?
You should consider looking in the mirror, Walt, before shooting your mouth off like that.
I am interested however in knowing what grounds you make the above accusation upon. Are you attempting to accuse me of McCarthyism for outing McPherson as an avowed left wing south hater with openly Marxist political activism? If so, you fail to meet the burden of establishing McCarthyism as, unlike McCarthy's often made-up charges, every one of these facts about McPherson has been thoroughly documented in great detail. You have had more than one opportunity to refute any one of them and to defend your oft-stated claim that McPherson is "fair and balanced" and all that other debunked nonsense about objectivity. You have refused every one of them and continue to spread the LIE that McPherson is fair and balanced. As long as you continue to fib about him I will continue to reveal the truth about his marxist political affiliations, left wing activism, and extensive public record of south hating.
Address the data, not the person who presents it.
I find it much more applicable to address both as I have done here and elsewhere with thorough documentation refuting the man's historical writings and similarly thorough documentation of his anti-southern and far left wing political activism.
This is important especially when persons such as yourself regularly build your arguments not only on McPherson's data but also his supposed "authority."
But in the end you cannot escape the facts about your "historian" of choice - his arguments are fraudulent and his objective authority is suspect.
Where are YOUR sources for this statement? Which archives did you visit? Which authorities do you cite?
This whole thread is a joke.
On p. 94 of BCF, Dr . Mcpherson writes:
"The city of Lowell, Massachuetts, operated more spindles in 1860 than all eleven of the soon-to-be Confederate states combined."
For a source he cites:
Stephen J. Goldfarb, "A Note on Limits to the Growth of the Cotton-textile Industry in the Old South." JSH, 48 (1982), 545.
Now, are you going to dispute this statistic, and the other -hard-cold-statistics-- that he provides, or just carp some more?
Walt
I --want-- you to provide sources that refute his research. His politics don't matter. You attack him personally because you cannot gainsay his research.
Walt
Show it in the record. Everything else is just piffle.
What you have to do is say, "McPherson says it was this, when it was really this."
But you can't do that.
Walt