I note that today marks the sesquicentennial of the shelling of Fort
Sumter, with which the US Civil War quickened into armed conflict.
Did slavery cause the war? Contemporaries said, "Yes, it did!" I
believe the cause was sectarian. If proponents and opponents of
slavery had been uniformly distributed throughout the states, the
struggle would have been fought at the state level. This was not the
case. Seven contiquous slave states (ultimately eleven and the Indian
Territories in what is now Oklahoma) seceded. Had their union been
allowed to stand beside the Union of the 23 free states (nominally
including the five border states), it would have presented an ongoing
economic and territorial challenge, which would have been disputed
along the Cumberland and Mississippi Rivers and throughout the West
for decades. Both unions would have destroyed each other in the end
instead of at the beginning.
Competition drove petit businesses and tradesmen out of the South into
the West before the onslaught of slavery. What was in progress up to
the start of the war was concentration of vast wealth in
vertically-organized private agricultural monopolies based on slave
labor. Book wealth amounted to billions of dollars even in those
days. The work force was, of course, carried on the books. Northern
commentators disparaged the state of fence repair in the South, not
realizing that the South's wealth was corraled by other means. When
this wealth was wiped off the books by ratification of the 13th
Amendment to the Federal Constitution in 1865, the economy of the
South crashed and never recovered, taking with it land values and
everything else.
Southern aristocrats intended to travel in the North with their
retinue of slaves and enlist law-enfocement there to help contain
them. Business and agriculture in the North had few clients or
suppliers among the secessionist states. In fact they were mainly in
competition. In particular, Western pioneers wanted competition for
land and labor circumscribed in other states. To say that any of
these constituencies was heavily in favor of "states' rights" at that
time is ludicrous. No, what they wanted was an imposition (on others)
of one consistent moral, ethical, and economic code throughout all
regions of the US and its territories (including the Mormon
settlements in Utah), and that's what they got.
Today's partying political factions imagine they can turn back to a
time when states were sovereign. They have no notion of the forces
unleashed 150 years ago today to quell sectarianism and impose Federal
consistency. In other words, they aren't drinking their tea; they're
smoking it.
--
.. Be Seeing You,
.. Chuck Rhode, Sheboygan, WI, USA
.. Weather: http://LacusVeris.com/WX
.. 55° — Wind NE 8 mph
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