Caribbean Project: Abolition and the Louisiana Sugar Industry

Cuba

This excerpt comes from Franklin W. Knight’s Slave Society in Cuba During the Nineteenth Century and references the destruction of Louisiana’s sugar industry by the Union Army and Emancipation Proclamation in 1863:

“In fact, the Civil War almost completely destroyed the sugar industry in the South, where production fell from 459,410 hogsheads in 1861 to 10,000 hogsheads in 1864, and the 1,200 plantations fell to 175. The abolition of slavery alone in 1863 had destroyed nearly 50 percent of the capital investment in the Louisiana sugar industry.”

I’m not sure if anyone has ever tried to calculate the social and economic cost of the abolition of slavery across the South and the Caribbean.

The only reason negroes existed in the South and the Caribbean was to work as slave laborers on farms and plantations. Then one day the Union Army shows up and turns our society upside down and even goes so far as to place the Whites under the rule of the Black Undertow.

In 1865, Cubans were surrounded by dead slave societies: Saint-Domingue (then Haiti), Jamaica (abolitionized by British stupidity in 1838), and most recently the disaster in Louisiana (crushed by Lincoln’s legions).

“The example of Louisiana had clearly exposed the disasters that would result from any unorganized, unindemnified emancipation shouod a revolution break out. Economic vulnerability, therefore, was a cardinal consideration in the reevaluation of the role of slavery in the labor system of Cuba, while concern for continued production led to the demand for gradual emancipation.”

How much did joining the Union in 1789 – the worst mistake in our history – cost the South in terms of a dysfunctional central government and foolish racial policies handed down from liberal federal judges and a common parliament in which we are doomed to be a perpetual minority?

Update: In 1861, a total of $194 million dollars in capital (1861 dollars) was invested in the Louisiana sugar industry of which $100 million was in slaves – an investment wiped out by the War Between the States.

About Hunter Wallace 12379 Articles
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14 Comments

  1. “the Civil War almost completely destroyed the sugar industry in the South, ”

    Who cares as long as States rights was crushed, nullification done away with, the Morrill Tariff was protected, White men killed, Southron homes burned, negros freed and made citizens, amercian tyranny established …..

  2. You need a chart of per capita white GDP from 1400 to the present divided Slave vs “free” to see the effects not only of the abolition of slavery, but also the retarding effects of an economy dependent on black labor and white management.

    You would likely see a period of rapid growth from nothing of the slave lines which hits a plateau, while free lines experience slower growth but then race ahead with industrialization, a process that is not compatible with black labor (see also Detroit…)

    Further on you would likely see relative decline of the North as it becomes the nesting ground of black labor, while the South begins to catch up towards the present as white businesses flee the Socialism of the north to the South before departing America all together in recent times.

  3. “How much did joining the Union in 1789 – the worst mistake in our history – cost the South in terms of a dysfunctional central government and foolish racial policies handed down from liberal federal judges and a common parliament in which we are doomed to be a perpetual minority?”

    More than we will ever know.

  4. Good point, John. Much the same as “King Cotton” dominated the antebellum Southern economy, “King Car” dominated the yankee economy in the twentieth century.

    “How much did joining the Union in 1789 – the worst mistake in our history – cost the South in terms of a dysfunctional central government and foolish racial policies handed down from liberal federal judges and a common parliament in which we are doomed to be a perpetual minority?”

    How much did it cost? Everything. The unintended consequences were subjugation by an insane people addicted to a suicidal ideology centered around negro worship. You can’t ever have peace if you are eternally yoked to “disturbers of the peace.” That is why the South will perish right along with the yankees unless it is able to break free.

    Deo Vindice

  5. “Metropolitan Britain would have treated
    the South a great deal better than the Yankees.”

    Except that they didn’t. Parliament blew in whatever direction the wind was blowing during the war. When it looked finally that the South was not going to keep the Union Army out of Southern territory, they bailed just as Northern voters did after Sherman burned Atlanta.

  6. “How much did joining the Union in 1789 – the worst mistake in our history – cost the South in terms of a dysfunctional central government and foolish racial policies handed down from liberal federal judges and a common parliament in which we are doomed to be a perpetual minority?”

    Indeed the constitution was a trojan horse if ever there were one. Not only did it possess vague clauses, such as the commerce clause but it opened the door to any amendment that could further hamper an already debacle of a document, besides what is a piece of paper going to do to safeguard private property and stop enroachment of a central government?

  7. It should be easy to compare the transition from slave labor to free labor in terms of production rates. Seeing as how there was no compensated emancipation in the South, abolition wiped out an enormous amount of Southern wealth, which took a further plunge as land values plummeted.

    Then Northerners came to the South after the war and snapped up dirt cheap property.

  8. Off everyone’s favorite site ….. The Nation of Islam …..

    ” The Congo of America: The Slave Trade of Washington, D.C. ”

    ” D.C. Slave Pens and Auction Blocks. An assortment of White slave traders operated from the many tavern barrooms in Washington, D.C., including the slave-trading firm that became the largest in the country for an eight-year period, Franklin & Armfield. By 1830, the capital city served as a depot for the wholesale traders who marched their chained and shackled Africans right past the Capitol, even while the Congress sat in session. One observer wrote, “The auction block, the lash, and the manacled gangs on their way to the Deep South were as much a part of Washington as the steamy climate, the malaria, the marshes, and the dust.” ”

    etc.

    http://noirg.org/the-congo-of-america-the-slave-trade-of-washington-d-c/

  9. No, Black slavery was a huge mistake, one guaranteed to result in long term disaster. The only use white men really have for blacks is, none whatever. Keep them out and pay White wages for White labor.

    If the Rhodesians and South Africans had done that they’d still have their countries.

    And if the Southern aristocrats had done that they would too.

    Total separation is the only sane policy. Not slavery, not segregation, not integration. Pay White, skilled workers to use machinery, and accept the fact the skilled tradesman is your racial equal even if he can’t read Homer in the Greek or discuss opera.

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