American South
Here’s an excellent excerpt from Time on the Cross: The Economics of Negro Slavery which eviscerates the economic argument for the abolition of slavery that was famously made by Hinton Helper in The Impending Crisis of the South:
“The assumption that the South had a better resource endowment than the North was false. The South was hopelessly outmatched by the North in mineral resources. It had nothing to compare with the iron deposits of Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, the lead deposits of Illinois, and the coal deposits of Pennsylvania. It was the Northeast, not the South, which had the advantage of “super-excellence” of water-power for manufacturing. The rivers of the South provided excellent avenues for transportation. But navigable rivers were poor sources of water power. In the technology that prevailed before the Civil War, water power could be more cheaply harnessed from the smaller streams of New England, which were well endowed with natural falls in regions that were accessible to existing markets.”
The North was following its comparative advantage in an internal free market (its natural superiority in mineral resources and water power) in specializing in manufacturing. The idea that the South should specialize in manufacturing within the context of the Union was as retarded as the idea that the North should specialize in growing cotton.
The South had less need for railroads and canals than the North because we have a much longer and more accessible coastline. Southern rivers were also vastly superior to Northern rivers for transportation purposes.
“Nor was it true that Southern soils and climate were generally better for agricultural purposes than northern land and climates. No doubt some Southern soils were better for agriculture than some Northern ones. But on average Southern soils were inferior to those of the North. The soils of the Cotton Belt, as well as of the subtropic coastal regions, are more sandy than those of the north central states and hence have only quite limited capacity to retain the minerals on which fertility depends. This situation is further aggravated by leaching of the soil due to heavy rainfalls, and by the absence of winter freezes which retain water and minerals in the soil. The climatic factor not only worked to reduce the fertility of the soils but, in the technology of the antebellum era, made agriculture more vulnerable to insects in the South than the North. For one advantage of the winter freeze that was that it killed off the various pests and disease carriers which affected crops, livestock, and man. High Southern humidity also prevented the satisfactory curing of hay in this region before the development of silos, and hence made livestock rearing relatively less advantageous than in the northern states. Other crops that suffered in the southern climate included oats and some types of wheat. On the other hand, the subtropical climate was not quite warm enough to make sugar more than a marginal product.”
The analysis of Helper’s polemic on the economics of slavery goes on for several more pages. It is quite clear though that Helper didn’t know what he was talking about and made serious errors in interpreting the census data he used in his book.
“Helper’s prediction that Southern land values would rise fourfold the day after slavery ended, of course, proved to be false. In fact the opposite was true. The collapse of slavery led to a fall in agricultural land values.”
Helper was a polemicist that spun a yarn about slavery that Northern Republicans wanted to hear. They seized on his flawed arguments
Good stuff, HW. It’s nice to see these sorts of myths exploded.
Cuba wasn’t “inferior” to Jamaica in the production of sugarcane.
Sugar production in Cuba exploded after the 1830s when the spread of railroads reduced prohibitive transportation costs and opened up vast tracks of new land to sugarcane in the interior.
In the earlier stage of the Sugar Revolution, the smaller islands had a decisive advantage over the Greater Antilles: lower transportation costs due to proximity to the coasts, vegetation that was much easier to clear with seventeenth century technology, better access to winds for the return sail to Europe, along with closer geographic proximity to the source African labor.
In much the same way, it was easier to process cotton in New Engand because of the water power of its streams was easier to exploit with mid-nineteenth century technology. The rivers in the Cotton Kingdom and the Coastal Plain in the South are below the fall line:
http://gallivance.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/fallline04.jpeg
Helper was a polemicist that spun a yarn about slavery that Northern Republicans wanted to hear. They seized on his flawed arguments
So, what? Suppose that’s true. Suppose every argument Helper made was invalid. Suppose–to take things even farther–that Helper wasn’t even being honest in intimating that he was morally opposed to slavery or that he loved the United States and wanted to see the Union preserved. Suppose he simply thought the South would be destroyed if the conflict were to come to war and that he was simply making an unusual attempt to get the South to give up slavery and thus be spared destruction. Suppose, yes, that the Northerners who were opposed to slavery were simply latching onto his argument as a sort of bolster of their moral opposition to slavery. Suppose all of that–what does it matter?
Are you opposed to Obamacare? I am. I’m opposed to every government entity that involves American citizens’ being forced to give each other money, either indirectly or directly. Undoubtedly, there are all kinds of books that present all sorts of arguments about, say, the efficiency or inefficiency of government-run medical care, whether in Britain or Canada or whatever. Do you care about any of those arguments? I don’t. I oppose the thing on principle. At the same time, I recognize, that there are anti-liberals who waste their time discussing with liberals the pros and cons of such government-run medical care. Okay–so some of the Northerners who were opposed to slavery wasted their time embracing Helper. Again: So, what? The real question wasn’t slavery’s economic efficiency or states’ rights. All of that is a distraction, and all of your exertions at this blog amount merely to the perpetuation of that distraction. That’s all your Confederate flag means: perpetuating the distraction. The question was the morality of slavery. That’s what the war was about.
….The idea that the South should specialize in manufacturing within the context of the Union was as retarded as the idea that the North should specialize in growing cotton….”
Northeast Myopia: the problem that keeps on giving.
Now, if “slavery is wrong” was the reason for the war, John of Philly, then why are there so many well-documents accounts of Yankee soldiers robbing blacks in the aftermath?
And why did those sweet religious liberators win that whole war for “freedom” THEN ship your jobs elsewhere, lol. Not to mention slipping toward drafting women, since their army will never be big enough. How moral!
The annihilation of the South’s social and economic system and the death of 1 out of 5 White Southern men of military age and cursing the whole country with 147 years and counting of the free negro was … drumroll … NO SMALL MISTAKE.
It was no “oops” moment like dropping and busting your beer at a party. There was a lot riding on these bogus arguments.
Okay.
The question is the “morality” of slavery then. Well, if that is the case, then a good place to start is that slavery was normative and accepted in virtually every society in the world until the late eighteenth century.
It was not obvious that slavery was “immoral.” Even the Quakers wrestled with the “morality” of slavery until 1755. The idea that slavery is uniquely immoral was a novelty on the same level as “gay marriage” today.
Another advantage that the North possessed over the South was its highly productive cold water fisheries. There were entire fleets of ships exploiting this resource and the South had next to nothing in comparison.
“Another adavantage that the North possessed over the South was it’s highly productive cold water fisheries. There were entire fleets of ships exploiting this resource and the South had next to nothing in comparison.”
– Well boo hoo hoo. Would you like a lollipop? Would that make you feel better? Perhaps it wasn’t such a smart move to start a war with such a mighty industrial power that had so many “advantages”, was it now? Buncha fucking crybabies.
‘Well boo hoo hoo. Would you like a lollipop? Would that make you feel better? Perhaps it wasn’t such a smart move to start a war with such a mighty industrial power that had so many “advantages”, was it now? Buncha fucking crybabies.’
The South seceded and merely wanted to go its own way. As President Jefferson Davis famously said, ‘All we ask is to be let alone.’ The South didn’t ‘start a war’ with the United States. Nor is anyone here crying. We’re just pointing out facts.
“That’s all your Confederate flag means: perpetuating the distraction. The question was the morality of slavery. That’s what the war was about.”
What is it with these Eye-talians from up north?
Morality of Slavery? Hello??? Have you never read the Bible the Roman communion says is the Grund of their faith? The Bible CONDONES slavery, and even supports it generationally!
HW, I was going to congratulate you once again on dismantling the heresy of the Abolitionists and Yankee Supremacists, a brick at a time. These columns DO have merit, if people like Joew, Mr. 666, and Boneofcontention don’t see it.
For they leave liberals and YS’s without excuse, and take away the entire edifice of ‘moral legitimacy’ Blacks continue to use as a cudgel to get ‘Cargo’ (per Denise) from whites. If you do nothing else than destroy that ideology, you should get a Nobel Peace Prize- heaven knows, they’re going pretty cheap these days, when you look at previous recipients.
The annihilation of the South’s social and economic system and the death of 1 out of 5 White Southern men of military age and cursing the whole country with 147 years and counting of the free negro was … drumroll … NO SMALL MISTAKE.
It was no “oops” moment like dropping and busting your beer at a party. There was a lot riding on these bogus arguments.
No–there was nothing riding on those bogus arguments. The argument was moral. The South wasn’t listening, so persons threw in other arguments, as persons invariably do in political disputes. So, what? That was my point, which you’re simply trying to avoid.
One in five Southern men killed. Cry me a river, whitey. Shall we get into an argument about what percentage of Northerners died? Is that how it works? Do we go by absolute numbers–or by percentages? I want to make sure I understand that critical point.
The question is the “morality” of slavery then. Well, if that is the case, then a good place to start is that slavery was normative and accepted in virtually every society in the world until the late eighteenth century.
Yes–but the war took place in the nineteenth century. By that time, the question of the morality of slavery had been raised. “Nobody ever thought it was immoral before” is not an answer.
Why, again, do you use quotation marks–as in “morality”? Are there not things to which you object on moral grounds, Mr. W.? Are you a liberal all of a sudden? “Morality” is a word not to be taken seriously?
I see Dixiegirl has posted the following:
Now, if “slavery is wrong” was the reason for the war, John of Philly, then why are there so many well-documents accounts of Yankee soldiers robbing blacks in the aftermath?
Why are there so many such accounts? I didn’t know there were any; but if there were, it’s probably because a great many white persons are vicious–as vicious as slaveholders. Do you think every white soldier–North or South–who got caught up in that war was a man of lofty spirit? Quite a few of those soldiers were probably drunken bums, whose ancestors were drunken bums on the Scythian steppes and whose descendants are drunken bums on the Midwestern prairie. Whites don’t change with time or geography any more than do blacks or Jews.
Dixiegirl continues:
And why did those sweet religious liberators win that whole war for “freedom” THEN ship your jobs elsewhere, lol. Not to mention slipping toward drafting women, since their army will never be big enough. How moral!
But we know what that is. It’s the hallmark of the craven white, trapped in a moral corner: “Oh, yeah? Well, you’re immoral, too.”
Whites. They have a lot to learn. They’ll learn it or perish–probably the latter.
“Quite a few of those soldiers were probably drunken bums, whose ancestors were drunken bums on the Scythian steppes”
That would argue that drunken bumness is an evolutionarily selected trait for survival.
That would argue that drunken bumness is an evolutionarily selected trait for survival.
Keep hoping.
PS Next time you’re in Philadelphia, go to Fairmount Park and see the Civil War memorial. It’s huge–and it’s sad. The inscription expresses the view that North and South will now continue on together, with love for each other. “And how did that work out?” my cousin’s San Franciscan wife said sardonically, when we went to see it a few years ago. “Well–the sentiment is worthy,” I told her. She agreed.
The North became a mighty industrial power … AFTER the war.
PPS Of course, to get to the memorial, you’ll have to go through a dangerous black neighborhood, so I’m not arguing that the abolitionists themselves weren’t irresponsible.
The North became a mighty industrial power … AFTER the war.
Okay–then you lost to a pipsqueak.
(1) Really?
Did the value of land increase four fold after the abolition of slavery as Helper had argued? Were blacks eight times as productive after the abolition of slavery as Olmstead had confidently predicted?
In the final analysis, whose predictions ultimately came true? The South had predicted that abolition would destroy the economy and unleash a plague of free negroes. Who was right?
(2) There was a moral argument for abolition. There was also an economic case for abolition that looks absurd in hindsight.
(3) I’m simply noting the cost of the North’s foolish theories and discredited economic arguments for abolition.
(4) The moral case for abolition?
The law sanctioned slavery. The Constitution sanctioned slavery. The Declaration of Independence had condemned King George III for “inciting domestic insurrections among us.” Tradition and custom sanctioned slavery.
The Greco-Roman republican heritage sanctioned slavery. Roman law sanctioned slavery. The Bible explicitly sanctioned slavery. Church tradition for the past 1800 years of history sanctioned slavery. The vast majority of people in the world were in some form of servitude.
Blacks were legally enslaved in Africa according to their own customs. Slavery was legal in Africa from the Mediterranean to the Cape. Every other civilization in world history sanctioned and practiced slavery.
What sanctioned the novelty of anti-slavery? The false theory that “all men are created equal” which is contradicted by every scientific measurement known to man, empirical observation, and the experience of all ages.
“The North became a mighty industrial power … AFTER the war.”
No. The North was a greater industrial power before the war began. They both grew a lot industrially during the war but only the North continued to do so afterward.
The North finally crushed the South industrially as it grew faster during the war, they had more guns, more steel, more ironclads, more artillery, more ammunition, more railroads, and more men.
Rudel,
The North had most, but not all, of the manufacturing base before the war. Northern industrialization accelerated during the war, but the North didn’t become “a mighty industrial power” until well after the war. Northern manufacturing before the war wasn’t of the type that we commonly associate with the Carnegies, Fords, Rockefellers, etc.
As I pointed out above, the South didn’t have the same need for railroads as the North. The South has a far longer coastline, more natural harbors, and far more navigable rivers than the North because much of the South is below the Atlantic fall line.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_Seaboard_fall_line
Suppose you were an Alabama cotton farmer. You could easily ship your cotton down the Alabama River or Black Warrior/Tombigbee River or the Chattahoochee River to the Gulf of Mexico.
“Northern industrialization accelerated during the war, but the North didn’t become “a mighty industrial power” until well after the war.”
I agree, and the Republican Party has been the party of the big industry and big finance ever since. Romney may be the last of the fat cat Republicans if he loses the election. If Obama wins and current demographic and de-industrialization trends continue then the Great Reversal may finally become complete as the Republican Party becomes the party of small town and rural White Protestants as was the 19th century Democratic party.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/…nonlin1024.png
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
Morality of slavery, bah! It’s the only thing negroes are fit for, the thing that makes them productive at all.
Given negro criminality and dysfunction, it is truly a wonder anyone with half an unindoctrinated brain cell would even try to maintain that slavery is immoral.
There is simply no basis for such an assertion outside of the present distortion of truth that underpins BRA. We can all see how well that is working.
Abolition of slavery was what was immoral, especially since it involved theft and murder. Of white people… for the sake of negroes…
Absolutely wicked and utterly perverse.
Deo Vindice
The kikes are abandoning Obama.
“The kikes are abandoning Obama.”
It’s all relative to a fairly heavy Democratic bias on their part. The Republicans are doing well with the Jews whenever they manage to get more than 30% of the Jewish vote. If Romney wins I expect to see that they have done just that. He’s gotten himself a fair amount of big money Jewish donors so far.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/US-Israel/jewvote.html
I’m not sure it’s fair, Mr. W., to say that Hinton Helper was erroneous in predicting that abolition would result in a quadrupling of the value of the South’s land. Presumably, he was speaking of peaceful abolition, not abolition via war that wrecked the region.
Let’s put that aside. You add a reference to a prediction by Olmsted, a prediction that blacks would be vastly more productive as free laborers than they were as slaves. I don’t know your source for that, but I’ll assume you have it right. You’re deliberately combining two things that don’t go together. Do you think Hinton Helper would have made such a prediction about black productivity? He wouldn’t even have addressed the subject. To him, it was imperative that blacks be removed from white lands.
You’re making it sound as if everyone who was opposed to slavery thought blacks should be free to live among whites. That wasn’t true in the period before the Civil War; and as you know, it’s not true now either, among your blog followers, Northern or Southern.
“All men are created equal”? I don’t know what was meant by that, but I’m glad the United States Constitution makes it impossible for you and me and everyone else to be enslaved (directly, anyway). I don’t have to think that blacks are the same as whites, or that blacks can flourish in a white world, to recognize that blacks experience not only physical pain but frustration and humiliation. I don’t think anyone’s entitled to inflict those things on anyone, whether or not the victim is “equal” to someone. I’d be willing to bet that that’s what every one of your other blog followers–Northern and Southern–is saying when he or she says to you, as I do, that slavery is wrong (or “crap,” as, I think, one of your followers said the other day).
Those abolitionists who thought blacks should be set free to live among whites were, in my view, irresponsible, to put it mildly. I make that statement even though I, as a citizen of the modern United States, have had, unsurprisingly, black friends and acquaintances–friends and acquaintances who have treated me better than I have been treated by many whites and who, more importantly, have treated me better than I have treated many persons. I simply think the two races should not be living together.
In my opinion, as I said to you a long time ago, the South’s intransigence re slavery contributed to the racial disaster that overtook America. Had the South simply agreed to do away with slavery, a true discussion of measures for separating the races might have taken place, in advance of abolition. As things played out, no such discussion could occur.
I’ve had to work with them and have had civil relations with them but I’ve never had a black “friend” and I really think that is impossible. They all hate every one of us. Every one of them.
Re: John Bona
(1) British and French abolition in the Caribbean (not to mention gradual emancipation in Latin America) had already established a precedent for the peaceful abolition of slavery under controlled conditions.
(2) Olmstead is refuted in this book in the next section. I was referring to his belief that black free laborers would be eight times more productive.
(3) Cassius Clay and Hinton Helper thought blacks should be expelled. Olmstead did not. That’s also made clear in the book.
(4) The U.S. Constitution sanctioned slavery until the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865.
(5) If blacks were victimized by slavery, what can be said of “free” laborers in the Northern states? Were they victimized by capitalism?
The typical slave in Mississippi had a longer life expectancy than White “free” laborers in Philadelphia and Italy. The typical slave in Mississippi had a diet that “actually exceeded the daily recommended level of proteins” and “the modern daily recommended levels of chief nutrients.”
The slaves on Southern plantation were “victimized” in the sense that they had the best healthcare, the highest life expectancy, the best diet, and the best disease environment of any blacks living anywhere in the world at the time.
Great–British and French abolition in the Caribbean took place peacefully. I wish it had taken place peacefully in the U.S., too. Who doesn’t? Even in the Caribbean, unfortunately, it didn’t involve separation of the races. That’s the real subject: separation of the races.
Yes, I understood your reference to Olmsted’s prediction of black productivity; thanks for clarifying the source. The main thing is that, on the one hand, there were persons such as Olmsted, who saw no problem in blacks’ living among whites, and on the other, there were persons such as Helper, who were completely opposed to that. My point was simply that discussion of separation of the races would have been easier had that question (separation) not been entangled with the question of slavery. If, in other words, there had been simple agreement that slavery was to be brought to an end, the racial question could have been discussed in detail.
Yes, I know the Constitution did not originally prohibit slavery. I meant I’m glad it prohibits it now; if the reason it prohibits it now is that somebody thought “all men are created equal,” well, that’s fine with me.
If blacks were victimized by slavery, what can be said of “free” laborers in the Northern states? Were they victimized by capitalism?
This is your one statement to which I’m really going to object. Again: Are you a liberal all of a sudden? What is this blithe equivalence between working men and slaves? Were the free laborers in the North victimized by capitalism? No, they were not–that’s why I don’t put the word free in quotation marks. Are you a Communist now? Enslaving someone is victimizing him; hiring him is not.
And what is all this nonsense about the slaves’ life expectancy and protein and so on? Would you yourself like to be enslaved? If someone were to enslave you, right now, and say, “Don’t worry–your protein improvement is going to be out of this world,” would you say, “Oh–well–when you put it that way.” Your position is absurd, and you know it.
PS Rudel — Maybe you’re right that blacks and whites can’t truly be friends. That’s something I myself have reflected on. I don’t know what the answer is; but I’ll let my statement stand, with the word “friends.”
“Were the free laborers in the North victimized by capitalism? No, they were not–that’s why I don’t put the word free in quotation marks. Are you a Communist now? Enslaving someone is victimizing him; hiring him is not.”
A person employed by another or by a faceless corporation is a wage slave of sorts. Just look back at the history of the labor movement in the U.S. if you are not convinced. Workers in America are now going backwards in terms of wages. They are not “middle class” despite the claims of politicians they are working class. Wage slaves whether your Republican ass wants to admit it or not. Even a doctor or lawyer is a wage slave if they are mere employees of a corporation.
If you have trouble grasping these facts try reading some Marx or Engels.
‘- Well boo hoo hoo. Would you like a lollipop? Would that make you feel better? Perhaps it wasn’t such a smart move to start a war with such a mighty industrial power that had so many “advantages”, was it now? Buncha fucking crybabies.’
Hey Chris313, I have a better idea. Why don’t you take that lollipop and stick it up your ass? If you’re so fact adverse there are better places to spend your time than here.
Hunter is a Marxist of sorts.
“Hunter is a Marxist of sorts.”
As is any educated person. Marx and Engels great insight was that social relations between people are determined by their economic relations.
Hunter is a Marxist of sorts.
Oh, boy–John, I think you’re right. And Rudel: you’ve just outed yourself as a Communist. Reds everywhere.
Re: John Bona
(1) There was no evidence that land values would rise following the abolition of slavery. It was speculation that was contradicted by the evidence of previous emancipations in the Caribbean and Latin America.
(2) The Northern proto-WNs of that time threw in their lot with the abolitionists and the Republicans. Look what happened as a result.
(3) No, I am not a liberal. A liberal is someone who believes in abstract “liberty” and “equality” and rights talk.
(4) It is possible to measure the standard of living of Southern slaves and compare them to the White working class in Northern and European cities. The slaves had a higher standard of living.
(5) Opposing liberalism is not synonymous with communism. As for communism, Marx supported Lincoln because he believed that capitalism was progressive. In the communist theory of history, capitalism is the stage that precedes socialism.
(6) I don’t believe in the existence of abstract universal moral laws.
(7) No, you are confusing manoralism with communism. Southern plantations incorporated elements of manoralism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manorialism
HW: I meant you are speaking in the manner of a Communist when you suggest that hired men are unfree. You keep referring to working men as “free” laborers, in quotation marks.
I agree with the communists that men are physically compelled by their nature to labor for sustenance and that capitalism is exploitative by its nature. Plantation slavery was a type of capitalism that retained elements of manoralism.
I really don’t know what to make of your response, Mr. W. If you maintain there is no distinction between hired men and slaves, then you are, to put it very mildly, nothing but a mischief maker, like a person who says there is no such thing as race.
I’vr really come to hate most Republicans almost as much as I hate Democrats.
In the conclusion, the authors assert that the pecuniary income, diet, health, life expectancy, skill acquisition and other material aspects of the lives of the ex-slaves had declined significantly by 1890 after thirty years of free society.
This would be consistent with the new book Sick From Freedom which claims that 25 percent of free negroes died after the abolition of slavery due to the destruction of the healthcare, social security, and slave diet of large plantations.
They were clearly better off under the slave regime.
How “free” is the average corporate drone? Hourly wage earner? Anyone whose livelihood depends upon the arbitrary opinions and decisions of another rather than their own products and produce? Exactly how many modern people actually make or grow anything these days. How many actually control any means of production at all.
Seems to me like our postindustrial society becomes increasingly more and more servile each day. Communism and capitalism are opposite sides of the same coin. Both are antiquated and dysfunctional ways of view commerce and the economic relationships of people.
Their usage as labels for other people is increasingly irrelevant, as neither of them bear any resemblance to the economic and political realities of our time. Corporatism has annihilated or crippled free enterprise wherever possible, leaving a precarious economic balance as a result of globalism/internationalism.
We don’t compete in the textile industry anymore because in a global marketplace, we cannot compete with quasi-slave labor from the Far East. Therefore, our so-called “free” economy has created a dependency upon this quasi-slave labor as a major commodity and component of our economic system.
A new sustainable economic paradigm is needed. One that builds the same type of self-sufficient, resilient traditional communities that once existed in Amurrica. Otherwise we will continue our long march into servitude and eventual annihilation.
Deo Vindice
Excellent post, Apuleius.
Slavery was quasi-socialist due to the elements of manorialism on the plantations.
As a business proposition, a negro child was a loser for a planter until he or she turned a profit around the age of 27. Elderly slaves also became less and less profitable for planters.
Slavery held down the talented tenth. It had just the opposite effect on the vast majority of the black population.
Capitalofeudal manorial somesuch.