History assignment 3 discussion

US I - LESSON SEVEN

This lesson contains my ideas about US History. It is meant to give you information, and to get you to think. The lesson is drawn from various sources and may or may not agree with concepts and ideas from your textbook. 

Trade – The south, through its own lack of foresight had backed itself into a corner.  The only escape would be succession.  How and why did this happen?  It has something to do with cotton, but it isn’t what you are thinking.  Depending on one crop for your economy will be a problem, but not yet.  So what is the problem this time?  The south grows the cotton; the north profits from the cotton.  But how?  By 1820 cotton alone accounted for more than 50% of our exports.  It was our number one moneymaker.  The south should have been rolling in dough, but they weren’t.  They had made a major blunder.  As cotton demand skyrocketed, cotton production rose to meet the demand.  Plantation owners were putting every penny of profits into producing more cotton.  They bought more land and more slaves and then grew more cotton to sell.  Sounds like a good plan until we consider that even today who makes the money?  Is it the farmer or the middleman?  It’s the middleman.

The North – While southerners were busy growing more and more cotton, somebody has to transport the cotton, somebody has to process the cotton, somebody has to turn the cotton into cloth and finished clothing, and somebody has to build ports and ships to take the cotton to foreign markets.  Southerners were not interested, so northerners did those jobs.  By 1850 the north owned the railways, the factories, the ports, and the ships.  Southerners owned the cotton.  Nobody forced southerners to produce only cotton.  They could have used some of their money to build ports, factories, etc.  They made their choice and now they suffered dire consequences.  The vast majority of profits from cotton went to northerners.  Southerners belatedly realized they had become a mercantile colony of the north.  In fact, since the railroads all headed north where the factories and ports were located, the only choices the South had was to either accept the situation or stop sending cotton north.  Northerners so thoroughly controlled the cotton trade that the only way the South could change the situation would be to secede.

Railroads – They became America’s largest and most important industry in the 19th century.  Even today 70% of all goods traveling within the continental United States go by rail.  Most railroads were privately owned.  Entrepreneurs invested in these enterprises with the hope of making a fortune but also the fear of going bankrupt.  America prided itself on being capitalist.  Government stood back and allowed businesses to either thrive or die.  But now something strange would happen, and it related to the trains.  The federal government began providing federal support for railroad construction.  Government subsidizing an industry?  This wasn’t capitalism.  Worse was to come.  The government began selling land to the railroad companies at very low prices and even gave land to the railroads for free.  By the 1870s corruption was so rampant even the Vice President of the United States was taking bribes from the railroads in return for titles to land.  Why were railroads so interested in gaining land?  Before a railroad is laid through a section of the country, that land is isolated and closed to economic exploitation and production.  As soon as tracks are put down and the train is operational, land on either side of the tracks is open for economic development.  The value of the land doubles, triples, and even increases more than 100 times.  Whoever owns the land stands to make a fortune.  Only the railroad owners know where they are going to build.  They can keep this information secret, buy the land from the government in secret, and then announce that they are going to build a track and that they already own the land.  They can turn around and sell this land to other people at exorbitant prices.   Today this would be like trading stocks based on insider information.

Fillmore – This was not the best man to become president just as things were really starting to go wrong.   How mediocre was Fillmore?  The only major accomplishment he is remembered for was first of all silly and second not true.  Fillmore’s hometown in upstate New York celebrates his birthday each year with Millard Fillmore Days.  The highlight of the celebration?  The Millard Fillmore Bathtub Races.  Bathtub races?  That’s silly!  Fillmore is credited with putting the first bathtub in the White House.  The problem is even this nonsense accomplishment is untrue.  Jefferson had a bathtub in the White House almost 50 years before Fillmore put his in the place.  If this was his claim to fame, Fillmore was definitely not the man to be in charge when the decade began.

Wilmot Proviso – Wilmot, a northern congressman tried to get Congress to vote to outlaw slavery in the new Mexican Concession.  The north and south foolishly argued over whether Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico would be free or slave territory.  This was a “no brainer.”  Slaves were needed for labor intensive crops such as sugar, cotton, and tobacco.  These crops were not going to grow in the southwest, so slavery would never take hold there.  They were arguing over a non issue. 

Popular Sovereignty – Let the people living in the territory decide if they would be slave or free.  The Compromise of 1850 did this for the southwest.  It also admitted California as a state.  Unlike the Missouri Compromise, this new compromise satisfied nobody.  Northerners were unhappy because the southwest could now vote to be slave territory, while southerners were unhappy because California’s entry upset the Senate’s balance of power in favor of the north. 

Kansas-Nebraska Act – This act was even worse.  Popular Sovereignty was applied to the Kansas and Nebraska territories.  This immediately led to “Bloody Kansas.”  Slavery people in Kansas knew they would be outvoted 7 to 3 so they hijacked the election through fraud, murder, etc.   “Bloody Kansas” even led to blood on the floor of the United States Senate.  Sen. Charles Sumner read a speech attacking the Kansas situation.  A few days later Rep. Preston Brooks walked onto the Senate floor and beat Sumner unconscious.  When asked if he was sorry for what he did, Brooks reportedly replied “Sorry?  I’m sorry I broke my cane.”  Although well meaning, Popular Sovereignty and Kansas-Nebraska did more to tear the country apart than did any other thing including slavery.

Fugitive Slave Act – It brought the brutality of slavery to the north.  Slave hunters often chopped the toes off runaway slaves.  This was done to stop slaves from running.  If you don’t have toes, you don’t have balance, and you can’t run.  The brutality shocked many northerners and turned them into strong abolitionists.    

Harriet Beecher Stowe – “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” portrayed blacks as people.  This was the first time many whites ever thought of or realized that Blacks were human.  

Dred Scott – When the Supreme Court ruled that slaves are property, not people, it spurred abolitionists to try even harder.  

John Brown - You can’t try much harder than did John Brown.  Attacking a federal arsenal with the hope of starting a massive Black uprising led to his being tried and hanged for treason and murder.  Brown was so dignified at his trial and hanging that he immediately became a martyr for the abolitionist cause.

States Rights – The eleven seceding states decided the Confederacy would be based on states rights. Each state would be sovereign, and the national government would have to come hat-in-hand begging. They had forgotten Ben Franklin's admonition about hanging together or hanging separately. They were in a fight for their lives, yet they choose to do it as eleven separate entities rather than as one united nation. It is sad to realize Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, who had no real power, was one of only two men who were never forgiven for the war. He was stripped of his citizenship and it has never been returned.  The eleven governors are the men who should have lost their rights.  They are the men who held real power.

Slaves – The south had millions of slaves they could have used in the war effort. Obviously they could not give them guns to fight for their right to be slaves, but they could have been used them in war related industry or in building and repairing fortifications. Instead, the slaves were left on the plantations to pick cotton. Finally, in late 1864, when it is too late, the South began using slaves in the war effort.

Cotton – Now, having only one cash crop would come back to bite the South hard. The South seceded so they would finally get to cut out the northern middleman and sell cotton directly to Europe. The money would come rolling in. Wrong! Economically, the South could not have picked a worse time to secede. Europe was in the midst of a cotton glut. Europeans had so much cotton on their hands that the South could not give it away, let alone sell it. The South's big money maker, their only means of funding the Civil War was gone.

Emancipation Proclamation – Lincoln freed the slaves. Every child learns this in school. Each year at the NAACP National Convention speaker after speaker extols the virtues of Abraham Lincoln, The Great Emancipator. But wait a second. Didn't our Founding Fathers protect slavery in the United States Constitution? How could one man change the Constitution? Wouldn't it take a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery? Yes it would. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did nothing. Slavery was ended by the Thirteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. So, was Lincoln the Great Emancipator? Let's take a look. Missouri was a slave state that had remained loyal to the Union. Lincoln wanted to ensure this loyalty, so he sent John C. Fremont to be his representative to Missouri. Fremont arrived and immediately announced an Emancipation Proclamation for Missouri. Slavery was ended. The slaves were free. The Missouri governor sent a message to Lincoln asking if this was how Lincoln intended keeping Missouri's loyalty. When Lincoln heard what Fremont had done, he fired Fremont, cancelled the Emancipation Proclamation, apologized to Missouri and assured its good, loyal people that their slaves were theirs to keep.

Emancipation – So what about Lincoln's own Emancipation Proclamation? If you read it carefully, all it says is any slave not under Union control was free. Lincoln freed only those people who he had no capabilities of freeing. Not one single slave under Union control, whether in a free state, a border slave state, or a conquered part of a Confederate state was freed by the Emancipation Proclamation. In fact everybody specifically understood that these people were and would remain slaves This would be like our president today announcing that all political prisoners in China are now free. Would any of these people actually be freed? Not very likely. The Chinese would first have a good laugh and then complain about America attempting to interfere in China's internal affairs. The rest of the world would be shaking its collective head while wondering what was wrong with the United States.

Lincoln – If Lincoln was not the Great Emancipator, then what was he? The Republicans were divided into two groups. Radicals wanted to free the slaves while Moderates were afraid to free slaves. Lincoln was the leader of the moderate camp, and while he was alive this group controlled the Republican Party. The Moderates were afraid of Blacks. They didn't even want to give loaded guns to Black soldiers. Remember the movie ‘Glory’? It was pretty much true to reality. Whites dragged their feet for a long time before finally arming Black soldiers. When they finally did give them guns and ammo Whites were afraid the Blacks would turn around and shoot the first White they saw. If Lincoln had lived it is quite likely Moderates would have maintained control of the Republican Party. What would have happened to Blacks then? We would most likely have still passed the Thirteenth Amendment. Blacks would be free, but then what? It is also likely Blacks would have been kept on the plantations until they could be placed on ships and sent to Africa or the Caribbean. Blacks celebrate Lincoln as the Great Emancipator. If he had lived there would most likely be very few Blacks living in America to celebrate him for anything.

Music – ‘Dixie’, the unofficial anthem for the South was originally written for a New York City show by a man from Ohio.  The North’s unofficial anthem, ‘The Battle Hymn of the Republic’ was set to music that had been written by a man from South Carolina.  At least the words were written by a New York abolitionist.  We don’t really know who wrote ‘Taps’, but the best story is of a Union officer and his Confederate son.  The son was found dead on the battlefield.  The song he had just composed was in his pocket.  Dad, the Union officer had it played at the funeral and a tradition was born.  Now that is so ‘soppy’ it has to be wrong, but it is so ‘good’ it begs repeating.