Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
The very first US land grant RR was the Illinois Central, which Congress funded from 1851-57. The land grants, IIRR, actually went to the state of Illinois for that purpose.
That is correct
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The poster child for fraud and manipulation would be the 1854 Minnesota & Northwest Railroad charter and grant. The grant was cancelled amidst a bribery scandal; the railroad was renamed Minnesota & Pacific, then the St Paul & Pacific, and eventually the Great Northern.
James J. Hill and a group of friends bought the bankrupt St. Paul & Pacific in 1878 and built the Great Northern without federal subsidies, paying for right-of-ways across public and Indian lands in cash. It was the only road to the Pacific that did not go bankrupt.
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Since RRs were being financed in this way more and more by giving away Federal land, it is hard to see how they would affect tariff votes -- unless someone wants to argue the Tariffs would have been far higher if this giveaway wasn't going on.
It could be argued that the land was not completely "given away." The transcontinentals had to haul US mail at discounted rates, and open the roads for government use in hauling troops and their supplies. In times of war, railways were often nationalized, and as can be seen in the Civil War, became military targets for complete destruction. It will also be argued by some that the land value and sales appreciated many fold by the building of railroads into the territories, spreading settlement and adding to the nation's prosperity and health, and making it quickly defensible against any idea of conquest.
That's my point... it seems he was just one more writer... w/ more publicity than most; little different than Greely. Just a considerably better writer.
Something makes me think you don't like getting your world political views from Hollywood actors and rappers either.
It could be argued that the land was not completely "given away." The transcontinentals had to haul US mail at discounted rates, and open the roads for government use in hauling troops and their supplies. In times of war, railways were often nationalized, and as can be seen in the Civil War, became military targets for complete destruction. It will also be argued by some that the land value and sales appreciated many fold by the building of railroads into the territories, spreading settlement and adding to the nation's prosperity and health, and making it quickly defensible against any idea of conquest.
It certainly can be. But no one was envisioning nationalization of the RRs in the 1850s, or a major war on the American continent. The land being given away in the 1850s was in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Ohio, and the goal was economic development. The way to make money on it was to get people to come and settle on it so that the RRs would have freight to carry: not the worst of ideas -- and the land itself was worth much more because access to the RR gave access to national and international markets. The real value to the West of all this came from those markets, and the importance of the European market had much more impact on their tariff views than most other factors.
Also, in a related issue, what many people arguing for the concept that Southerners were opposed to spending on internal improvements overlook is that Southerners were in favor of internal improvements that favored them. This is merely the manifestation of the "all politics is local" concept.
For example, "the West" included Tennessee, Kentucky, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama, and Missouri in the days under discussion. They tended to favor improvements to river navigation over RRs and canals -- because geography and population densities made those more favorable to them. In particular, river improvements favored plantation-style agricultural conditions in the geographic areas of the South.
They were also perfectly prepared to wheel-and-deal for boondoggles that benefitted them. For example, somehow a bill for a naval yard in Memphis, TN was passed and such a yard was built. The War Department was opposed to it; the Navy was opposed to it. Heck, the Navy didn't want the navy yard that was built in New Orleans, either, preferring Pensacola. It seems only one then-Lt. in the Navy favored it: Matthew Maury, a Virginian-turned-Tennessean who would become well-known in the Confederacy 20 years later.
One of the items Maury hammered away at was the sectional difference in naval spending dominated by "a few Atlantic states". Essentially, the only reasons this yard was built was political patronage and influence peddling. It was a failure from the beginning, and was abandoned before the Civil War. In particular, the inhabitants of the area saw the opportunity to sell hemp to the Navy for a ropewalk (a factory to make rope) in the Mississippi-Ohio region.
While Natchez, MS and Cairo, Illinois were also pursuing the ropewalk, the issue was settled by politics. 1844 was an election year, and Tennessee was up for grabs. Both parties thus supported Memphis, and granted a contract for the Memphis Navy Yard, $100K voted to start and a total cost of $2 million envisioned. The ropewalk was not included, but President Tyler urged that it be added.
In the end, the Navy Yard was never really built -- but the ropewalk was. The Navy Yard was abandoned in 1854, with about $1 million spent. The ropewalk was unsuccessful -- largely because the quality of hemp in KY-AR-TN was inferior to what the Navy purchased from other sources. It was, pure-and-simple, a political boondoggle from the beginning. The only issue behind all this, at any time, was a sectional desire to get "their" share of Federal spending by "Westerners". Funding for all this came from the Federal budget, which of course was largely funded by the tariff on imports.
Southerners weren't opposed to "internal improvements"; they just wanted the ones that benefitted them. If cotton, tobacco or rice had been faced with a competitive threat from the outside, they would have advocated protectionist tariffs on the import of those products, just as Louisiana planters favored protection of their sugar profits for 100 years or so in American history. But they had no such need on cotton in the 1850s, when they had a virtual monopoly on worldwide cotton supply, with both the biggest production and the highest quality, thus yielding large profits and the temporary ascendance of "King Cotton".
Somehow I don't equate Charles Dickens with Snoop Dog, Pee Diddy, Madonna, Dixie Chicks, etc etc...
It was just meant as a light-hearted remark to Shane. As with Dickens, they are all entitled to their views. Their celebrity alone though should not give their views any specialness, and neither should Dicken's.
Somehow I don't equate Charles Dickens with Snoop Dog, Pee Diddy, Madonna, Dixie Chicks, etc etc...
I doubt anyone on these boards do...
"The South went to war on account of slavery,...South Carolina went to war as she said in her secession proclamation, because slavery would not be secure under Lincoln,...don't you think South Carolina ought to know why it went to war?"
John Singleton Mosby
I'll stick w/ the opinion of a CS soldier of the highest order. I think he knew what he was talking about... and I give him considerably more weight of practical knowledge & experiance in North America than Dickens.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
Something makes me think you don't like getting your world political views from Hollywood actors and rappers either.
Cedarstripper
Amen... celebraties are given far too much weight IMHO.
__________________ Few take the trouble to understand or to view the American scene with perspective. And we Americans love to find ourselves guilty of something. However, it is never I who am guilty, but those other Americans, the past or present government or the other political party. Americans almost never find other countries guilty. It is always ourselves or our fancied influence in other countries. Louis L'amour
"The South went to war on account of slavery,...South Carolina went to war as she said in her secession proclamation, because slavery would not be secure under Lincoln,...don't you think South Carolina ought to know why it went to war?"
John Singleton Mosby
I'll stick w/ the opinion of a CS soldier of the highest order. I think he knew what he was talking about... and I give him considerably more weight of practical knowledge & experiance in North America than Dickens.
Here's the opinion of a Northern Abolitionist-
...these lenders of blood money had, for a long series of years previous to the war, been the willing accomplices of the slave-holders in perverting the government from the purposes of liberty and justice, to the greatest of crimes. They had been such accomplices FOR A PURELY PECUNIARY CONSIDERATION, to wit, a control of the markets in the South; in other words, the privilege of holding the slave-holders themselves in industrial and commercial subjection to the manufacturers and merchants of the North (who afterwards furnished the money for the war). And these Northern merchants and manufacturers, these lenders of blood-money, were willing to continue to be the accomplices of the slave-holders in the future, for the same pecuniary considerations. But the slave-holders, either doubting the fidelity of their Northern allies, or feeling themselves strong enough to keep their slaves in subjection without Northern assistance, would no longer pay the price which these Northern men demanded. And it was to enforce this price in the future - that is, to monopolize the Southern markets, to maintain their industrial and commercial control over the South - that these Northern manufacturers and merchants lent some of the profits of their former monopolies for the war, in order to secure to themselves the same, or greater, monopolies in the future. These - and not any love of liberty or justice - were the motives on which the money for the war was lent by the North....
The whole affair, on the part of those who furnished the money, has been, and now is, a deliberate scheme of robbery and murder; not merely to monopolize the markets of the South, but also to monopolize the currency, and thus control the industry and trade, and thus plunder and enslave the laborers, of both North and South.
The pretense that the "abolition of slavery" was either a motive or justification for the war, is a fraud of the same character with that of "maintaining the national honor"....
Their pretenses that they have "Saved the Country," and "Preserved our Glorious Union," are frauds like all the rest of their pretenses. By them they mean simply that they have subjugated, and maintained their power over, an unwilling people....
All these cries of having "abolished slavery," of having "saved the country," of having "preserved the union," of establishing "a government of consent," and of "maintaining the national honor," are all gross, shameless, transparent cheats - so transparent that they ought to deceive no one - when uttered as justifications for the war, or for the government that has suceeded the war, or for now compelling the people to pay the cost of the war, or for compelling anybody to support a government that he does not want....
The issue of slavery was the ultimate cause of secession.
The secession was the reason for the war..........
...........because secession cost the North money.
"Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils"
~
Total value of manufactured goods used in the United States 1860-......$2,061,000,000
Used according to % of population
North (70.9%)........................................... ..................................$1,461,000,000
South (29.1%)........................................... ......................................600,000,000
Goods manufactured in the South-.................................................. ....155,000,000 (7.5% of total)
Needed by the South ($600 mil.-$155 mil.)-.........................................$445,000, 000
The Southern POV:
Union means I buy from the North at protectionist rates.
Secession means I can buy from England or France, etc., at cheaper rates.
The Northern POV:
Secession means I lose a good chunk of that $445,000,000
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