Confederate expectations.

wausaubob

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They were great.
But what did they miss.
Cotton was a good thing, but it was only valuable when it made it to New York, Liverpool, or a French port.
That meant that the Confederacy was going to be dependent on someone else's merchant fleet and navy.
Although they thought they would be like France, and have an aristocratic ruler with a few democratic forms, they weren't much like France, at all.
They did not have a Paris within the Confederacy. That meant they did not have an advanced financial system or an advanced scientific community. Nor did they have a homogeneous population highly committed to becoming western as did the Japanese.
They were already dependent on outside capital, and the railroad and iron industries were already competitive in the capital markets. Coal, oil refining, electricity were going to dominate future capital investing, In other words, the steam engine already pointed the way. The industrial revolution was going to depend on energy systems and their applications. That meant the Confederate agriculture was going to have compete with the second part of the industrial revolution in terms of rate of return and growth potential. Could a system based on coerced labor meet that competition? Or would capital investors conclude that the docility of the slave population was based on illiteracy, poor health and short life expectancy?

So instead of being like France, perhaps the Confederates would have been more like the Austrians and Hungarians. They would have a lot of proud culture, but a stagnant hinterland, which required constant attention. Instead of being an industrial power themselves, they would have been next to one.
Its not a terrible future. But it is a future in which manufactured items are pricey, freight rates charged on shipping cotton gradually increase the price of cotton, and the capital markets begin to pull away from the Confederacy because enforcement of security interests is subject to opaque local rules.
I suspect that people who had wanted an education and a good job would be gradually drawn away from the Confederacy and the Confederate leadership has to deal with difficult issues of financial dependency.
National governments are expensive. Thomas Jefferson was shocked to discover this. The Constitution was an attempt to create a system in which each state fulfilled its obligations.
A continuing Confederacy would have discovered that debt service is expensive and importing all manufactured items is not profitable. Eventually they would have been faced with the same problems as Japan, without Japan's geographic and ethnic advantages, perhaps.
 
They were great.
But what did they miss.
Cotton was a good thing, but it was only valuable when it made it to New York, Liverpool, or a French port.
That meant that the Confederacy was going to be dependent on someone else's merchant fleet and navy.
Although they thought they would be like France, and have an aristocratic ruler with a few democratic forms, they weren't much like France, at all.
They did not have a Paris within the Confederacy. That meant they did not have an advanced financial system or an advanced scientific community. Nor did they have a homogeneous population highly committed to becoming western as did the Japanese.
They were already dependent on outside capital, and the railroad and iron industries were already competitive in the capital markets. Coal, oil refining, electricity were going to dominate future capital investing, In other words, the steam engine already pointed the way. The industrial revolution was going to depend on energy systems and their applications. That meant the Confederate agriculture was going to have compete with the second part of the industrial revolution in terms of rate of return and growth potential. Could a system based on coerced labor meet that competition? Or would capital investors conclude that the docility of the slave population was based on illiteracy, poor health and short life expectancy?

So instead of being like France, perhaps the Confederates would have been more like the Austrians and Hungarians. They would have a lot of proud culture, but a stagnant hinterland, which required constant attention. Instead of being an industrial power themselves, they would have been next to one.
Its not a terrible future. But it is a future in which manufactured items are pricey, freight rates charged on shipping cotton gradually increase the price of cotton, and the capital markets begin to pull away from the Confederacy because enforcement of security interests is subject to opaque local rules.
I suspect that people who had wanted an education and a good job would be gradually drawn away from the Confederacy and the Confederate leadership has to deal with difficult issues of financial dependency.
National governments are expensive. Thomas Jefferson was shocked to discover this. The Constitution was an attempt to create a system in which each state fulfilled its obligations.
A continuing Confederacy would have discovered that debt service is expensive and importing all manufactured items is not profitable. Eventually they would have been faced with the same problems as Japan, without Japan's geographic and ethnic advantages, perhaps.
Plus,a hypothetical independent Confederate nation would have to compete with India,Egypt and Central America for cotton exports. Also Turkey and Southern Africa in particular the soon yo be established British colony Rhodesia should compete with the Confederacy on tobacco exports. Not to argue that Confederate agricultural exports still couldn't be profitable but it does limit price increases. The Confederacy would not enjoy a monopoly on agricultural exports.
Leftyhunter
 
Plus,a hypothetical independent Confederate nation would have to compete with India,Egypt and Central America for cotton exports. Also Turkey and Southern Africa in particular the soon yo be established British colony Rhodesia should compete with the Confederacy on tobacco exports. Not to argue that Confederate agricultural exports still couldn't be profitable but it does limit price increases. The Confederacy would not enjoy a monopoly on agricultural exports.
Leftyhunter
Part of the difficult is that both the British and the French have an incentive to find places to grow cotton in Africa and Asia, so that the cotton money is contained within their empire. If they get control of the cotton export business of the Confederates they would tend to treat the CSA as a colonial possession. There is no desire to be mean about it, but the closed Asia economies of China, Korea and Japan were under great pressure from the western imperialists.
 
The slaveholders who led the rebellion weren't fools. In 1860 cotton exports alone brought in $160 million and the internal market $40 million more to cotton producers using slave labor. The export market alone totaled twice the entire federal budget and nearly as much as the United States government would spend on ordnance during the entire four years of war.

Had all slave states joined the rebellion the population ratio of the belligerents would have been closer to 3:2, not 2:1, and the advantage of the remaining "union" would not have been great enough to conquer the rebellious states. Both the army and navy of the United States were tiny and vastly scattered. No one could have predicted the alacrity of the response of northern states or the mobilization of resources by the federal government.

Nor was there any reasonable expectation that other sources of cotton -- a resource that much of the world depended on -- would be developed in any reasonable time to drive down the value of the American crop or blunt the force of a producer's boycott. The 80% of the cotton that the south exported also made up 80% of Britain's supply, the remainder divided roughly evenly between Egypt and India, both of which were, at least before Sumter, less reliable sources.

All this means that a separate country was almost besides the point. The leaders of the Confederacy could reasonably expect to dictate terms of union to the rest of the country, much as they had for years. The Crittenden Compromise, in some form or another, was on the table from before hostilities right up to the final days of the rebellion. As one European observer reasoned, the slaveholders' goal -- the ultimate objective of the aggressive actions undertaken since the election of Lincoln -- was not an independent country, but one finally and forever organized to their liking:

"In reality, if North and South formed two independent countries, like, for example, England and Hanover, their separation would be no more difficult than was the separation of England and Hanover. 'The South', however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan.

"The advice of an amicable separation presupposes that the Southern Confederacy, although it assumed the offensive in the Civil War, at least wages it for defensive purposes.... Nothing could be more false. 'The South needs its entire territory. It will and must have it.' With this battle-cry the secessionists fell upon Kentucky. By their 'entire territory' they understand in the first place all the so-called border states... Besides, they lay claim to the entire territory south of the line that runs from the northwest corner of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. What the slaveholders, therefore, call the South, embraces more than three-quarters of the territory hitherto comprised by the Union... The war of the Southern Confederacy is, therefore, not a war of defence, but a war of conquest, a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery....

"Were it to relinquish its plans of conquest, the Southern Confederacy would relinquish its capacity to live and the purpose of secession... Incapable of wrestling the mouth of the Mississippi from the hands of a strong, hostile slave republic in the South, the great agricultural states in the basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies...would be compelled by their economic interests to secede from the North...[and] would draw after them into the same whirlpool of secession all the Northern states lying further east, with perhaps the exception of the states of New England.

"What would in fact take place would not be a dissolution of the Union, but a reorganization of it, a reorganization on the basis of slavery, under the recognised control of the slaveholding oligarchy...."
 
Plus,a hypothetical independent Confederate nation would have to compete with India,Egypt and Central America for cotton exports. Also Turkey and Southern Africa in particular the soon yo be established British colony Rhodesia should compete with the Confederacy on tobacco exports. Not to argue that Confederate agricultural exports still couldn't be profitable but it does limit price increases. The Confederacy would not enjoy a monopoly on agricultural exports.
Leftyhunter
Don't forget that the south- mainly Virginia- was America's greatest source of wheat in 1860. What happens when the extensive grain production of the Midwest and Canada come on line?
 
Don't forget that the south- mainly Virginia- was America's greatest source of wheat in 1860. What happens when the extensive grain production of the Midwest and Canada come on line?
Here is a wheat growing map showing wheat production areas in 1859.
http://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/143/q/
The problem for the south is that Illinois and Wisconsin were mechanizing.
 
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Here is wheat growing map showing wheat production areas in 1859.
http://dsl.richmond.edu/historicalatlas/143/q/
The problem for the south is that Illinois and Wisconsin were mechanizing.
Thanks for your response.
My point exactly. Yet another product that would soon be available more cheaply from other sources. In the end, aside from cotton, the south had little to offer on its own, though that wasn't obvious in 1860/61
 
The countries that made it in the 2oth century had industrialized. Britain, Germany, France, Japan, and the United States.
In a very short time the industrial powers are going to find geographical or chemical substitutes for cotton.
So I disagree with Mike. Without a modern financial system and a strong scientific community the south would have been sending people abroad to get training. They would have been in a catch up mode.
 
The Confederacy would have been better off if the fighting had stopped earlier. The road back to prosperity would have been easier with slavery in place. But I do not see capitalists being willing to invest in a coerced labor system. If the Confederacy was not stable enough to convert to paid labor, it would not have been attractive.
 
Can you link that in with a citation?

"Were it to relinquish its plans of conquest, the Southern Confederacy would relinquish its capacity to live and the purpose of secession... Incapable of wrestling the mouth of the Mississippi from the hands of a strong, hostile slave republic in the South, the great agricultural states in the basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies...would be compelled by their economic interests to secede from the North...[and] would draw after them into the same whirlpool of secession all the Northern states lying further east, with perhaps the exception of the states of New England.

"What would in fact take place would not be a dissolution of the Union, but a reorganization of it, a reorganization on the basis of slavery, under the recognised control of the slaveholding oligarchy...."[/QUOTE]
 
The slaveholders who led the rebellion weren't fools. In 1860 cotton exports alone brought in $160 million and the internal market $40 million more to cotton producers using slave labor. The export market alone totaled twice the entire federal budget and nearly as much as the United States government would spend on ordnance during the entire four years of war.

Had all slave states joined the rebellion the population ratio of the belligerents would have been closer to 3:2, not 2:1, and the advantage of the remaining "union" would not have been great enough to conquer the rebellious states. Both the army and navy of the United States were tiny and vastly scattered. No one could have predicted the alacrity of the response of northern states or the mobilization of resources by the federal government.

Nor was there any reasonable expectation that other sources of cotton -- a resource that much of the world depended on -- would be developed in any reasonable time to drive down the value of the American crop or blunt the force of a producer's boycott. The 80% of the cotton that the south exported also made up 80% of Britain's supply, the remainder divided roughly evenly between Egypt and India, both of which were, at least before Sumter, less reliable sources.

All this means that a separate country was almost besides the point. The leaders of the Confederacy could reasonably expect to dictate terms of union to the rest of the country, much as they had for years. The Crittenden Compromise, in some form or another, was on the table from before hostilities right up to the final days of the rebellion. As one European observer reasoned, the slaveholders' goal -- the ultimate objective of the aggressive actions undertaken since the election of Lincoln -- was not an independent country, but one finally and forever organized to their liking:

"In reality, if North and South formed two independent countries, like, for example, England and Hanover, their separation would be no more difficult than was the separation of England and Hanover. 'The South', however, is neither a territory closely sealed off from the North geographically, nor a moral unity. It is not a country at all, but a battle slogan.

"The advice of an amicable separation presupposes that the Southern Confederacy, although it assumed the offensive in the Civil War, at least wages it for defensive purposes.... Nothing could be more false. 'The South needs its entire territory. It will and must have it.' With this battle-cry the secessionists fell upon Kentucky. By their 'entire territory' they understand in the first place all the so-called border states... Besides, they lay claim to the entire territory south of the line that runs from the northwest corner of Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. What the slaveholders, therefore, call the South, embraces more than three-quarters of the territory hitherto comprised by the Union... The war of the Southern Confederacy is, therefore, not a war of defence, but a war of conquest, a war of conquest for the spread and perpetuation of slavery....

"Were it to relinquish its plans of conquest, the Southern Confederacy would relinquish its capacity to live and the purpose of secession... Incapable of wrestling the mouth of the Mississippi from the hands of a strong, hostile slave republic in the South, the great agricultural states in the basin between the Rocky Mountains and the Alleghenies...would be compelled by their economic interests to secede from the North...[and] would draw after them into the same whirlpool of secession all the Northern states lying further east, with perhaps the exception of the states of New England.

"What would in fact take place would not be a dissolution of the Union, but a reorganization of it, a reorganization on the basis of slavery, under the recognised control of the slaveholding oligarchy...."

Can you provide a citation?
 
Don't forget that the south- mainly Virginia- was America's greatest source of wheat in 1860. What happens when the extensive grain production of the Midwest and Canada come on line?
Not sure if Virginia produced so much wheat that it could meet the entirety of Confederate need for grain and have surplus for foreign export.
Assuming Virginia could supply all the wheat needed for human consumption in the Confederacy the surplus with the waste grain could used as livestock feed or even better used for beer or whiskey production which are absolutely essential food groups with the waste grain used to feed pigs.
Leftyhunter
 
They were great. But what did they miss. Cotton was a good thing, but it was only valuable when it made it to New York, Liverpool, or a French port.
That meant that the Confederacy was going to be dependent on someone else's merchant fleet and navy.
Although they thought they would be like France, and have an aristocratic ruler with a few democratic forms, they weren't much like France, at all.
They did not have a Paris within the Confederacy. That meant they did not have an advanced financial system or an advanced scientific community. Nor did they have a homogeneous population highly committed to becoming western as did the Japanese.
They were already dependent on outside capital, and the railroad and iron industries were already competitive in the capital markets. Coal, oil refining, electricity were going to dominate future capital investing, In other words, the steam engine already pointed the way. The industrial revolution was going to depend on energy systems and their applications. That meant the Confederate agriculture was going to have compete with the second part of the industrial revolution in terms of rate of return and growth potential. Could a system based on coerced labor meet that competition? Or would capital investors conclude that the docility of the slave population was based on illiteracy, poor health and short life expectancy?

So instead of being like France, perhaps the Confederates would have been more like the Austrians and Hungarians. They would have a lot of proud culture, but a stagnant hinterland, which required constant attention. Instead of being an industrial power themselves, they would have been next to one.
Its not a terrible future. But it is a future in which manufactured items are pricey, freight rates charged on shipping cotton gradually increase the price of cotton, and the capital markets begin to pull away from the Confederacy because enforcement of security interests is subject to opaque local rules.
I suspect that people who had wanted an education and a good job would be gradually drawn away from the Confederacy and the Confederate leadership has to deal with difficult issues of financial dependency.
National governments are expensive. Thomas Jefferson was shocked to discover this. The Constitution was an attempt to create a system in which each state fulfilled its obligations.
A continuing Confederacy would have discovered that debt service is expensive and importing all manufactured items is not profitable. Eventually they would have been faced with the same problems as Japan, without Japan's geographic and ethnic advantages, perhaps.

I think this picture represents a severe lack of research on the Confederacy. The Confederacy was a democratic nation that had a vibrant free press; indeed, Confederate leaders never found it necessary, unlike the Republicans, to shut down hundreds of newspapers and to jail dozens of newspaper editors. The Confederacy also suspended habeas corpus less often and over a smaller area than did the federal government. Finally, one key ingredient missing from the OP's representation is that, as even John Nicolay admitted, most Southern leaders believed that the North would allow the South to leave in peace; they did not know that two months after they formed their nation, they would be facing an invasion from the North.
 
Can you provide a citation?

The easiest place to find both cotton sales and the federal budget is "The American Almanac and Repository of Useful Information For the Year 1861": https://books.google.com/books?id=8... intitle:almanac&pg=PA185#v=onepage&q&f=false

More details are in Thomas Kettel's "Southern Wealth and Northern Profits" in DeBow's Review, Vol. 29, p. 200, as well as Samuel Powell's "Notes On" same from 1861.

All federal receipts and expenditures for the period, by year and quarter, can be found in the Register of the Treasury's "Statement of Receipts and Expenditures of the Government (by Warrants) from July 1, 1855 to June 30, 1885"

The ordnance department expenditures come from the ORs, Series III, Vol. 5 via Fred Shannon's "Organization and Administration of the Union Army" vol. 1, pp. 70-71

The "European observer" was Karl Marx, who included that analysis in his November 1861 article in Die Presse, "The Civil War in the United States," which you can find starting on p. 27 here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/ma..._Writings_on_the_North_American_Civil_War.pdf

Sorry for the delay in response, but my notes on all this are a bit scattered and, unfortunately, some of the links no longer work.
 
Marx had amazingly good information during the war. One could disagree with his conclusions, but his census and political information was excellent. One has to suspect that Marx's views were not too far from what John Bright and Richard Cobden were thinking and talking about. If the United States loses that war, the slave plantation system conquers the entire western hemisphere, in time.
 
The state totals for slave population he cites in that article come from the 1850 rather than the 1860 Census (which wasn't yet available at the time), and were the first place I'd ever seen them. A very interesting article in that series is the one by Engels, published in a British military journal, "Lessons of the American War," which goes a long way to explaining why large scale military action took so long to ramp up. I think a lot of us would benefit from reading it today.

I put both of them in much the same category as European professionals like De Chanal and the Comte de Paris -- their explanations of American affairs to a contemporary European audience work pretty well with us today, separated by a century and a half rather than the Atlantic... :smile:
 
this may be all true providing they stay in an agricultural society. Why not become a manufacturing center. I understand slave labor works really well. If Carnegie and Rockefeller had their way I'm sure they would prefer slave labor to union workers. So I don't count the South out of the fusion just a shift in manufacturing.
 
most Southern leaders believed that the North would allow the South to leave in peace; they did not know that two months after they formed their nation, they would be facing an invasion from the North.

This a false narrative or lies told to the people to get support for secession. Here is a link to civil war papers and look at the papers about a dissolution of the union and civil war is always mentioned...

https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/...war&y=14&x=15&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

The Confederacy was a democratic nation that had a vibrant free press; indeed, Confederate leaders never found it necessary, unlike the Republicans, to shut down hundreds of newspapers and to jail dozens of newspaper editors. The Confederacy also suspended habeas corpus less often and over a smaller area than did the federal government.

All this happen after the war began not before...
 
Thanks to Michael and fish for their assistance. unionblue also has a citation that people in the middle South also foresaw some basic difficulties with a Confederacy dominated by cotton growers.
 
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