Restricted Economic Historians: the South was a prosperous agricultural region

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From A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union:

In the momentous step, which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery - the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product, which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization.

From a March 4, 1858, speech by James H. Hammond, a US senator from South Carolina, concerning the admission of Kansas to the Union and other matters

But the strength of a nation depends in a great measure upon its wealth, and the wealth of a nation, like that of a man, is to be estimated by its surplus production. ...All the enterprises of peace and war depend upon the surplus production of a people.

It appears, by going to the reports of the Secretary of the Treasury, which are authentic, that last year the United States exported in round numbers $279,000,000 worth of domestic produce, excluding gold and foreign merchandise re-exported. Of this amount $158,000,000 worth is the clear produce of the South; article s that are not and cannot be made at the North. There are then $80,000,000 worth of exports of products of the forest, provisions, and breadstuffs. If we assume that the South made but one-third of these, and I think that is a low calculation, our exports were $185,000,000, leaving to the North less than $95,000,000.

In addition to this, we sent to the North $30,000,000 worth of cotton, which is not counted in the exports. We sent to her $7 or $8,000,000 worth of tobacco, which is not counted in the exports. We sent naval stores, lumber, rice, and many other minor articles.

...No, you dare not make war on cotton. No power on earth dares to make war upon it. Cotton is king.

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We have had a half dozen threads recently whose topic was the condition slavery in the US at the time of the Civil War. The claim has been made that slavery was dying.

I want to share some excerpts from Roger Ransom's book The Confederate states of America: What Might Have Been. I hope that this amount of excerpting is not excessive. Note that, this might seem like a lot of paragraphs from the book; but I have broken the book's paragraphs into smaller paragraphs for the sake of readability. Please forgive the typos.

The point that Ransom makes is that when the Civil War began, slavery was thriving, or rather, that the slavery-based Southern economy was seen as thriving.

All of the following is from pages 19-45 of the Ransom book.

- Alan
 
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