In doing this comprehensive review of Dr. Mitcham's It Wasn't About Slavery, my motives are selfish because I wanted to learn his facts and argument thoroughly and the best way to learn anything is write about it.
Everything I have cited in this review shows where it is located in Mitcham's book. Of course, the book itself cites Mitcham's original sources. At the end of this article, beneath the notes I have cited, is "Actual Citation from Book," four pages of Mitcham's actual endnotes for Chapters I and II. Many are explanatory with good additional information.
Chapter I, Slavery and the Yankee Flesh Peddler, is one of the best short histories of slavery I have ever read. As I said before, Dr. Mitcham has a knack for cutting to the chase.
More @ Charleston Athenaeum Press
Yeah. Yeah. The real deal was national survival and :slavery" was a Southern weak point, so it worked. [From a college History Prof.}
ReplyDeleteThe South was financially doomed. The south had one source of income; cotton. The South could barely feed itself. Cotton profits were helped/maintained by the cotton gin (engine) and the cotto press but England/U.K. was developing alternative sources for cotton in Eg
Egypt and India. Slavery (and thus cotton) were blocked from the Western Territories although there wasn't much suitable land for "King Cotton". Rebuilding the soil by crop rotation would have cut the cotton production (and profits) by 1/2 to 2/3. Remember that nitrogen fertilizers were not devoloped in Germany until the decades before WWI. The U.S. grain (mid-west) and railroads (transportation) had all but destroyed the Brit and European agricultural economies. Even with the U.S. import tariffs, the South never used any of its wealth to build an industrial base. As late as the Civil War, the South had only two steel making centers; Richmond and Birmingham. It seemed inevitable that an independent South would fail economically and would be likely to trade imports for stationing troops from the U.K., Spain, or France on their territory. The U.S. (North) could not continue to grow and spend to defend that long, open border.
Secession was never addressed in the Founding documents, but in the 19th Century, it would be a death threat to the future of the Republic. I suspect that it would have been difficult to ralley an army over "industrial capability", or "cotton or food prices" but the South had a vulnerability in its portfolio; "Slavery". Had the South "freed" the slaves, that focus would have been eliminated. Since the South didn't free the slaves or develop industry or alternative crops, they were a great vulnerability to the growing nation. Even by the time of the Civil War, Southern armies were often bare foot and were using captured "Yankee" weapons. The Southern "elite" wasn't "right". A "heroic" army fighting for a society of foolish "Landed Gentry", who mirrored the inept response of their predecessors to industrialization/modernization back in the Mother Country.
So, yeah, it wasn't about, "Slavery", it was the second half of the Revolutionary War.