Mini-updates 1: "Give us factories, and we will assert our rights."
In the decade of 1850, there were two main movements that dominated the southern mindset. Both movements were based around the future of the South, both also placing slavery at the center. The crux of the issue was whether the future of the South laid in expansion or modernization.
The later view was especially popular at the start of the decade. It envisioned a South that modernized and adopted the industrial technologies of the north. Proponents argued that the South had languished behind the other section in several key economical aspects. For example, the Southern share of canals was a measly 14%; their share of railroad mileage had dropped from 44% to 26%; their population grew much slower than the Northern one due to immigration both internal and external boosting Northern growth; and they only had 18% of the nation’s industry.
Overreliance on cotton had defined the economy and society of the South. Cotton was immensely profitable thanks to slave labor and the cotton gin. As trade increased, so did the price and demand of cotton. Due to this, becoming a planter became the Southern version of the American dream. Southerners ditched the development of industry or cities, dedicating themselves to agriculture. “To sell cotton in order to buy Negroes, to make more cotton to buy more Negroes, etc., is the aim of all the operations of the cotton planter”, commented Joseph H. Ingraham, a New England Yankee who authored a book about the Midwest, published in 1835. Ingraham commented that the ambition to possess a plantation and slaves drove many. Those who studied trades or educated themselves to be doctors or lawyers, would abandon their profession as soon as they obtained enough to start a plantation of their own: “As soon as the young lawyer makes enough to purchase a few hundred acres of rich land and a few slaves, he quits his profession at once, though perhaps just rising into prominence, and turns cotton planter. The legal profession at Natchez is composed entirely of young men.”
Statistic further emphasized this point. In 1840, 86.3% of the people in the South were plantation owners, farmers, slaves, or dedicated themselves to agriculture. Just 0.8% were learned professionals. Despite Southern claims that slavery allowed them to “cultivate the arts and the sciences”, while the greasy mechanics of the North labored in the mud, the truth is that slavery stunted Southern grow. The English traveler Robert Russell wrote: “Traveling through a fertile district in any of the southern states, the appearance of things is very different than that in the Free States. During two days’ sail on the Alabama River from Mobile to Montgomery, I did not see enough houses in any one spot to call it a village.” Unlike the North, the South was no land of opportunity. In fact, three times as many people migrated from the South to the North than the other way around.
Erosion resulted in exhausted soils as well. “Our small planters, after taking the best off their lands, are unable to restore them with rest, fertilizer, or otherwise. So, they are moving further west and south, in search of other fresh lands which they will also ruin”, said an Alabama state legislator who denounced this practice, which eradicated small farmers in favor of great plantations. Frederick Law Olmstead, a Yankee travelled, reported a similar phenomenon in Louisiana: “The hillsides were worn, cracked, and channeled like icebergs; the stables and Negro quarters were all abandoned— everything was given up to nature and decay.”
But the greatest source of Southern preoccupation wasn’t erosion or lack of development; it was honor, and standing firm in the face of Northern insolence. The country was faced with several important choices, as the debates about the Mexican cession and the Compromise of 1850 dominated the nation, and president Zachary Taylor threatened to march South and hang every traitor. Tensions were increasing, and talks of secession started. But the South was painfully aware of its economic inferiority, and what aggravated Southerners the most, their dependency on the North.
Most plantations relied on Northern and British banks for loans and credit; most Southern ports relied on Northern and British firms for shipping their cotton; most Southerners bought their products, including textiles, from the North. As an Alabamian explained, “our whole commerce except a small fraction is in the hands of Northern men.” This was a form of “degrading vassalage” that irritated him to no end; “financially, we are more enslaved than our Negroes”, he also added. A newspaper concurred, “The slaveholder dresses in Northern goods, rides in a Northern saddle… reads Northern books… In Northern vessels his products are carried to market… and on Northern-made paper, with a Northern pen, with Northern ink, he resolves and re-resolves in regard to his rights.”
DeBow’s Review, a popular New Orleans newspaper, was the greatest denouncer of this vassalage, and the greater proponent for the solution of modernization.
“Does Ireland sustain a more degrading relation to Great Britain? Will we not throw off this humiliating dependence?”, DeBow cried, signaling to statistics that showed a stark trade deficit. He further demanded “Action! ACTION!! ACTION!!!—not in the rhetoric of Congress, but in the busy hum of mechanism, and in the thrifty operations of the hammer and anvil.” His objective was clear: maintaining Southern dominance over the Federal Government, a dominance that could be lost if they didn’t take the necessary measures, because "the North grows rich and powerful whilst we [Southerners] at best are stationary."
This fear was very real, and it combined with fears of the creation of an anti-slavery party in the South. “The fight will not be between North and South, but it will be fought in the South, between Southerners”, warned some. Hinton Rowan Helper, in his book
The Impending Crisis, denounced Southern backwardness, and urged non-slaveholders to overthrow the Slavocracy. As the decade advanced, and hostilities increased, the fear of non-slaveholders constituting the “ply through which the North can extirpate slavery” from the South also increased. Through its use of statistics taken from the 1850 census that sought to prove that Free Labor was superior,
The Impending Crisis also struck a raw nerve on Southerners who believed their section was being left behind.
The modernization the South sought was to be achieved through industry. They wanted railroads that crossed the entire South; Southern steam ships that traded with Europe without Yankee interference; a Southern route to the Pacific; they wanted to “throw off the degrading shackles of commercial dependence” throughout economic development. "Give us factories, machine shops, workshops, and we will be able to assert our rights”, said several editors.
Textiles and railroads seemed the natural choices. “With cotton and spinners, and with industrious labor”, the South could achieve a flourishing industry, said an investor. As for railroads, “the railroad is the path through which civilization and progress is achieved”, declared various newspapers; a Southern Whig agreed: “This railroad business is the dispensation of the present era.”
But their efforts failed, and they did so miserably. The South did grow in the decade of 1850; its railroad mileage increased by a factor of 4, ahead of the Northern threefold increase, and both per capita and absolute investment in industry and business increased. But the North simply grew too fast for the South to catch on. As a result, the Southern industrial share actually decreased to 16%. Single cities in Massachusetts continued to operate more industry than the entire South. Southerners "are destitute of every feature which characterizes an industrious people”, said the frustrated textile industrialist William Gregg. He blamed slavery, calling it a “blight” that destroyed Southern ambition and growth.
Gregg was, perhaps unwittingly, echoing a common Republican theme: free labor was vastly superior to slave labor. Horace Greeley had declared that when you slave a man "you destroy his ambition, his enterprise, his capacity. In the constitution of human nature, the desire of bettering one's condition is the mainspring of effort." This itself echoed the words of Adam Smith: “a slave can have no other interest but to eat as much, and to labour as little as possible.” Free Labor defined the Republican ideology and mindset. To them, Northern Free Labor defined an ideal society, by allowing free enterprise, economic development, social mobility, and democracy. Southerners betrayed these values. For Republicans more focused on economic rather than social issues, the main sin slavery committed was preventing development. “An exhausted soil, old and decaying towns, wretchedly-neglected roads, and, in every respect, an absence of enterprise and improvement, distinguish the region through which we have come, in contrast to that in which we live. Such has been the effect of slavery”, wrote William H. Seward. Other Republicans agreed, and added their own observations, “Slavery withers and blights all it touches... slavery is a foul political curse upon the institutions of our country; it is a curse upon the soil of the country, and worse than that, it is a curse upon the poor, free, laboring white man."
Why did these Southern efforts to industrialize fail? Some economists have concurred with Republicans and blamed slavery, either because Southerners lacked the labor base and consumer market necessary to kickstart industry, or because they lacked the drive to do so. Use of slaves in industrial enterprises during the Civil War seem to dispel the first notion. Thus, Southerners must have lacked the capital necessary. But the South had plenty of capital in the form of farms, plantations, and trade. However, that capital was used to acquire more slaves, and more land, instead of being invested. “All spare cash is sunk here in purchasing negroes”, complained a British investor.
Southern hostility to the idea of industry can also be blamed. Industry, working manually to produce goods was a lowly profession, fit for Yankees but not for Southern gentlemen. Many Southerners denounced the “filthy, crowded, licentious factories,” of the North, or the “hireling labor, pauperism, rowdyism, mobism, and anti-rentism," of the society of the Free States. They rejoiced and took pride in their agricultural society. “Ours is an agricultural people, and God grant that we may continue so. It is the freest, happiest, most independent, and with us, the most powerful condition on earth”, said an Alabamian. James Hammond mocked Northerners as “mudsills” who had to labor so that Southern gentlemen could dedicate themselves to noble pursuits.
The failure to industrialize in the early 1850’s gave way to shift in Southern aptitudes. Instead of going after industry and development, Southerners started to crave land and territories. Commercial conventions that had once cheered industry, now dedicated their pages to agriculture and Southern nationalism. The industrializing desire of the early decade was forgotten, and the South instead moved its eyes further south, where Mexico, Cuba, and Central America were, and where the promise of a Southern Empire laid.
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AN: As promised, the first of the mini-updates! Of course, it's not really a "mini-update", being of the same length as the regular updates, but as you can see it doesn't form part of the regular narrative I've build, but rather provides additional information. This first mini-update deals with Southern attempts to industrialize at the start of the 1850's. Regular updates will continue as usual, with Chapter 13 being posted next week.
These economic realities should have made people think twice about secession and its effects on the economy of the southern states.