HB of CJ wrote:What he may have supported was that all Amendments regarding States Rights after the 10th amendment were ALL also wrong. Seems things have been getting worse for a very long time.
How can you do something that is illegal and can not be done? The answer is that the powers that be wanted it so and did it anyway. The South had much wealth that must change hands.
You must also understand that the political climate and emotions running just after the War Of Northern Agression and the following illegal non Constitutional "deconstruction" period following ...
The War was pretty much intended to illegally punish the South for the crime of standing up for the Constitution ... and for States Rights. The parallels today with about 1868-80 are remarkable.
Just me. HB of CJ (old coot)
Not really. Kinda hard to try to say that when some of the correspondence between the South´s leaders included phrases about how they must go to war to protect their rights to keep slaves and the "godgiven truth" that negroes are less than human and so on with the disgusting shit.
The south was ALSO hot on the staterights thing, but the main reason actually stated for that was slavekeeping rights... So kinda bummer for you.
Much wealth in the south you say?
In 1860, slaves roughly equalled the value of all farmland and estates in the southern states(and had a nominal value far exceeding the total of industry, railroads and commerce), made up 38% of the population there, over half the workforce, and generated almost a quarter of the whites income(almost 42% at most in Alabama and just over 17% at lowest in Virginia).
Then look at the 1860 census, a paltry 7% of the population in the south lives in urban areas, while the average for USA is almost 20%.
The south had 621k urban population, ie the population involved in industry, while the north had ~5.5M.
The south had about 13% of the banking activity of USA and less than 20% of it´s industry, and less than 10% of the production.
North had $263M cash&deposits, south had $74M.
North had almost exactly twice as much horses as the south.
2/3s of the railroads.
70% of the south´s population was needed in agriculture, less than 50% in the north(by some accounts the numbers are 84% vs 40%, depending on how you look at it).
By 1860, the northern states had on average twice the value of mechanisation in agriculture per acre than the south, and grossly outproduced the south both on per manhour, per dollar and per acre comparisons.
Northern population, 23M, south 9M. That southern figure includes the 38% slaves. While the northern figure includes something like <3% slaves from the 4 "borderstates" that did not join the south(Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri, Delaware that had 2-20% slaves).
So seriously, the souths single largest asset, at almost 3 billion $ worth, making up almost half the souths total assets, were slaves.
While cotton by itself made up well over half the total exports from the south, making it effectively a monoeconomy.
So no. Wealth, sure, MUCH wealth? Hardly. A bubble economy almost completely reliant on slavery is not a good idea.