Those of us who know the War for Southern Independence was more than just about slavery often get accused of trying to make economics one of the reasons for the conflict. Accused of performing economic studies after the fact to fit that narrative. But what if there was economic information that would have been available to most businesspeople and people in positions of making policy at the time?
The following information was printed in 1860, shortly before the South Carolina Secession in December 1860. These excerpts were taken from Southern Wealth and Northern Profits as Exhibited in Statistical Facts and Official Figures: Showing the Necessity of Union to the Future Prosperity and Welfare of the Republic, March 6, 1860, Original Edition, By Thomas Prentice Kettell, Late Editor of the Democratic Review [Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by Geo W. & John A. Wood. In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York, New Edition 1965: Copyright © 1965 by University of Alabama Press, Library of Congress Card Number 65-12246].
Beginning on page 75 it is stated:
. . . . . This is the vast trade which approximates the sum of the dealing between the North and the South. These transactions influence the earnings, more or less … … The mind can with difficulty contemplate the havoc and misery that would be caused on both sides by the breaking up and sundering of such ties, if indeed it were possible. If we were to penetrate beyond a rupture, and imagine a peaceable separation, by which the North and the South should be sundered without hostilities, we might contemplate the condition and prospects of each. From what has been detailed above, as revealed to us from the returns of the census, it is quite apparent that the North, as distinguished from the South and the West, would be alone permanently injured. Its fortune depends upon manufacturing and shipping; but, as has been seen, it neither raises its own food nor its own raw material, nor does it furnish freights for its own shipping. The South on the other hand, raises a surplus of food, and supplies the world with raw materials. lumber, hides, cotton, wool, indigo – all that the manufacturer requires – is within its own circle. The requisite capital to put them in action is rapidly accumulating, and in the long run it would lose – after recovering from first disasters – nothing by separation. The North, on the other hand, will have food and raw materials to buy in order to order to employ its labor; but who will then buy its goods? It cannot supply England; she makes the same things cheaper. The West will soon be able to supply itself. The South while, having the world as an eager customer for its raw produce, will not want Northern goods; but she will supply with her surplus manufactures the Central and South American countries, as now with her flour. As the world progresses, manufacturing nations will deal less with each other because they make the same things. Their customers must be tropical and agricultural communities. But if they quarrel with the manners and customs of those countries to the extent of attempting to force upon them a new system of morality, their piety will be its own reward and the crown of commercial martyrdom may be mistaken for a zany’s cap.
………. There is this difference: both the South and the West have vast natural resources to be developed, and the time for that development is only retarded by the present profits that the North derives from supplying each with those things that they will soon cease to want. The North has no future natural resources. In minerals, both the other sections surpass it. In metals, it is comparatively destitute; of raw materials, it has none. Its ability to feed itself is questionable. . . . . . .This period the North supinely permits a few unscrupulous politicians, clerical agitators, and reprobate parson to hasten by the most wanton attacks upon the institutions of their best customers. . . . . . . (emphasis added).
I believe our friends to the North were probably aware of these facts, and they influenced the North’s decision to not let the South go. The North’s economic future looked pretty bleak without the South being a part of the Union. Therefore, the bully will say anything to start a fight, even say things like secession isn’t legal, or the Union existed before the States, or other crazy things to get its way. They certainly can’t say we are going to fight you because we need your resources – that just doesn’t seem very noble. It’s very convincing to have a source available to the public that demonstrated the economic situation at the time. It’s also interesting to note and credible that the author, Thomas Kettell, was known to be friendly to the North and later wrote articles in support of the Union