Lyle,
My apologies for opening the worm can back there; my point was not meant to be about the motives of civil war soldiers or the politics of secession but to say that the institution of slavery was more than merely an economic interest to white southerners. Consider how adaptable an institution slavery was: by the 1840s slaves were doing all manner of work -- mining, ironmaking and other industries, cattle, building trades, maritime trades, skilled, unskilled, as well as the traditional agricultural realm -- it seems that there was no shortage of tasks one could find to exploit with slave labor if one wanted to exploit slave labor -- and that's my point. The argument that they would come to a reasonable pocketbook decision against slavery would have a long way to go than just mechanizing farming.
Getting back to the question about the mechanization of agriculture, if one considers how long it took to produce and put to wide use an automated cotton picker, one can see the pressure of non-economic factors in that technological evolution. The Rust cotton picker in the 1930s did not catch on as expected because it was either not seen to be in the interest of Depression-era society to displace all those sharecroppers (not in their immediate interest either) or it was not in the interest of the landholders whose traditional authority rested on having a dependent underclass of people.
Even that long after slavery it is difficult to separate out the economic from the social or political.
My two cents.
David Kiracofe
________________________________________
From: Discussion of research and writing about Virginia history [[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Lyle E. Browning [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, May 07, 2012 3:41 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: The Peculiar Institution's End Without The Intervention Of The Civil War
ALRIGHT YOU LOT,
Stop hijacking my original post's intent;) I'm not concerned with why people fought. That they did is evident.
What I am concerned with is whether the mechanization of farming would have resulted in the destruction of slavery. If you look at the census figs, some 70-90% of the population at any given time were on farms until the 20th century. Now it's about 3%. If that trajectory had followed WITHOUT the intervention of the Civil War, slavery would, in my view, have become superfluous. Slaveowners bought and used people because until the second agricultural revolution that brought animal power and towed equipment into the picture, they were all that they had. And due to the peculiarities of some of the southern crops, intensive hand labor was needed. But if you progressively add equipment that paid for itself quickly, did more per day and did it more efficiently and with less cost than slaves could do it, it seems to me that even the dimmest person would at some point see that keeping all those folks housed, fed and supervised, not to mention the social issues raised by bondage, would make no economic sense.
So can you please respond to that thesis and turn your considerable guns upon it rather than the usual arguments;)
Lyle Browning
On May 7, 2012, at 2:32 PM, Alexander Colvin wrote:
> James McPherson, of Princeton U, author of "For Cause and Comrades,"
> examined this question as well in his seminal work. We were required to
> read it (and four other books,) in Dr. Steven Deley's Civil War and
> Reconstruction course at University of Houston (upper class) which I just
> finished. McPherson examined thousands of letters from CSA and Union
> soldiers in hopes of finding the truest sentiments of why these men fought;
> the ultimate answer it seems is rather varied and changed as the war
> progressed. IOW, there was no single reason but there were overall themes:
> to end slavery, and its counter-point; to protect the union and its
> counter-point; to protect home and hearth, and for love of comradeship are
> some of the reoccurring and developing themes. In Dr. Deley's course, were
> were tested on these issues, and they are multi-layered. I would encourage
> you to read McPherson's short but very readable work. which suggests the
> rational changed over time as the war dragged on.
>
>
>
>
> On Mon, May 7, 2012 at 11:29 AM, Jeff Southmayd <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
>> "We often ask why so many southern white men, who did not own slaves and
>> whose economic picture was negatively impacted by the competition from
>> slavery, fought in 1861 to uphold an institution that did not evidently
>> benefit them..."Pretty obvious they fought largely because their homes were
>> being invaded by an enemy army. Or as one Southern soldier in Virginia
>> reportedly responded to a Northern soldier's question "Reb, why are you
>> fighting" with "I reckon because your here."
>> SOUTHMAYD & MILLER4 OCEAN RIDGE BOULEVARD SOUTH
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