I am reading a book entitled "Tribunal" by Stauffer and Trodd (editors, not authors). It is a collection of essays, letters, etc. written in response to the raid and its aftermath, by John Brown, northerners, southerners, Europeans, both immediately and years afterward. The main point of the editorial comment was that the raid was the primary spark that led to the U.S. Civil War. My impression is that American History as taught today, both in high school and college, the raid has a much smaller role leading up to the Civil War. Comments?
mathman John Brown's raid was simply one of the more "media friendly"(newspapers, north and south. Both used it for propaganda)incidents throughout the South prior to the war(and after), as it was the blacks who were the instigators and carried out the most egregious acts. The ones you don't hear of had different villains and outcomes. And they continued all the way into the 1950s. Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" wasn't about exotic foodstuffs, you know. The cause of the war was economics, mostly. The Industrialized North was outcompeting the rural South despite their "Free Labor". That the North was actively pushing to take that "Free Labor" away was the trigger that set it all going. John Brown's Raid was a part of the zeitgeist that drove public opinion toward Abolition in the North and Succession in the South, add in partisan politics, a contentious election and loony-toons Southern politicians(it's the water, I guess)and it only takes a match. John Brown was on the right side of history, but like most zealots he did evil things and went too far in the opposite direction. GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Or maybe all the way into the 21st century: Trayvon Martin. If Zimmerman were a crazy black man and had stalked a white child, while pretending to have police authority, then got out of his car and accosted him, then (when the child fought back with every ounce of strength he had, just as every child in America is taught to do when accosted by an obviously crazy stranger) shot him dead... where do you suppose he would be right now? What unmarked hole in the ground?
There was never free labor , Roughly the price of the slave was over two years of hard production in the field by one slave . Same as if you have a horse you have to maintain him healthy and well fed to get work out of him.
I agree the cause was economic. (I tend to think that causes many things) but don´t think there was a clear economic advantage to either owning slaves vs. hiring labor - in both cases they cost mainly what was required to feed and cloth them etc. and little more. Probably, on average, it was more expensive to own a slave as you had a capital investment in him to protect but if a worker was injured or died, you just hired a replacement. There were many economic aspects in the cause but perhaps the strongest was the North had water power for many small looms but could not grow cotton and wanted to buy it (from the south) as cheaply as possible. The South could grow cotton and wanted to sell it at the highest price possible - I.e. to England which had larger, more efficient steam driven looms and more importantly the huge captive "empire" to sell it too. (E.g. India etc. were not allowed to buy textiles from any one but English mills.) With that large production cost and volume advantages, English mills could pay more significantly than the North could for cotton. The North used various means*, especially blockade of Southern ports, and finally war to force the South to sell its cotton to the North. Abolition certainly had supporters for various reasons too, but that cause was pick-up by the North as a "just cause flag" to cover their more basic economic desires. - Just as later the US fought wars to make "The world safe for Democracy" etc. when really it wanted to crush an industrial competitor or take someone´s oil etc. *Charleston SC was both closer to England and the main cotton growing areas, but the Union held Ft Sumter that controlled Charleston harbor. See map below: Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! The north was adding men and bigger guns to the Fort. The south really had no choice but to attack the Fort before it was much stronger. Years later, Pearl Harbor was much the same story - the Japanese had no choice but to attack after the US and English cut off their oil supply - they had only about 90 days supply left when they attacked - This is little known in both cases as the victors get to write the history books the masses read. Scholars eventually learn the truth as they seek written records (old newspapers, ship logs, bills of sale, court records, and letters mainly). I don´t know much about John Brown, but think he was something of an egotist, expecting to get guns in the raid on the Harpers Ferry armory and then lead a small but growing army, mainly of newly armed blacks, to free other slaves. He definitely preferred action to talk but was short on careful planning.
The people who went to war thought they were fighting over the expansion of slavery, necessary to guarantee its continued existence. Whatever the underlying economic drivers, they were not the motives behind secession, reaction, and the Civil War. Slavery was. It took no victor's rewriting of history to establish that.
iceaura You and billy are both correct. It was a complex interplay of economic, military and Abolitionist factors all coming to a head at one time. The fight to extend slavery into the newest states, the blockades and arming of northern forts in southern harbors and an intense propaganda campaign by newspapers, north and south(especially about John Brown who was Moses leading his children out of Egypt to the north and a devil coming to free your slaves, rape your women and kill all white people for their cannibalistic, primitive, African Devil worshiping ceremonies to the south)all ratcheted up the pressure and Fort Sumter was the pin. Of course a series of bafoonishly incompetent southern Congressional legislators, elected by an increasingly ignorant electorate afraid of black uprisings or loss of property and way of living on the labor of others, standing against the much more highly populated norther states that meant the only place the south was "fairly" represented was in the Senate, standing athwart the progress of history(England had outlawed slavery, the slave trade was dying worldwide)saying "NO!" Funny how familiar this all seems... GrumpyPlease Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Reason I did not reply to iceaur´s post 7 is that it is true that nearly all who actually fought in the civil war (as in all wars) on both sides believed in the noble cause publicly declared to be why the war must be fought for its stated "just cause." Those brave young men who fought in Iraq and now in other parts of the mid east with oil or other valuable natural resources sincerely believe, for the most part, that they are trying to advance the cause of Democracy, let women have some rights, girls get an educations, etc. and it just Chance that their sacrifices are made in lands with oil and other resources the US needs. This was even truer in the civil war with the poorly educated troops on both sides. I assure you that where there are even greater human rights abuses, but no natural wealth to be captured, like sub Sahara Africa, the US will not see much need to spread Democracy, get girls educated, etc. there. Economics is the basis of all wars - what sort of "noble flag cause" hides that fact differs with each war. Also in the US Civil war case there were thousand of mainly religious people with little if any thing to gain economically by freeing the slave but supported the war as it was the "right thing to do." In post 6 I admitted that for them the main purpose of the war was freeing of the slaves. I said: “Abolition certainly had supporters for various reasons too, but that cause was pick-up by the North as a "just cause flag" to cover their more basic economic desires.” My point is that the "right thing to do" rarely if ever gets done for that reason alone. There must be at least the expectation of economic benefits for the rich and powerful members of society. Scratch the surface justification statements away on almost every one of man´s organized activities (war included) and you will see the economic foundation. I don´t think there has ever been a war with leaders so honest (or lacking in imagination) that they said: "You have something we want and we are bigger and stronger than you, so give it to us or we will take it."
