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The Triumph of Industrialism

Prior to 1861 the American union was a federation of member States which jealously guarded their own territory and sovereignty to decide upon their own internal affairs. This also included determining whether or not to continue membership in that federation and departing it for another as was done in 1789. Also, by 1861 the North had become a far different region that the American South through industrialization and the relentless immigration of foreigners lacking an understanding of American republicanism.

The Triumph of Industrialism

“The ordeal which beset the United States in 1861 was related to the upheaval on the continent in 1848, and to the spasm which shook England in 1832. In a veiled and confused yet crucial way it, too, was a test of strength between the industrial way of life and the agrarian.

When the Machine first reached this country it took root in the North, and there alone it was able to make even slow headway. The ruling elements in the South were inclined to despise the innovation, for they had black slaves to do their hard labor. In this they were merely repeating history.

The slave owners in ancient Greece had had a similar attitude toward machinery; so had the slave owners in ancient Rome and China and Mexico. These, it must be realized had not lacked the cunning to invent mechanical devices. A Greek mathematician named Hero who lived in the First Century actually built a working steam engine. But did it occur to him to put the contraption to practical use? It did not.  Instead, he installed it in a temple to amaze the worshippers by the way it worked the doors.

That was typical. The clock and the compass, gunpowder and the printing press – these were all invented in relatively ancient times. Yet until relatively modern times they were kept as mere playthings. Ingenious patricians with time on their hands were continually thinking up cunning devices; but never with the idea of applying them to save toil. They themselves did not toil, neither did any of their friends. They had slaves for that. So why bother? And that was precisely the attitude of the white gentry of the South and in their eyes an interest in machinery was vulgar.

In the North, however, the very opposite held true. Bondage had long since been outlawed in that section in part for climatic and other reasons it had too obviously failed to pay. Having no slave labor, the Northerners had naturally been forced to try to save labor. Since this could be done more easily in industry than agriculture, there had been an equally natural compulsion to favor the factory over the farm. The great boom of the 1850s was almost entirely confined to the North and it equipped that region with so much new machinery that it was able to manufacture six times as much merchandise as the South. As a result, the interests of the North, especially New England, became increasingly wrapped up in the fortunes of industrialism.

But as the collapse of that boom had revealed, those fortunes were increasingly insecure. When the Panic of 1857 finally waned and the Yankee industrialists began to pick themselves up from the dust, there was blood in their eyes.

They felt they had been betrayed. For years the industrialists had been complaining that their foreign rivals had them at a disadvantage and pleaded with Congress to come to their aid. They demanded these things: higher tariff walls to keep out cheap foreign merchandise; lowered immigration standards to admit cheap foreign labor; increase subsidies to shippers carrying Northern merchandise overseas; advance more generous loans to railroad companies; create one currency to replace the various State bank notes; and lastly, change the African slave into a free consumer who would spend his money buying Northern products.

But the Southerners had opposed that program to a man. Moreover, being superior politicians, they had always been able to make Congress vote their way. Now, however, the Northerners had their dander up and forged a political alliance with the radical farmers of the West and elected a cagey frontier lawyer named Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. Whereupon, there was war.

The South decided to secede from the 1789 Union. They decided they would rather have half a continent of their own than a whole one run by damn Yankees. Like agrarians everywhere else, their outlook on life had remained essentially provincial. They believed that a citizen’s first loyalty belonged not so much to his country as to his immediate countryside.

Rather than let the South gain independence, the North was ready to lay it to waste. With the Government furnishing the capital, and patriotism the incentive, they rushed to lay hold of more and more machinery. At the time it was called the “Civil War,” and later this somewhat sinister name was softened to the “War Between the States.” In effect, however, it was the “Second American Revolution.” The first had secured the triumph of republicanism on these shores; the second insured the triumph of industrialism.”

(Something Went Wrong: A Summation of Modern History, Lewis Browne, MacMillan Company, 1942, excerpts pp. 113-116)

The Choice Between War and Peace

Lincoln was without question a sharp Whig attorney who knew the intricacies of Illinois politics. On the national stage he led a conglomeration of former Whigs, anti-Catholic Know Nothings, radical abolitionists, free-soilers, Transcendentalists and tariff protectionists who valued their own interests above all. As stated in the second paragraph below he knew that his political support from this rainbow of varied interests and controlled by Radicals, would fall apart should any compromise to save the Union be embraced. He placed his party above his country.

His predecessor James Buchanan was not a supporter of secession but aware that a president waging war against a State was committing treason – Article III, Section 3 of the US Constitution. His attorney-general confirmed this. A president could not raise an army – only Congress could do this – Lincoln circumvented the Constitution with Republican governors sending him their own State troops until Congress met in July. By that time congressmen were aware that they faced arbitrary arrest for “treason” should they oppose Lincoln’s actions.

The Choice Between War and Peace

 “Lincoln’s cabinet was almost equally divided between Conservatives and Radicals. The Radicals favored an immediate attempt to resupply Fort Sumter even should this precipitate war. These men thought the new Confederacy would crumble upon the first show of force, because a small junta had caused all the trouble, and the Southern people would have no heart in a conspirators’ war.

The Conservatives believed that given peace and adequate time, the Union could be reconstituted. Would it not be better to withdraw the small garrisons from forts to so as to prevent immediate hostilities and secure the Border States to the Union? Seward knew there were no military reasons for keeping Sumter and had no doubt that it would soon be evacuated. On March 7, Lincoln told a caller that if Sumter were abandoned, he would have to leave the White House the same day.

On March 12 1861 Stephen Douglas began a debate designed to force the Radical Republicans either the accept or attack Lincoln’s peace policy as stated in his inauguration speech.

He reviewed at length the legal status of federal authority in the South. As the laws stood, the Executive could not use the army and the navy to enforce the law in the Southern States. What would be involved in the use of force? He had secured estimates from competent military authorities as to the troop requirements in the event of war. At least 285,000 men would be needed to compel submission and it would cost at least $316,000,000 to keep them in the field for a year. How could eighteen States ever pay the cost of subjugating fifteen?

The Republicans sat silent as he talked, smiling contemptuously. When he finished, Henry Wilson of Massachusetts, attacked him as the country’s outstanding alarmist. Douglas lost his temper and taunted the Republican Radicals with desiring the Union dissolved. The Republicans were unyielding, the few Northern Democrats were impotent but the galleries applauded wildly.”

(The Eve of Conflict: Stephen A. Douglas and the Needless War, George Fort Milton, Houghton, Mifflin Company, 1934, pp. 548-551)

Penalty for Not Re-enlisting

Lincoln was counting on a brief war with the South as he raised an army – without Congressional approval – to send southward. The army of General McDowell was full of 90-day volunteers and battle had to be joined (and won) before they went home with the government’s $100 in their pockets. The battle of First Manassas was a Northern debacle which cooled the alleged flag-insult at Fort Sumter and it became obvious to Lincoln’s War Department that generous enlistment bounties were necessary to keep men in blue uniforms.  Between 1861-1865 the North paid about $750,000,000 in bounties to fill its ranks. An excellent resource is William Marvel’s “Lincoln’s Mercenaries,” LSU Press, 2018.

Penalty for Not Re-Enlisting

Author Jonathan W. White’s book “Emancipation, the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln” (LSU Press, 2014) suggests that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton utilized intimidation tactics to ensure Lincoln’s election and use the soldier vote to help accomplish it. His assistant secretary, Charles A. Dana, admitted to using the full power of the War Department to ensure Lincoln’s electoral triumph. Stanton was also creative in his filling the ranks with blue soldiers as the unpopular war wore on.

By May 1864, the initial three-year enlistments had expired and strong measures utilized for re-enlisting the veterans. The hated draft was causing riots in northern cities, and Grant complained often of the useless soldiers he was sent — paid substitutes and draftees who often deserted at the first opportunity.

Desperate to retain the veterans, Stanton demanded additional government bounty money to entice them to stay, one-month furloughs home to show off their “Veteran Volunteer” sleeve chevrons, and commanders rewarded with promotions for re-enlistments obtained. Commanders unsuccessful in their re-enlistment efforts were denied promotion or cashiered.

The bounty money made soldiers wealthy men for the time, but naturally caused them to avoid battle in order to spend it. White estimates that only 15 percent of veteran soldiers re-enlisted, leaving 85 percent who walked away, as it had become an abolition war rather than the “save the Union” banner they had enlisted under. Additionally, they saw emancipation bringing many black freedmen north in search of employment, thus depressing wages and taking jobs from white northerners.

“In May [1864] the three-years’ service of the regiment had expired; and three hundred and seventy-five men who had not reenlisted as veterans were mustered out and made their way home as best they could. On arriving in New York, they drew up and adopted a series of resolutions. They began by rehearsing an order of Col. [Henry L.] Abbot, dated May 21, urging them to “stand by their colors, and not march to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.”

The reason for their non-re-enlistment seems to be stated in the charge against Col. Abbot:

“That he has spared no pains to place over us a military aristocracy, subjecting us to every variety of petty annoyance, to show his own power, and take away our manhood; subjecting men to inhuman and illegal punishments for appealing to him for justice; disgracing others for attempting to obtain commissions in colored regiments; . . . about May 4 ordering his heavy artillery men who had not re-enlisted, into the ditch for the remainder of their term of service, thus placing us on a level with prisoners under sentence for court-martial; and finally capping the climax by leaving us to the tender mercy of provost-marshals, turning us loose on the world, without pay, without officers, without transportation, without rations and without our colors.”

(The Military & Civil History of Connecticut, During the War of 1861-1865. W. Croffut & J. Morris. Ledyard Bill. 1869, pg. 558-559)

 

Penalty for Not Re-Enlisting

Author Jonathan W. White’s book “Emancipation, the Union Army and the Reelection of Abraham Lincoln” (LSU Press, 2014) contends that Secretary of War Edwin Stanton utilized intimidation tactics to ensure Lincoln’s election and use the soldier vote to help accomplish it. His assistant secretary, Charles A. Dana, admitted to using the full power of the War Department to ensure Lincoln’s electoral triumph. Stanton also employed creative solutions for filling the blue ranks with soldiers.

By May 1864, the initial three-year enlistments had expired and strong measures utilized for re-enlisting the veterans. The hated draft was causing riots in northern cities, and Grant complained often of the useless soldiers he was sent — paid substitutes and draftees who often deserted at the first opportunity.

Desperate to retain the veterans, Stanton demanded additional government bounty money to entice them to stay, one-month furloughs home to show off their “Veteran Volunteer” sleeve chevrons, and commanders rewarded with promotions for re-enlistments obtained. Commanders unsuccessful in their re-enlistment efforts were denied promotion or cashiered.

The bounty money made soldiers wealthy men for the time, but naturally caused them to avoid battle in order to spend it. White estimates that only 15 percent of veteran soldiers re-enlisted, leaving 85 percent who walked away, as it had become an abolition war rather than the “save the Union” banner they had enlisted under. Additionally, they saw emancipation bringing many black freedmen north in search of employment, thus depressing wages and taking jobs from white northerners.

Penalty for Not Re-Enlisting

In May [1864] the three-years’ service of the regiment had expired; and three hundred and seventy-five men who had not reenlisted as veterans were mustered out and made their way home as best they could. On arriving in New York, they drew up and adopted a series of resolutions. They began by rehearsing an order of Col. [Henry L.] Abbot, dated May 21, urging them to “stand by their colors, and not march to the rear to the sound of the enemy’s cannon.”

The reason for their non-re-enlistment seems to be stated in the charge against Col. Abbot:

“That he has spared no pains to place over us a military aristocracy, subjecting us to every variety of petty annoyance, to show his own power, and take away our manhood; subjecting men to inhuman and illegal punishments for appealing to him for justice; disgracing others for attempting to obtain commissions in colored regiments; . . . about May 4 ordering his heavy artillery men who had not re-enlisted, into the ditch for the remainder of their term of service, thus placing us on a level with prisoners under sentence for court-martial; and finally capping the climax by leaving us to the tender mercy of provost-marshals, turning us loose on the world, without pay, without officers, without transportation, without rations and without our colors.”

(The Military & Civil History of Connecticut, During the War of 1861-1865. W. Croffut & J. Morris. Ledyard Bill. 1869, pg. 558-559)

 

Rebel Perfidy and Juvenile Press Propaganda

During the war, Northern magazines such as “The Student and Schoolmate” targeted juveniles with words and picture games, and songs highlighting Northern political principles. Illustrations were accompanied by phrases: “cannoneers delight in shooting into enemy lines,” and “We propose to make our flag shelter the oppressed wherever it waves.” Ultimately, the magazines “sought to instill an 1860s version of “political correctness” by defining Union war aims, establishing the centrality of slavery in causing the war, and recognizing the humanity of the former slaves.” In short, the children were taught that intolerant “Southern slaveowners had grown arrogant, conceited, overbearing . . . determined to destroy the government they could not control.”

Rebel Perfidy and Juvenile Press Propaganda

“The juvenile press went far beyond providing minutiae about the War. Although it would be too much to argue that children’s writers in the North actually encouraged underage boys to join the army, many stories portrayed the extent to which a few children displayed their loyalty to the Union.

Several threw their protagonists – often twelve years old or less – into battles or other dangerous situations and ranged in length from a paragraph about a fourteen-year-old hero on the USS Cumberland to full-blown short stories and serials.

In the “Little Prisoner,” young James is finally allowed by his widowed mother to become a drummer boy of an Ohio regiment. He proves his mettle at the Battle of the Wilderness, where he is also bayoneted – not seriously – by a Rebel intent on robbing the body of a friend of his father’s. A kindly black woman takes him to an abandoned plantation nearby where she nurses him back to health, reads the Bible with him, and tells her about her long-lost son, who had been “sold-South” years before but miraculously appears just as James is captured by John Mosby’s raiders. The author describes the famous partisan as “manly” but cautions that the “stormy, unbridled passions, and . . . cruel, inflexible disposition” ingrained in this slaveholder made him an oppressive commander and an unworthy enemy.

Eventually, Mosby releases James, who returns home to his mother, revealing how “God dealt with a little boy who trusted in and prayed to Him.”

A similar tale – purportedly a true story – has another twelve-year-old Yankee drummer boy, Robert, captured at the Battle of Chancellorsville, at which he cares for both wounded Union and Confederate soldiers. He encounters Robert E. Lee, who had “none of the smaller vices,” but all of the larger ones; for he deliberately, basely and under the circumstances of unparalleled meanness, betrayed his country, and long after hope of success was lost, carried on a murderous war against his own race and kindred.”

Marse Robert treats the hero patronizingly and responds angrily when Robert declares, “I came out here sir, to help fight the wicked men who are trying to destroy their country.” Robert ends up in Libby Prison, where he survives a nasty fever, studies his lessons with a “good Colonel,” and rediscovers one of the patients he had nursed during the battle, a seventeen-year-old Confederate who kindly helps him escape. This reversal of the magazine’s usual presentation of Rebel perfidy is nevertheless true to form. Young, poor whites are not to blame for the carnage, at least in the war-stricken South presented in the juvenile press; “after all . . . it is true that the same humanity beats under a gray coat that beats under a blue one.”

(Northern Children’s Magazines and the Civil War, James Marten, Civil War History, A Journal of the Middle Period, Volume 41, No. 1, March 1995, (pp. 63-64; 68)

Nov 27, 2021 - Education, Historical Accuracy, Historical Amnesia/Cleansing, Lincoln's Revolutionary Legacy, Newspapers    Comments Off on The Myth of Social Science

The Myth of Social Science

The study of history since the 1960s is replete with programs of “social science,” a term referring to areas of social and human interactions. This is where the fixation on race, gender and culture originates, and the Marxist reduction of all history to class and socio-economic warfare.

Most history of the past 60 years relies less on facts and then-contemporary writings, and more on modern social science theories and class distinctions. Newspapers have been the worst offenders and regularly publish hearsay, inaccurate accounts of history which do more to increase class warfare than to educate its readers.

The Myth of Social Science

Sociology and the related fields of study are not sciences. They are pseudo-sciences. They lack the essential ingredient of science, which is the desire for verifiable truth.

There have been a few times when these fields approached being scientific, but these have been far and few between. For the most part, they have been so swamped by the emotional tides of the times and by the personalities of the scientists involved they have made negligible progress. Is this because scientific progress in sociology is difficult and facts are so few? Partially, but it is more due to the difficulty of thinking rationally in these emotion-laden areas.

To investigate an area when the results may offend one’s contemporaries, or even oneself, requires a rare type of man. The tragedy is that these fields of study attract the man who is least capable of this type of thinking. A man imbued with the ideals of his time, desiring to do good, desiring social approval, is the last man for the job. These men try to benefit society in accordance with their humanistic beliefs, but they do not seek the truth.

The present state of sociology derives directly from this mixing of science and humanism. A man cannot be a humanist while he is a scientist. This is not to say that he cannot be both a humanist and a scientist. But to be a humanist while a scientist is to carry morality and ethics into an area where they have no relevance. The result is a pseudo-science because, in such a mixture, the ethical and moral considerations far outweigh the scientific.

It would be better to abandon the pretense that a combination of science and humanism is anything but a means of advancing humanism.

Is this conflict inevitable? Yes, so long as humanism takes its present form. Humanism as a philosophy is not dynamic today. It is frozen into certainty. Only the implementation of the philosophy is still a dynamic process. To humanism, as to religion, science is a potential danger. Science means change and change is a threat to any established system, particularly one that seeks to fix man’s relationship to both physical and spiritual worlds.

Today humanism and religion tolerate the physical sciences but neither is comfortable with any real investigation into the nature of man. The existence of any science is an admission that all is not known. The existence of a true social science would be an admission that there are things about man which are not known or understood – which both today’s religion and humanism deny.

Some will object that scientists seek the truth and that truth and morality are synonymous. Others will say that the truth will make us free. But this truth is not the scientist’s truth. The scientist seeks facts which can be verified by experiment. These facts may be useful, useless, or even harmful. Such facts, like science, are amoral. They exist, they have no moral significance.

One, it is true, might assess the effect of science on society as being both good and evil if one had standards by which to judge. But who shall be the judge and what will be the criteria?

(The New Fanatics, William A. Massey, National Putnam Letters Committee, 1964, pp 26-27)

“Who Owns These Monuments?”

In April 1878, former-President Jefferson Davis prepared a letter to be read at the laying of the cornerstone of the Macon, Georgia monument to Southern dead. He wrote “Should it be asked why, then, build this monument? The answer is, they [the veterans] do not need it, but posterity may. It is not their reward, but our debt. Let the monument teach . . . that man is born for duty, not for expediency; that when an attack is made on the community to which he belongs, by which he is protected, and to which his allegiance is due, his first obligation is to defend that community . . . Let this monument teach that heroism derives its luster from the justice of the cause in which it is displayed, and let it mark the difference between a war waged for the robber-like purpose of conquest and one to repel invasion — to defend a people’s hearths and altars, and to maintain their laws and liberties.”

“Who Owns These Monuments?”

“An address on “Who Owns These Monuments?” delivered by Dr. Joseph Grier of Chester, South Carolina at the dedication of the Richburg monument on May 7, 1939, best sums up the issue of responsibility.

“Whose monument is this? He said, “It is the United Daughters of the Confederacy’s because it is their labor of love, representing a long period of loyalty, devotion and sacrifice, culminating in the erection of the splendid memorial.

Secondly, it is the community’s, because it will stand by the roadside for centuries in the same place and all may see it and draw inspiration from it.

Thirdly, it belongs to the Confederate soldiers whose names ate inscribed on it, because it is erected in their honor.

And Fourthly, to God, because patriotism and devotion to duty and willingness to sacrifice are a vital part of religion, and as we feel the impact of these things, we are swept toward God.”

(A Guide to Confederate Monuments in South Carolina . . . Passing the Silent Cup, Robert S. Seigler, SC Department of Archives and History, 1997, pg. 21)

An Aristocracy of Color

Antebellum North Carolina was home to an aristocracy of industrious free-black merchants, craftsmen and farmers, such as barber John Caruthers, “Barber Jack” Stanly of New Bern.  Stanly invested his profits into plantations and town property, making him one of Craven County’s most prosperous citizens with over $40,000 in personal wealth. Free-black brick mason Donom Mumford of the same community owned ten slaves.  Also, Virginia-born, free-black Thomas Day of Milton, North Carolina, owned fourteen slaves and was an acclaimed master cabinetmaker in the 1850’s with an extensive clientele.  See: The Free Negro in North Carolina, John Hope Franklin, UNC Press, 1943.

An Aristocracy of Color

“The diary which William Tiler Johnson kept from 1835 to his death in 1851 reveals the remarkable life of this exceptional free Negro in a Southern community.

In the 1830s William made profits of $15 to $20 a day from his barber shop and eventually accumulated an estate worth $25,000. He invested capital in two stores which he rented out, made loans to white residents and owned a farm, which he named “Hardscrabble.”

To work his farm William owned fifteen slaves and employed a white overseer to direct their daily work. A gun owner, he hunted regularly, enjoyed the theater where he sat in the colored gallery among friends, attended horse races, and subscribed to five or six newspapers. He took a keen interest in city affairs, politics, criminal court, militia musters as well as fireman’s parades.

Maintaining terms of friendship with several of his barber patrons, William respected the community standards of the day against dining or drinking with white people. He belonged to the aristocracy of the free people of color, avoiding “darky dances and parties.”

(The Growth of Southern Civilization: 1790-1860, Clement Eaton, Harper & Row, 1961, pg. 92-93)

War for a Certain Interpretation

“We talk of peace and learning,” said Ruskin once in addressing the cadets of the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, “and of peace and plenty, and of peace and civilization, but I found that those were not the words which the muse of history coupled together, that on her lips the words were peace and corruption, peace and death.” Hence this man of peace glorified war after no doubt a very cursory examination of the muse of history.”

 War for a Certain Interpretation

“The surrender of the armies of Lee and Johnston brought the struggle to an end. The South was crushed . . . “the ground of Virginia had been kneaded with human flesh; its monuments of carnage, its spectacles of desolation, it’s altars of sacrifice stood from the wheat fields of Pennsylvania to the vales of New Mexico.” More than a billion dollars of property in the South had been literally destroyed by the conflict.

The palpable tragedy of violent death had befallen the family circles of the South’s patriotic not merely twice as frequently as in times of peace, or three times as frequently, or even ten times, but a hundred times as frequently. Within the space of four years was crowded the sorrow of a century. Mourning for more than 250,000 dead on battlefield or on the sea or in military hospitals was the ghastly heritage of the war for the South’s faithful who survived. The majority of the dead were mere boys.

Many strong men wept like children when they turned forever from the struggle. As in rags they journeyed homeward toward their veiled and stricken women they passed wearily among the flowers and the tender grasses of the spring. The panoply of nature spread serenely over the shallow trenches where lay the bones of unnumbered dead – sons, fathers, brothers and one-time enemies of the living who passed.

War is at best a barbarous business. Among civilized men wars are waged avowedly to obtain a better and more honorable peace. How often the avowed objects are the true objects is open to question. Avowedly the American Civil War was waged that a certain interpretation of the federal Constitution might triumph.

To bring about such a triumph of interpretation atrocities were committed in the name of right, invading armies ravaged the land, the slave was encouraged to rise against his master, and he was declared to be free.

“The end of the State is therefore peace,” concluded Plato in his Laws – “the peace of harmony.” The gentle and reasonable man of today has not progressed much beyond this concept. “War is eternal,” wrote Plato “in man and the State.”

The American Civil war strangled the Confederacy and gave rebirth to the United States. It brought forth a whole brood of devils and also revealed many a worthy hero to both sections. Seen through the twilight of the receding past a war is apt to take on a character different from the grisly truth.”

(The Civil War and Reconstruction in Florida, William Watson Davis, Columbia, 1913, pp. 319-322)

The South Delivered Up to the Care of the North

When the Articles of Confederation were put to the States for ratification in November, 1776, the preparatory debates revealed very strong warnings of sectionalism. These clear and distinct divisions eventually produced threats of New England secession in 1814, economic fissures by the 1820s, talk of Southern secession by 1850, and eventually an all-out shooting-war in 1861 which ended the experiment in free government.

The South Delivered Up to the Care of the North

“The Congress debated the Articles throughout the summer of 1776. There were three main arguments. One was on whether each colony should have a single vote, and issue of large versus small States. The second was States’ rights, whether the confederation had authority to limit territorial expansion of individual States. Third was the method of apportioning taxation. The North wanted to tax according to total population. The South was opposed to taxing slaves.

The latter issue began one of the enduring sectional debates of the first American century. Were slaves part of the general population? Or were they property? The South held for property and Rutledge of South Carolina said that if ownership of slaves was to be taxed, then so should the ownership of the Northern ships that carried the slaves.

There were several strictly sectional votes on the subject with the bloc of seven Northern States lined up against the six-State Southern bloc. It was finally compromised that taxes would be apportioned according to the private ownership of land and the improvements thereon.

In November 1776 the Articles were sent to the States for ratification. The hottest opposition came from the Southern States (with the exception of Virginia) . . . The reaction of William Henry Drayton, chief justice of South Carolina, was typical of the eighteenth-century South. Drayton felt the Articles gave too much power to the central government and States’ rights would be run over roughshod. He observed that there was a natural North-South division among the States, arising “from the nature of the climate, soil and produce.”

He felt the South’s opportunities for growth would be crippled by the Articles because “the honor, interest and sovereignty of the South, are in effect delivered up to the care of the North.”

(The Natural Superiority of Southern Politicians, David Leon Chandler, Doubleday and Company, 1977, pg. 74)

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