tobacco – Lynn Brown Writer

Combine: developed from the McCormick Reaper

This was a point of view that was represented without data.

Here are the facts:

The South had led early emancipation efforts, especially in Virginia.
The South’s money crops were cotton and tobacco.
Crop rotation was known and practiced at least to a limited extent because plantations were self-sufficient, growing food for people and livestock.
The cotton gin made slaves’s lives easier, and fewer were required.
Now, in 1831, the first practical reaper was invented by Cyrus McCormick, who was born in Virginia. This cut time and slave effort for standing crops, such as wheat.
Few people owned slaves.
The South was markedly less racist than the north, as noted by many travelers, both foreign and domestic, throughout the years.

Against the facts were these issues:

Although the South was less racist, it was difficult for free blacks to make a living. This had to do with paying blacks less for equal work and certain work not being available to blacks—just as in the North. Southerners felt responsible for the slaves and knew that they lacked the understanding of the enormity of the task of complete self-care. They needed to be taught these things and to be allowed to increase self-care gradually—as was being done by Northern states even into the Civil War.
The plantations, where almost all slaves lived, looked rich, but the wealth was not in cash: it was in land, livestock, and slaves. Many struggled with cash flow, even taking severe economies when not extending hospitality (when it didn’t show). The plantations would not continue to exist with simultaneous loss of slave wealth plus wages required for replacing them—even with the former slaves. In that case, everyone was out of a job. Where would they go to make a living?

The answer, of course, was mechanization. But this was a slow evolution.

The planter had to find money to buy a cotton gin—impossible on plantations that were already mortgaged.
The workforce had to be carefully reduced. The slaves knew the hard times of free blacks. Many, especially house slaves, prided themselves on the plantation to which they belonged. So, after eliminating some positions with the cotton gin (unless the owner bought more land), it would be field hands who were sold. The positions could also be eliminated by the natural attrition of deaths.
The reaper would vacate fewer positions because those crops were grown on fewer acres, but there would be some sales.
But the final emancipations would need to be slaves who paid for their own freedom but chose to stay as paid employees.

That was the only way the plantations would survive. The South was willing, but it wanted to do it its own way and in its own timing—just as Northern states were doing.

All the South wanted was the state independence already allowed to the North.

Trade: Deal / War

This is one of many lies by omission. True historians admit that there are many candidates for the title, depending on what is meant by “began the Civil War.”

Here are the biggest three: Northerners often blamed it on the secession of South Carolina, arguing that without the secession, the re-supply of Fort Sumter would not have been an issue.

The Lincoln Administration pushed the CSA firing on Fort Sumter as the beginning of the war.

But the South has a longer memory. It point to the beginning of abuse of the Constitution by what it called the Treaty of Abominations.

Realize that in 1828, the south controlled the majority of imports and exports because they grew crops valued by the world: tobacco and, first and foremost, cotton. The north struggled with imports and exports, especially after the law against the slave trade. Their lands were not optimal for growing those prize crops.

Another factor is the enormous influence of New Englanders with their wealth and their connections socially, industrially, and politically.

So what’s in the 1828 Treaty of Abominations, and why did it upset southerners?

It’s actually called the Treaty of 1828. It was the South that called it the Treaty of Abominations. The new country had imposed tariffs previously to pay down the national debt of the Revolutionary War. But there were three important differences in this treaty:

1. There was no stated common purpose for the tariff.

2. The amount of this tariff went as high as 50% to protect New England’s industries.

3. The tariff did not benefit all of the states. The federal government represented all of the states. Its policies should have been good for all. But this treaty was good for the New England and Mid-Atlantic states at the expense of the Southern economy.

The South had direct economic ties to Great Britain. Tobacco and cotton were extremely popular products. However, as the prices went up with the Tariff of 1828, demand dropped.

Also, the south was trying to increase mechanization. Machines were bought from Britain because New England could not compete in free trade. It was easier for the South to trade tobacco and cotton directly with Britain for machinery and other manufactured goods.

With the tariff, the prices were so high that the South could not purchase the machines it needed, extending the need for slave labor as an economic necessity beyond expectations.

The result of the Treaty of 1828 was an explosion across the South. Although the percentages of the tariffs were lowered in the next tariff act, one following it reintroduced high rates.

Results included South Carolina’s first stab at secession. (She was not the first to do so. Massachusetts and other states had also explored this option for various reasons. No one had been upset about those threats.)

The doctrine of Nullification, propounded by Vice President Calhoun, lit the explosion. The Nullification Doctrine stated that if the federal government could annul state laws that infringed on constitutionally named responsibilities, then states could nullify federal laws that applied to areas not ceded to the federal government by the Constitution.

South Carolina nullified the 1828 treaty and the following one. In 1833, the treaty with lowered tariff rates was passed and also the Force Act empowering the President to collect tariffs by force, if necessary. South Carolina removed the nullification acts on the earlier treaties, since the new rates were now acceptable, then nullified the Force Act.

There is a theory that all wars begin with money, or in a wider sense wealth including land. In the Southern point of view, this was true of the Civil War.