Would love to know if some contemporaries saw the writing on the economic wall and flat out stated, “We need to jettison this slavery thing and Pronto!”
That was certainly the Republican position: "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men". The view was that slaveholding debased the owners as much as the slaves, and that it inevitably tended toward aristocracy in a manner that was inconsistent with the existence of a republic in substance if not in form.
Moreover, they proposed a very different solution: the Transcontinental Railroad and the Homestead Act, which emptied Europe and filled the Great Plains with small family farmers: entrepreneurs.
Oh, and of course, Northern businesses outproduced the South a gazillion to one when it counted: the War.
Well written and interesting! Personally, I'd say our biggest driver of growth and innovation was the variability and moderate redundancy generated by our federalist system, a system that was federalist not only in the political sphere but in the economic and scientific spheres as well. And we had very unique features in these regards as well, take banking and finance, we had truly decentralized system of systems, this gave us all the benefits of a large continental fully integrated capital market WHILE also providing the benefits of local nd regional capital flow inhibitors and biases. At least in regards to economic policy, the country was genius in its design.
If cotton was so essential to the US economy, why was the Morrill Tariff of 1861 enacted?
Southern planters opposed the tariff yet it became law.
Would love to know if some contemporaries saw the writing on the economic wall and flat out stated, “We need to jettison this slavery thing and Pronto!”
That was certainly the Republican position: "Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men". The view was that slaveholding debased the owners as much as the slaves, and that it inevitably tended toward aristocracy in a manner that was inconsistent with the existence of a republic in substance if not in form.
Moreover, they proposed a very different solution: the Transcontinental Railroad and the Homestead Act, which emptied Europe and filled the Great Plains with small family farmers: entrepreneurs.
Oh, and of course, Northern businesses outproduced the South a gazillion to one when it counted: the War.
I think I meant: Did they move to get rid of slavery more for economic expediency than for any sort of moral reason?
Well written and interesting! Personally, I'd say our biggest driver of growth and innovation was the variability and moderate redundancy generated by our federalist system, a system that was federalist not only in the political sphere but in the economic and scientific spheres as well. And we had very unique features in these regards as well, take banking and finance, we had truly decentralized system of systems, this gave us all the benefits of a large continental fully integrated capital market WHILE also providing the benefits of local nd regional capital flow inhibitors and biases. At least in regards to economic policy, the country was genius in its design.
Amen and amen.