It was from my understanding that the CSA had enough cotton stockpiled to sell and fund a large portion of the war, but they decided to keep it and not sell for below market value. I'm just curious to hear everyones take on it.
Cheers
Posted Feb 23, 2020, 1:23 PM UTC
It probably would not have made a difference.
Didn't the South have Bumper Crops of Cotton in 1859 and 1860. Thus England's warehouse's were bursting with cotton. Enough so, They had enough to carry them for a few years. Till other sources were found in India and Egypt. One reason They did not throw in with the South. Main Reason was England and France had crop failures. Their main source of Grain was the Union North. This is often overlooked. England needed Food more than Cotton.
Goes to show just how well balanced the North was. The Industrial Base is always talked about. But the North also had could well hold its own when it came to Agriculture. Not to mention having the manpower to field an army but produce enough crops to feed it self but others. But also produce industrial goods.
My understanding is that they held the supply from Europe to apply some pressure in helping the CSA, but it didn’t really work out.
The North had more than twice as many men available to fight as the South.
Even if they got their cotton to market the South still needed to import mountains of manufactured goods that couldn't be produced in large quantities. And the blockade only caught about a tenth of the ships that tried to run it, but most didn't try to run it. So that wouldn't be changed by selling their cotton.
The North won the civil war without mobilizing all it's men. It won without significant economic hardship.
So no, selling a bit of cotton wouldn't have changed the war much.
No. That would have given them more money, it's true, but money was not their problem. The South was, after all, the wealthiest part of the U.S. Their problem was incompetent generals who did not know what they were doing, a disorganized war effort, growing divisions at home, an ultimately weak industrial economy that could not provide enough war materiel or industrial goods (RR rails, for example), and fighting for a very bad cause, slavery, that could not be sustained.
The south had a lot of money. That wasn’t the problem. There was a blockade that stopped most of the commerce to and from the south. British blockade runners did make it through and supplied about a million rifles to the Confederates. But it was only the blockade that slowed that down rather than money
I doubt it. It would have been better put to use for their uniforms. The CSA May have been somewhat behind the Union when it came to firearms but that’s kind of overstated. By the end of the war the vast majority of the CS forces were armed with the same rifles as the federal troops and had been for the majority of the war. Money should have been a secondary concern but hindsight is 2020.
Overall, the Confederate chances of winning were quite low but there are certain short periods of time when those odds rise dramatically. There's a very strong case to be made for possible Anglo-French diplomatic recognition if the Confederacy wins at Antietam and bring the north to the bargaining table (Napoleon III was intensely favour even after the Confederate defeat at Antietam but wouldn't act without Britain) especially if the peace Democrats make gains during the midterms.
The other high water point was probably just before the 1864 election, if Atlanta fails to fall there's a reasonable chance McLellan wins and sues for peace on the back of a war weary Union.
Would cotton being on the open market have changed that? Maybe, it certainly makes their economics better and probably helps avoid the worst of the inflation crisis. They'll also have more hard currency which leads to a generally happier population and one less prone to surrender. The army is probably better equipped too which might break the Union at Antietam or Atlanta.
“Overall, the Confederate chances of winning were quite low” iF oNLy JaCkSon wAsnt KiLlEd tHe SouTh WouLd Of WoN
I normally never put things down to a lone man, but swapping Johnston with Hood proved to be monumentally terrible.
Jackson was a good general, but given what he was doing as a whole I'm not sure how he helps that much. There are simply too many structural defecits in the Confederacy for good generalship to overcome.
That said, good generalship in the west (or even mediocre) might have had a big difference
I’m just making fun of all the people I hear say “Jackson would of won us the war” Jackson was also somewhat of a nut job. There are lots of accounts of him acting peculiar. Then there was that whole thing with him holding his arm up all the time. And he had a weird thing with lemons. The man loved lemons.