GDG- Re: CS supply

[Margaret D. Blough]

>>Those worker layoffs were mitigated by increased hiring in the arms  
industries since Britain was making gobs of cash selling to both sides - which  
is, I 
believe, the real reason they were not going to come down in favor of one  
side or the other in the war.  It would be simple business suicide to do  so!  
If you think that British moral outrage against slavery was that  strong, look 
at it this way - if it really was, then they would not have sold  ANY arms to 
the Confederacy!  It had far more to do with making money than  moral outrage 
and in this respect, the Confederate feelings were correct in  Point 5 above.
 
Greg Biggs<<

I didn't say that the moral outrage was THAT strong; simply that strong anti-slavery feeling in segments of British society (the abolition of the slave trade by Parliament, in particular, made no economic sense, only moral. British industry was making a fortune from the slave trade, even when Britons weren't doing the trading, from supplying the trade) was one negative factor for the Confederacy  in a complex mix of pros and cons.  Her Majesty's government wasn't above fomenting a bit of mischief and taking advantage of the situation, particularly if it meant the opportunity of showing advocates of parliamentary reform that the great American experiment was an abysmal failure. OTOH, secessionists fatally misjudged how much H.M. government was willing to put at risk on their behalf.  Among other things that, focused on their own situation, they seem to have completely overlooked was that this was an extremely turbulent period in UK/European history, beginning with the Crimean War, c
ontinuing through the rise of Prussia and Bismarck, and culminating with the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871, and the abdication of Napoleon III, formal German unification, and the birth of the Third Republic in France.  

Regards,

Margaret

-------------- Original message -------------- 
From: Biggsk at aol.com 

> Esteemed GDG Member Contributes: 
> 
> 
> Margaret writes: 
> 
> >>>>(5) a belief, amounting to an article of faith, that the power of King 
> Cotton was so great that foreign governments, especially the United Kingdom, 
> would disregard their positions against slavery and provide assistance to the 
> Confederacy in order to protect the supply of cotton to their factories.>>>> 
> 
> Your points are all on-target and I would add that when secession began the 
> Southern papers chimes a "buy Southern" program for the citizens which 
> certainly encouraged them to start doing so based on the industrialization that 
> had 
> been happening over the previous decade. And yet there was still a lot of 
> still that was simply not made in the South for a number of reasons but cost 
> of manufacture being one of the top ones. Why make it at a higher per unit 
> price than paying for it at a lower price from the North or elsewhere? 
> 
> 
> As to Point 5 above - Frank Owsley in his excellent "King Cotton Diplomacy" 
> brings it all down to this - "King Corn beat King Cotton," in that from 1860 
> on, Britain for the first time in its history became a net food importer 
> meaning that they could no longer grow enough locally to feed the population - 
> and 
> so turned to the USA for corn, etc. 
> 
> The South failed to understand this and also failed in its view of cotton to 
> Britain on another level - its actual supply. The late 1850's saw huge 
> bumper crops of cotton arrive in Britain, some of which was still not processed 
> even by 1861, so that when the Confederates pulled yet another of their huge 
> strategic blunders (perhaps even exceeding that of putting their capitol in 
> Richmond) by laying on a cotton embargo, which crippled from the start their 
> ability to pay for war supplies, that bumper crop and increasing supplies of 
> cotton from the British Empire (Egypt and India) certainly stepped up to help 
> the mill demands. While Southern cotton was superior in quality to that from 
> Egypt and India, this was not enough of a factor to close all the mills when 
> the shortages did hit causing some worker layoffs. 
> 
> Those worker layoffs were mitigated by increased hiring in the arms 
> industries since Britain was making gobs of cash selling to both sides - which 
> is, I 
> believe, the real reason they were not going to come down in favor of one 
> side or the other in the war. It would be simple business suicide to do so! 
> If 
> you think that British moral outrage against slavery was that strong, look 
> at it this way - if it really was, then they would not have sold ANY arms to 
> the Confederacy! It had far more to do with making money than moral outrage 
> and in this respect, the Confederate feelings were correct in Point 5 above. 
> 
> Greg Biggs 
> 
> 
> 
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