Cotton, the Oil of the Nineteenth Century

[jgoodguy]

Interesting comparison between 20-21st century oil and 19th century Cotton.
Cotton, the Oil of the Nineteenth Century
What if you discovered that a foreign country had deliberately attempted to jeopardize millions of jobs in one region of the country? No, this was not an OPEC oil embargo designed to counteract American support of Israel. The target was in fact England, the instigator was the Confederacy, and the strategy involved the curtailment of cotton exports during the Civil War.
In 1861, the newly formed Confederate States of America, attempting to force England into the Civil War as an ally or as the instigator of a compromise that would acknowledge Southern independence, unanimously adopted King Cotton diplomacy. The South cut off England’s supply of cotton, the essential fuel for the British textile manufacturers.
Cotton prolonged America’s most serious social tragedy, slavery, and slave-produced cotton caused the American Civil War, our bloodiest conflict which almost destroyed the nation. Slavery was on the road to extinction before the cotton gin intervened to blindside the goals of the Founding Fathers.
“No industry,” Eric Hobsbawm writes, “could compare in importance with cotton in the first phase of British industrialization.” The young Karl Marx, in 1846, wrote unambiguously about the significance of cotton and the relationship between cotton and slavery: “Without cotton, you have no modern industry…Without slavery, you have no cotton.” The British were rightfully alarmed about their precarious dependency. Blackwood’s Magazine in 1853 bemoaned the fate of “millions in every manufacturing country in Europe within the power of an oligarchy of planters.” Playing its only card, the Confederacy became a ruthless cartel. Only a few months after declaring itself a nation, it implemented an embargo on the shipment of cotton
King Cotton diplomacy did create a devastating “cotton famine” in the Lancashire area. A large
stockpile of over one million bales of cotton forestalled the hardship until after the Union had stopped
Confederate advances at Antietam in the fall of 1862. It is inexplicable that the South did not know of this cotton stockpile.
Like today’s oil producers, the American South in the Civil War was a prisoner of price. What if the price of cotton had collapsed in the 1850s? Could the South have embarked on a war which cost six hundred thousand lives and injured another six hundred thousand men in uniform?
Cotton was so profitable that like the oil countries of today, there was little diversification.

 

[jgoodguy]

Copperhead-mi said:
According to Douglas B. Ball, who is considered by many historians to be the eminent financial expert of the fiscal policies of the Confederacy, claims that there was no Confederate embargo of cotton although an embargo bill without much support had been introduced in the Confederate legislature, and that most historians who claim otherwise base it on innacurate Northern newspaper reports in addition to Varina Davis's memoirs where she wrote that her husband favored an embargo as a way to bring pressure on Europe for diplomatic recognition although the record indicates just the opposite with Jefferson Davis and his Cabinet forcing the tableing of any embargo discussion in the Confederate Congress.
Ball notes that "Secretary Benjamin, in a letter to Slidell, was at great pains to emphasize that no embargo existed. As he put it: 'It is known that strenuous efforts have been made by the agents of the United States to create abroad the impression that this Government refuses to permit the exportation of the products of the country with a view to extort from the necessities of neutral powers that acknowledgement of our independence which they would otherwise decline to accord . . . Europe is without cotton, because Europe does not choose to send for cotton, and we have no means of sending it.'"
, Douglas B. Ball, pg. 90

I have read of state and local levels of embargo, but the Davis government did not want to impose national government control on planters.
Cotton, the Oil of the Nineteenth Century

The Confederate Congress authorized the burning of thousands of bales of cotton at Southern ports. Each state passed laws to create a cotton shortage. In 1862, Southerners witnessed the bizarre sight of cotton bales deliberately set on fire. Louisiana forbade cotton from being transported into New Orleans after October 10, 1861. Through control of both oil and cotton, governments have been able to directly impact the economies of industrial nations by withholding, or threatening to withhold supplies

From the Journal of the Confederate Congress vol 1
p 308

Mr. Kenner moved to recommit the l)ill to the Committee on Finance,
with instructions to report a general embargo bill.
Mr. T. R. E. Co])b moved to lay the amendment on the table.
Mr. Sparrow demanded the question, which v.as on agreeing to the
motion of Mr. Co])l) to lay the amendment on the table..

p322

Mr. Perkins offered the following resolution; which was read and
referred to the Committee on Foreign Affairs, to wit:
Resolved, That Congress heartily approves of and unites in the recommendation of
the cotton factors and insurance companies that no cotton be sent forward from the
interior to the seaports of the country during the existence of the blockade.

Aug 1861
p358

Mr. Perkins, from the Committee on Foreign Affairs, to whom was
referred A resolution expressing the approval of Congress of the plan of the
commission merchants and insurance companies to keep the cotton
crop in the interior, reported the same back, with the recommendation that it pass.
The resolution was agreed to, and, on motion, the injunction of
secrecy was removed therefrom.

p367

Mr. Chilton presented
A bill to be entitled "An act to establish a bureau in connection
with the Treasury Department to be called the Bureau of Produce
Loan, and to provide for so disposing of the cotton crop of the Confederate

p429

A bill entitled "An act to establish a bureau in connection with the
Treasury Department, to be called the Bureau of Produce Loan, and
to provide for so disposing of the cotton crop of the Confederate
States as shall best conduce to the public defense during the war,"
reported the same back, that the committee deemed legislation on the
subject inexpedient, asked to be discharged from their further consideration,
and that the bills lie on the table; which was agreed to.

P472
message from Pres. Davis
Nov 1861
If, in this process, labor in the Confederate States should be gradually diverted from those
great southern staples which have given life to so much of the commerce of mankind
into other channels, so as to make them rival producers instead of profitable
customers, they will not be the only or even the chief losers by this change in the
direction of their industry. Although it is true that the cotton supply from the
Southern States could only be totally cut off by the subversion of our social system;
yet it is plain that a long continuance of this blockade might, by a diversion of labor
and an investment of capital in other employments, so diminish the supply as to
bring ruin upon all those interests of foreign countries which are dependent on that
staple. For every laborer who is diverted from the culture of cotton in the South,
perhaps four times as many elsewhere, who have found subsistence in the various
employments growing out of its use, will be forced also to change their occupation.
p 477

Mr. Seddon introduced A resolution instructing the Committee on Military Affairs to
inquire into the expediency of urging upon the people and proyiding for the destruction of cotton, tobacco, and nayal stores upon the approach of the enemy; which was read and agreed to.

There appears to be no embargo on cotton and destruction was ordered only on cotton about to fall in the hands of the US forces.
OTOH about this time, the Davis government got the Conscription Act passed.

 

[jgoodguy]

RobertP said:
IMO there is some similarity. However, as far as I know, all oil assets in OPEC countries are owned by the governments, cotton in the American South never has been unless purchased from the producer.

In the antebellum South the folks that owned the cotton ran the government as opposed to cutting out the middle man in modern OPEC where the government owns the oil and is run by the folks that would have owned the oil and run the government otherwise.

 

[5fish]

No, cotton was seductive but Oil brings seduction with power and more greed...

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

I have read of state and local levels of embargo, but the Davis government did not want to impose national government control on planters.
Cotton, the Oil of the Nineteenth Century

From the Journal of the Confederate Congress vol 1
p 308

p322

Aug 1861
p358

p367

p429

P472
message from Pres. Davis
Nov 1861
If, in this process, labor in the Confederate States should be gradually diverted from those
great southern staples which have given life to so much of the commerce of mankind
into other channels, so as to make them rival producers instead of profitable
customers, they will not be the only or even the chief losers by this change in the
direction of their industry. Although it is true that the cotton supply from the
Southern States could only be totally cut off by the subversion of our social system;
yet it is plain that a long continuance of this blockade might, by a diversion of labor
and an investment of capital in other employments, so diminish the supply as to
bring ruin upon all those interests of foreign countries which are dependent on that
staple. For every laborer who is diverted from the culture of cotton in the South,
perhaps four times as many elsewhere, who have found subsistence in the various
employments growing out of its use, will be forced also to change their occupation.
p 477

There appears to be no embargo on cotton and destruction was ordered only on cotton about to fall in the hands of the US forces.
OTOH about this time, the Davis government got the Conscription Act passed.

The above is proof of what Don Dixon stated when he said " the Confederacy was to stupid to be a nation. "
Others have pointed out that had the Confederacy exported has much cotton has possible to Western Europe in return for as much weaponry and especially warships as possible the Confederacy might just might of grained independence.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[Kirk's Raider's]

No, cotton was seductive but Oil brings seduction with power and more greed...

In the case of cotton the West European nations could and did substitute cotton from British India and nominally independent Egypt.
It's no coincidence after the OPEC embargo Gulf Oil payed the Communist Cuban Army to guard their of shore oil platforms in Angola.
Kirk's Raider's

 

[5fish]

T thought for you all without cotton no industrial revolution...

Karl Marx has been famously quoted as saying “without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry”

 

[jgoodguy]

T thought for you all without cotton no industrial revolution...

Karl Marx has been famously quoted as saying “without slavery there would be no cotton, without cotton there would be no modern industry”

That is a reach, but certainly cotton cloth production drove industry at first. There are other unfree labor systems other than slavery that could have substituted for it.