" Englishmen of Honour" Topic

"The American Civil War began in 1861, but more than eighty years prior to that, the American States had endured a long fight to claim independence from its status as a British colony. That battle, the War of Independence started in 1775, and America was recognised as an independent nation by the treaty of Paris in 1783. Abraham Lincoln, who became President in 1861, the year of the Civil War, was only the 16th American President.

In the eight decades between independence and the start of the Civil War, hundreds of thousands of immigrants mainly from Britain, Germany, Holland and other European countries, all arrived in America looking for a new life in the land of dreams.

Trade links between the British Isles and the young United States of America were also strong, especially in cotton and other raw materials. Britain was the workshop of the world, exporting everything from nails to locomotives, but the North of America was also becoming increasingly sophisticated. In 1860 the value of steam engines and other machinery in the northern States totaled more than $14 USD million but in the States that were to make up the Confederacy, it was around $800,000. USD This disparity of wealth and the sheer scale of agriculture in the South meant that slavery – introduced by the British – was essential to maintain prosperity…."
Main page
link

Amicalement
Armand

This disparity of wealth and the sheer scale of agriculture in the South meant that slavery – introduced by the British – was essential to maintain prosperity

The standard apologia for slavery. In fact, the sheer cost of maintaining the slave economy was dragging the South down into bankruptcy. Virtually all plantations were mortgaged to the hilt and the planter class was so mired in debt that it was unlikely to ever get out. One of the first things the Confederate Congress did was pass a law voiding all debts owed to northern banks (which, of course, didn't make negotiating a bloodless exit from the Union any more likely).

And the claim that slaves were essential to Southern agriculture have been proven groundless – the 1860 census shows that the farms of small southern freeholders were more productive than the big plantations.

Oh boy.

There's agriculture and there's agriculture. The (relatively) small farmers (North and South) grew mostly food crops: maize, wheat, livestock, etc. The plantations grew cash crops: cotton, tobacco, sugar, indigo (and some rice), mostly things that would not grow in the colder climes farther north, or in Europe.