Author: Paul Newkirk

Second take on the Causes and motives of the Civil War

Paul Newkirk –

It was all about basic economics. The 2000 or so plantation owners in the South had gotten to be the wealthiest people in the Country, by far, by shipping on hundreds of ships, huge quantities of raw cotton to the state-of-the-art textile mills in Britain, where they just could not get enough of the stuff.

Since the raw cotton had been produced by utilizing wage-free slavery, its cost of production was artificially low, so its selling price to the Brits was also relatively low. For them, this was a sweetheart deal to get cheap raw material.

Which meant that the Brits could also get rich by producing excellent, very popular, finished cloth at reasonable selling prices and selling it to the whole world.

Once the ships unloaded their cargo of cotton in Britain, they were highly motivated to get back to the USA to pick up yet another load of cotton because the demand fr it was so high .

But these were sailing ships which do not sail well when empty. They had a choice of loading up with English rocks just for the weight, and then dumping them somewhere in the USA, or they could take on a cargo of all kinds of British manufactured goods instead of the rocks, and sell them in the USA for whatever price they could get. A break-even price was just fine for them since what they really wanted was to empty their cargo holds so they could refill them with raw cotton and then get back to Britain.

Now remember, the only people in the South who had cash to buy stuff with were those wealthy, but few in number, plantation owners, since all the available jobs in the agrarian economy of the South were already taken up by millions of slaves who had never even seen a pay envelope. So the returning ships stopped first in Northern ports, since the people there all had at least some small pay envelopes to buy stuff with.

The newly developing factories in the North found that whatever they could produce, a similar imported Brit product was offered for sale at a price they could not match.

All these imports had to pay an import tax, so the Government was making out okay. The only ones who were NOT benefiting from this situation were the factories in the North, both the owners and the wage-earning workers; which represented two-thirds of the population of the Country.

The Northerners were not happy at being left out of the whole exchange, so they politicked constantly for increased tariff taxes on those imports, to create the effect of increasing the selling prices of imported goods, so the Northern-produced goods could compete. And they were very well aware that it was the wage-free slavery that made it all possible to begin with. 

Eliminate the slavery or increase the tariffs, and the problem equalizes itself, by itself. But with either alternative, the plantation owners would no longer make the huge profits that they were accustomed to.

And THAT is why the North and the South were not getting along.

Economics 101.

Was the AOC intended as a “stop-gap”measure while they designed the Constitution?

Paul Newkirk –

The AOC was not really intended as a temporary stopgap, and no one had even seriously contemplated designing a federal Constitution at that point in time. The AOC was a series of definite statements, giving one the impression that this was intended as the final instrument, but as a contract between independents; not as a constitution. In fact it stood in place for ten years before it became painfully obvious to everyone that it was inadequate.  During that decade, and slightly before that, the Colonies, one at a time had turned themselves into States and created their own State Constitutions according to their local desires. They all found this effort satisfying and the result effective, Mass. being one of them. The thought of a nationwide variety of constitution became more palatable.
The pertinent aspects of the AOC are: 

A. That the states are hereafter joined into a Union, and, 

B. The clear and unambiguous statement that the Union of the new States shall be perpetual.  They were so strong on this “perpetual” point that they repeated it a reported 12 times, and as you know, repetition is normally frowned upon and kept to a minimum in the composition of such documents.  I started counting the “perpetuals” myself and quit at at a count of 6, being convinced.  And then there is, 

C. An entire Article dedicated to the establishment of the name of this new Union as the United States of America.  The Constitution does NOT do this, and it can hardly be claimed as an oversight in the following Constitution since these same delegates had so very carefully attended to it in the original AOC.

Neither A, nor B, nor C is present in the Constitution.


At the end of the first decade the AOC was performing so poorly that the States severally agreed to select delegates and send them to Philadelphia with the express mission of “improving” the AOC.  As compared to and contrasted with any instruction to trash-can the AOC altogether and dream up something brand new.  There was no initial intention of doing any such thing as starting over from scratch..

The delegates upon arrival in Philadelphia quickly came to the consensus that their new State Constitutions were a whole lot better than the AOC compact, and began to see that a federal one would also be the way to go, in order to handle the affairs of the Union more efficiently.   So they wrote one up.  After much travail.  And the underlying concern was that they were exceeding their mandate by a country-mile which was to simply spruce up the old AOC.  There was signifiant uncertainty amongst the delegates as to whether the “folks back home” would stand still for this.  In fact, Patrick Henry famously did NOT stand still for this at all, when he found out about it “back home” several weeks later.  He really did try to trash-can the whole Constitution during the State ratifying process in Virginia, and wanted to stick with the original idea of fixing up the existing AOC.  He lost by three or four votes as I recall.


Which is why there is no language in the Constitution that cancels the AOC.  Instead, they started out, right in the first line, to make it clear that the “people” who were creating this Constitution were “of the” United States of America, which THUS was acknowledged as already being “United” and in existence. Couldn’t very well say that if the “United States of America” did NOT ALREADY exist or was NOT United. It would have made no sense legally, semantically, linguistically or rhetorically.  
Notice the continuity from the AOC which created the “United” aspect, as well as merely quoting the already existing NAME of said Union in the Constitution.


And then they go on to say that what they are doing here is “to form a more PERFECT Union,” not to get rid of the old one and create a brand new one, but to perFECT the existing one. Notice how keeping the bones of the old AOC in place gives the delegates cover from the criticisms of the Patrick Henrys of the world.


My original question here was whether the delegates were on firm LEGAL ground on the continuity question when they updated, modified and amended almost everything in the AOC, but left just items A, B, and C, in place. Without including a cancelation statement, they are simply left in place as active as active.

Should we have stayed with the Articles of Confederation?


Paul Newkirk –

The AOC document failed to provide for a functioning central Government, and that was its basic downfall. But it did make some tremendous contributions.

The single most significant achievement of the “Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union” is that it is the instrument by which the separate and sovereign States welded themselves together perpetually into one single Country. People could now refer to themselves as Americans, and it now had a legal meaning rather than just a nickname.

However, since the primary governmental sovereignty stayed with the States, the AOC provided very little structure for the Country to develop any unity of purpose or action. The States continued to put their own interests first, relative to all of the other States.

After trying to function for a dozen years or so with this impractical situation, they amended, updated, and superseded nearly all of the provisions of the AOC, one at a time, and gathered the results into a new Constitution.  *Nearly* all provisions. But most definitely, not all of them.

Two provisions of the AOC were left in place, and remain so, to this day:

1.) The fact of the Perpetual Union, and

2.) The actual provision establishing the name of the Country.

Both of those items were already in existence, and there was no need to re-create them, even though all of the other provisions had been superseded. Which is why these two items are NOT found to be officially established within the Constitution.

And no; the Preamble does not “establish” anything at allIt is merely an introduction, with a list of goals.  [EDIT:]  But it DID note that the people entity, “We the people” as the sovereign of the Country, had produced this Constitution, and that IT was the ultimate arbiter of American governance, rather than the States.

And no, contrary to popular myth, the AOC was NOT cancelled in its entirety upon adoption of the new Constitution. There is not one single word, anywhere, which would have that effect. Not one. It did not happen.

The most salient change established by the Constitution was:

1.) to vest the primary national sovereignty of the Country, with The People, and

2.) to vest the secondary national sovereignty, with the Constitution and its central Government, and

3.) to vest/confirm the tertiary level of sovereignty with the State Governments, within their own States.

The end result was a functional Country, rather than a club of States.

What would have happened if Virginia or New York didn’t ratify the Constitution?


Paul Newkirk –

It would have been a problem. New York and Virginia were the ones with the largest populations as well as the most land, and they both were situated physically right smack in the middle of the 13 States.

Combined with the actual hold-out States of Rhode Island and North Carolina, those four States could not have blocked the remaining 9 States from putting the Constitution into effect legally, since 9 States was all that was called for. But the result would have been impractical, with the Constitution States separated by wide geographical areas by those hold-outs. Not readily defensible, and not an efficient way to do business, with each other, nor with the rest of the world.

Faced with an intolerable situation such as that posed by your question, they would have called for ANOTHER Constitutional convention and either started over from scratch, or they would have negotiated with the 4 hold-outs to deal with their demands. Which would have generated a few Amendments to the hung-up, but already ratified (by nine States), first effort at a Constitution.

This kind of situation could have gotten very dicey, since the reluctant 4 States were perfectly within their Rights to DEMAND that all 13 States remain under the Articles of Confederation.

How so? The AOC clearly stated that the only way to amend THAT document was by unanimous consent of ALL of the States; which certainly had not been achieved in the process followed to Adopt and Ratify the new Constitution. If the hold-outs had been really upset about something, and continued their holding-out, they could have told James Madison and friends to go take a flying leap. Legally.

Might have been a good idea to remove any sharp implements or heavy objects from Constitution Hall before the next Convention began. Virginia decided on its own to join up in return for a Bill of Rights, and luckily, the Founders were able to explain to the other hold-outs what life would be like for them if all the other States were slow to support them when another “acquisitive” European power became “interested” in them. Whereupon all the remaining hold-outs decided to sign up.

Why was there a Civil War

Paul Newkirk –

It was all about basic economics. The 2000 or so plantation owners in the South had gotten to be the wealthiest people in the Country, by far, by shipping on hundreds of ships, huge quantities of raw cotton to the state-of-the-art textile mills in Britain, where they just could not get enough of the stuff.

Since the raw cotton had been produced by utilizing wage-free slavery, its cost of production was artificially low, so its selling price to the Brits was also relatively low. For them, this was a sweetheart deal to get cheap raw material.

Which meant that the Brits could also get rich by producing excellent, very popular, finished cloth at reasonable selling prices and selling it to the whole world.

Once the ships unloaded their cargo of cotton in Britain, they were highly motivated to get back to the USA to pick up yet another load of cotton because of the demand for it was so high.

But these were sailing ships which do not sail well when empty. They had a choice of loading up with English rocks just for the weight and then dumping them somewhere in the USA, or they could take on a cargo of all kinds of British manufactured goods instead of the rocks, and sell them in the USA for whatever price they could get. A break-even price was just fine for them since what they really wanted was to empty their cargo holds so they could refill them with raw cotton and then get back to Britain.

Now, remember, the only people in the South who had the cash to buy stuff with were those wealthy, but few in number, plantation owners, since all the available jobs in the agrarian economy of the South were already taken up by millions of slaves who had never even seen a pay envelope. So the returning ships stopped first in Northern ports since the people there all had at least some small pay envelopes to buy stuff with.

The newly developing factories in the North found that whatever they could produce, a similar imported Brit product was offered for sale at a price they could not match.

All these imports had to pay an import tax, so the Government was making out okay. The only ones who were NOT benefiting from this situation were the factories in the North, both the owners and the wage-earning workers; which represented two-thirds of the population of the Country.

The Northerners were not happy at being left out of the whole exchange, so they politicked constantly for increased tariff taxes on those imports, to create the effect of increasing the selling prices of imported goods, so the Northern-produced goods could compete. And they were very well aware that it was the wage-free slavery that made it all possible, to begin with.

Eliminate slavery or increase the tariffs, and the problem equalizes itself, by itself. But with either alternative, the plantation owners would no longer make the huge profits that they were accustomed to.

And THAT is why the North and the South were not getting along.

Economics 101.

Causes and motives of the Civil War

Was slavery the real reason for the Civil War? This is a common question when discussing causes and motives of the Civil War…

Some may vaguely recall reading somewhere a long time ago that slavery was actually a ‘secondary’ reason for the Civil War.  The primary reason was economic. The south was growing cotton and exporting it to England’s cotton mills. The northern mills couldn’t get the cotton they needed for their manufacturing. One thing led to another and fighting broke out. BUT manufacturing differences? It wasn’t a ‘good reason’ to have an all-out war. Northerners didn’t “approve’’ of slavery and slaves were doing planting and harvesting of the cotton. So, if slavery was eliminated, then the cotton couldn’t be shipped to England. Therefore, “we will ‘make’ them stop using slaves.”

Paul Newkirk –

Yes, it WAS an economic problem. But then again, slavery itself was based on economics. The wage-free aspect of slaves is what made them a good investment, not the opportunity to boss them around. The plantation owners became the wealthiest people in the whole Country because of wage-free labor. The North could buy as much raw cotton from the South as it wanted, but it’s cotton mills were nowhere near as efficient as the state-of-the-art mills in Britain. Therefore the finished British cloth was lower-priced than anything the Northern mills could produce.The British mills were selling cloth all over Europe, a huge market, and needed a steady supply of raw cotton from the South. But once the raw cotton was offloaded in Britain, they were incentivized to send the ships back to the USA to get some more, and they had to load up those ships with SOMETHING, since they did not sail well when empty. Sometimes they filled them up with just rocks, which were simply dumped once they got back to the USA. As often as they could, the ships were instead filled up with whatever manufactured goods were available, including not only FINISHED CLOTH, but also things like farm plows and shovels, etc.New England is full of pretty stone walls, but after a while one notices that the stone walls on the properties in the seaports are so intricate and precise they look like an architect had something to do with it. And the stones, oddly, are different than the ones on inland stone walls. Ask how that could be, and the answer is “these stones are not from around here.” When that seems outrageously unlikely, considering the weight of stones in general, one is further told that they are referred to as “slave walls.” Oh.    And then they tell you the rest of the history. They love their walls and they will fight you to the death to retain them, but they are rather uncomfortable with how they got built. The manufactured goods were loaded in the ships in the first place mainly as ballast weight, remember, and the USA was a dinky-sized market compared to the whole of Europe. The Captains sold the cargo, at cost or below, as quickly as they could, so they could then fill the holds with more raw cotton, the real prize in all this, and get back to Britain. Now picture what the effect was on all the factories and mills in the North, trying to establish a market for their own struggling factories, when all these factory products from Europe got dumped on their doorstep whenever a ship arrived, several times a day. And NONE of this would have happened without millions of wage-free slaves working for free, all over the South. And it becomes obvious why the plantation owners of the South and the factory owners of the North were in severe economic conflict with each other.

Republics ARE democracies

Paul Newkirk –

…Ben Franklin declared they had created a republic, not a democracy….

The opposite of “republic” is “monarchy” (or dictatorship) and yes, the people around Ben Franklin were pleased to see that the delegates had not created another monarchy. Ben did NOT say that that it was not a democracy.

Obviously, monarchies are run by sovereign Kings, while republics are instead run by the sovereign People entity.

The original word for republic was “ras publica,” or “thing of the people, ” while the original word for monarchy was “monarkhia’ or “rule of one.”

The ONLY way to determine how the sovereign “People entity” wants to govern on any matter is to ask them to vote on it, which quite automatically makes a republic ALSO a democracy.

Therefore, ALL true republics are ALSO democracies, otherwise they could not function at all.

Are We Headed to Another Civil War?

Of Course Not

Paul Newkirk –

The unique thing about our Government is that it was the first one to be specifically created as a Government “of the people, by the people, and for the people,” as contrasted with a King, or a Dictator, or an Emperor, or any of authoritarian, so-called “strong-man” alternative.  Nobody else had tried to do this.

And because it was the first one, nobody, anywhere, thought it would work, precisely because our population was not a uni-culture like most other Countries, where everyone had a very similar background and could be expected to share many of the same attitudes. It was instead a multi-culture and when they referred to it around the world as the “American Experiment” it was as an expression of that pessimism.  The first settlers to our largest city consisted of roughly 36 persons, speaking a total of roughly 24 languages, for example.  Nothing even remotely “mono-culture” about it.   And yet they pulled it off, spectacularly

How could we be expected to be able to form any kind of democratic consensus to enable government to be even possible with so much diversity?    Luckily we had a great deal of geographic “elbow room” to expand and keep out of each other’s way, while the kids got on with the business of assimilation.

And luckily we also had a group of Founders smart enough to construct a Government flexible enough to accommodate our diversity, while still strong enough to operate as a unified whole.    Everybody would have a voice in Government by voting on any principle or candidate, and the concept with the most votes would be then adhered-to by the whole of us, regardless of whether one’s vote was for or against.    “Duly- elected” was the key phrase.   The operative activity left available for dissenters was to persuade, but certainly NOT to open fire.

And then they installed a system where the whole resulting Government was *AUTOMATICALLY* “overthrown” piece by piece, by the sovereign People with their votes, every two years, every four years, and every six years.   No opportunity for gaining power by force or by bullying was feasible.   No need for violence.

The Founders thought they had designed-away any need for any sort of violent revolution, ever, as long as the citizens followed the Constitution.

They had the principles right, but they fell short on the implementation phase when they failed to solve the issue of slavery, which was the exact opposite of everything else they held dear.  The price for that failure almost disintegrated the whole enterprise some 80 years later.  But it was not the principles which were deficient, it was the initial implementation.

The Civil War happened because those magnificent principles were disregarded in favor of personal profit.  It was a brutally painful and expensive mistake of a war, undertaken for purely crass reasons.  Never to allow such a stupid thing to happen again was the main lesson, deeply learned, and enshrined in our history.

And THAT’S what I mean by “of course not.”  Violent change is not necessary, and can’t be really necessary, since a peaceful alternative for change of government is built right into the fabric of the Country.

Although the thought of another Civil War sure seems to excite SOME people.