The Rights Never Given to the American Farmer pt. 2

Initial Conflicts

Nov 29, 2023

It begins with the rebellion in western Massachusetts after the Revolution against England in 1786 and 1787. It begins with farmers who had supported that revolution by leaving their farms and physically engaging in the revolution. Returning to their farms after the war had succeeded in granting the nation its independence, many of them were beginning anew upon farms that had been abandoned while they had fought for that independence. Supplies and tools were required for replanting these lands. But a lot of these farms were new expansions into lands that had been granted for service in that revolution and were on the very frontier of what Britain had ceded. Supposedly the British had granted the newly independent former colonies all of the lands below the 49th parallel, but the British nevertheless were maintaining a military presence in the northwest that was not directly ceded to any state and that military presence of course was seen more favorably by the Natives to discourage further encroachment of the settlers upon their own communities ability to survive. So not only were the farms beginning to develop, or redevelop farms,they remained in the frontline of the battleground with the natives.

After the conclusion of the revolution the colonists were facing a great deal of debt. Although all of the states had not faced equal consequences during the revolution they all had amassed a great deal of harm (and therefore, debt) to their pre-war economy. The Revolutionary debt quickly became the key problem of the 1780s. The war had reduced the finances of the Confederation to chaos. The initial mobilization had been financed by having the states most directly involved in the fighting issue paper bills of credit. Soon, however, Congress stepped in with its own bills in an attempt to establish centralized control over the war effort. This money held its value for about a year but then progressively depreciated until, by the early 1780s, it had ceased to circulate. As a result, Congress increasingly lost control over the continent’s resources, and after 1779 direction of the war devolved largely upon the individual states once again.. The French maintained the illusion that Congress was still in charge by subsidizing Robert Morris’s operations as financier general during the last year of the fighting, but it was an illusion. The Articles of Confederation, in fact, gave the central government no power to raise a revenue beyond calling on the states for requisitions, which they were slow and reluctant in meeting, if indeed they met them at all.

In 1782, Robert Morris tried to address the problem by “liquidating” part of the federal debt to equitable specie values and by asking the states to fund it, principally with an impost of 5 percent, but his efforts came to naught. The proposal, amounting to an amendment of the Articles of Confederation, required the unanimous consent of the states.equitable specie values and by asking the states to fund it, principally with an impost of 5 percent, but his efforts came to naught.consent of the states^.Outside his small nationalist clique, Morris was regarded with deep suspicion, and the debt he proposed to fund was that owing only to individuals, not to states.Those states that felt they had given far more than their share to the war effort feared that their interests would be sacrificed to those of individual creditors.They recognized that the impost, as an indirect tax, seemed to be the most eligible way of paying the foreign debt, which was due in hard coin, and therefore more of them endorsed it than might otherwise have done so. But the unanimous consent required by the Articles could not be had.

Massachusetts eventually endorsed the impost, but reluctantly. On the grass-roots level it remained unpopular. Many people believed that the revenue from it would be used to pay for commuting the half-pay for life, granted to Continental officers in 1780, into five years’ full pay at the end of the war. Commutation, which increased the army debt by 50 percent, was particularly resented in Massachusetts because the state had gone to extraordinary lengths during the war to protect both officers and men from the effects of depreciation. Early in 1779 the Massachusetts legislature had guaranteed to the army the full value of the wages originally stipulated by Congress, and a year later it had authorized the issuance of £8 million in treasurer’s or depreciation notes to make good this pledge. Though these, like the currency, also depreciated, many regarded commutation as an attempt by the officers to compensate themselves twice over for losses in which the entire population had shared as a result of the war. But Massachusetts citizens had also valued the continental currency at a higher rate than any other which led to an enormous influx of continental currency into the state that led to its availability becoming so widespread it ceased to have any value and it had to be totally suspended from circulation. One possible explanation for the higher price of Continental money within Massachusetts was the faster tempo of trade enjoyed there after Rochambeau’s expeditionary force arrived at Newport. The leadership, however, saw it as the result of their patriotic zeal in taxing the people at the rate specified by Congress’s requisitions. They saw themselves as the victims of their own willingness to participate in a national fiscal scheme, and this experience, enhanced the suspicions of centralized authority that lingered on in Massachusetts from the era of imperial rule.At the same time, Massachusetts had shown a strong disposition to establish its own public credit from the moment the Constitution of 1780 had been ratified. One of the first acts of the new government was to move up the date on which the state would begin repaying its debt from 1788 to 1785. To this end, it invited the state’s creditors to subscribe their certificates of indebtedness at fair specie value to newly scheduled loans. The revival of commercial activity accompanying the French presence nearby, together with the opening of a trade with Cuba earning large remittances in bullion, also emboldened the General Court to try paying interest on the principal in specie. It was hoped that this would give the consolidated debt a sufficiently stable value so that it could pass as an asset as well as a liability. During the summer of 1781, the state treasurer had hastily abandoned an attempt to pay interest in specie on the £1.46 million new emission currency Massachusetts had issued at Congress’s behest.But in the following autumn the legislature experimented successfully with an excise as a device for raising hard coin. The initial results of indirect taxation encouraged them to expand the number of dutied articles and appropriate the revenue to paying interest on a major part of the state’s consolidated debt.Nonetheless, more debt remained than there was ever specie enough with which to pay interest. The government attempted to cope with the situation in a variety of ways. When a creditor applied to the treasurer for payment of interest, he was given an order on a local collector rather than actual money in payment. The treasurer retained considerable discretion as to when these orders were issued. He also controlled to whom they were directed. This allowed him to exploit the original distinction between that part of the consolidated debt that had been exchanged for the depreciation notes issued to the army (the so-called army notes) and had been funded by an annual direct tax and the rest of the consolidated debt, which had been funded by the excise and impost. An order on an excise or impost collector in a thriving seaport could be a readily negotiable asset. But an order on the collector of a rural town, on the other hand, was not likely to be worth much, particularly if no execution had been issued against the official involved, as no local figure was going to risk the wrath of his fellow townsmen if he could possibly avoid it.By occasional procrastination and by a judicious matching of collectors to creditors, the treasurer was able to stretch out his limited supply of specie so as to meet the demands of those creditors living in the seacoast areas, where most of the revenue was raised. This expedient had the advantage of ensuring that the revenue would continue to come in, but the state paid a price for it. Its consolidated notes sold at anywhere from five to eight shillings on the pound, a good deal more than the two to three shillings a creditor could get for the liquidated federal debt but not enough to prevent a development that posed a serious threat to public credit.

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^{This led progressively to the concentration of the debt in fewer and fewer hands. Such devaluation amounted in effect to a disguised form of repudiation, and its attractiveness increased as people found themselves laboring under a growing burden of private debts in addition to public ones and by the subsequent difficulty of paying those debts, laid the groundwork for the upheaval. In levying a heavy specie tax just when most of the specie that had entered the economy during the war had drained out again, the Massachusetts General Court with a clumsiness that coincided when debtors were scrambling against the odds to pay private debt. Parliament at least had the excuse that distance from the scene had caused its ignorance of local circumstances. The Massachusetts legislature of 1785–86 had no such excuse. Congress’s requisition of September 27, 1785, to pay one years interest on its foreign and domestic debts precipitated the crisis.Of the two, the foreign debt posed the more urgent problem. Under the supplemental Franco-American Treaty signed in 1782, the United States had agreed to begin repaying the principal of a Dutch loan guaranteed by the French at the end of 1787 and to begin repaying the interest and principal of the French loan at the end of 1788. Since 1783 the nation’s foreign credit had depended on advances made by Dutch bankers, who might also help in refinancing the entire foreign debt. But Congress had reason to fear that the good offices of the Dutch would soon cease if the nation failed to make some headway in raising specie to meet its first formally scheduled payments. The legislature computed that Massachusetts’s share of the amount due on the foreign debt, together with interest on the federal domestic debt, came to £145,655, only one-third of which had to be raised in specie. Complying with the requisition, however, far from enriching the public creditors of the state, posed a serious dilemma for them.}

^{The immediate interest of the dominant group of creditors lay in preserving the arrangements that had permitted at least a partial funding of the state’s consolidated debt. Unfortunately, though an adverse balance of trade that had developed after 1783, and the yield on indirect taxes had declined to less than £60,000, an amount that placed even a partial funding of the levy of Congress in jeopardy. Nor was the yield likely to increase, given the trade war with Britain that Massachusetts had embarked upon in 1785. Enraged by a series of British orders-in-council that crippled the state’s trade, by the dumping of cheap British manufactures in the American market, and by the appearance of British factors in Boston, the Massachusetts legislature had struck back with protective duties. At first it was thought that raising the duties would increase the revenue, but by early 1786 it had become apparent that yields were continuing to decline. As a result, the holders of the consolidated notes serviced by the excise and impost had a wholly new interest in raising specie through direct taxation.}

^{In order to do so, however, they had to ally themselves with those public creditors who held less favored forms of the state debt, such as the “army notes,” and with the federal creditors. Alliance with the federal creditors was a necessity because, despite the reduced yields from the excise and impost, the most eligible way to raise the specie requisitioned by Congress was to divert to this purpose the funds appropriated for paying interest on the consolidated notes. An attempt to divert them had been made early in 1786 and only narrowly defeated, despite the popularity of partial funding in the eastern towns and the political power these towns enjoyed under the Constitution of 1780 because of the provision it made for proportional representation of the population. The precarious political situation the most favored state creditors found themselves in likewise made it expedient for them to try to meet the claims of those holding “army notes.”}

^{The incremental cost of satisfying all the specie claims of respective creditors, both state and federal, together with the annual expenses of the government, came to just over £125,000 out of a total tax of £300,000. But before a direct tax for that amount, bearing on all the towns, could be put into effect, some kind of equitable valuation of assets had to be undertaken. The valuations that had been done during the war had been completely haphazard and non-symmetric. The General Court had begun to address the problem of reform in 1784 and in 1785 and had delegated the job to a grand committee of unprecedented size. Instead of adhering to fixed proportions for the various counties and allowing them to divide up their quota among themselves, each town had its assets appraised systematically though polls continued to account for approximately a third of the valuation, care was taken to have unmovable assets assessed according to the income they might generate, thus preserving a measure of equity between the newer, poorer settlements and the richer, commercial towns. But the process was slowed down by considerable boon-doggling by the coastal cities, and the final allocations were highly preferential Nevertheless, the legislature had reason to think the valuation adopted in February 1786 was fairer than any that had preceded it.}

^{The adoption of the new valuation opened the way to the assessment of the largest direct tax for specie the Commonwealth had ever laid. Petitions in favor of paper money or tender laws as alternatives to this measure were rejected by the legislature on the grounds that the experience of the war had shown that they would drive money of real value out of circulation and thus exacerbate the Commonwealth's Problems.Though the creditors could not have been oblivious to the risks they were taking—they must have realized that a people who had lived through a revolution that had started as a tax rebellion would be sensitive to such dramatic increases in taxation—most of the state’s leadership felt that private inclinations had already been overindulged, that the time had come to put urgent public needs first, and that a modicum of virtue and restraint would lead to a speedy retirement of the Revolutionary debt. Massachusetts remained the second largest state in the Confederation and still thought of itself as having been far and away the foremost in initiating and prosecuting the Revolution. It had been the first to mobilize its forces for battle, and it had pioneered what was widely regarded as the most republican constitution on the continent, one to which the people had explicitly consented after an initial series of rejections. Now, surely, it was time for Massachusetts to lead the way once more by showing the other states how to extricate themselves from the morass of the postwar debt. And some suspected that if the state did not assert itself in this way, government under the Articles would break down over the issue of public credit. This was a disturbing prospect because the Articles gave the commercial states of the North more protection against dominance by the agrarian states of the South than they were likely to have in any consolidated union. What had enabled Britain to continue the struggle against hopeless odds of a war so far from its shores was its command of credit, as opposed to America’s loss of it.The war had also shown that because of persistent imbalances in the American economy, the nation needed foreign credit as well. Such considerations undoubtedly played a part in influencing the Massachusetts legislature to respond as it did to the requisition of 1785. But the most compelling influence touched on a larger question, raised with particular urgency in the immediate aftermath of the war, whether it would be possible to establish a stable government based on the consent of the people if one part of the populace violated its pledge to another; that is, if the public debtors inflicted injustice on public creditors. As we all know, the legislature’s policies provoked a series of court closings as the western farmers tried to prevent the court enforced seizures of their farms,culminating in a widespread rebellion, an expensive military repression of that rebellion that increased the debt rather than retiring it, and a bitter public reaction to these events that made it impossible to take further action on behalf of public credit at the state level. Other states also suffered court closings, and New Hampshire, too, was briefly confronted with an armed rebellion. But Shays’s Rebellion alone took on national significance because it showed what could happen when a public creditor minority, enjoying the benefit of the most legitimate constitution on the continent, imposed more than routine taxes on the debtor majority in the name of establishing public credit. In other words, it showed the futility of the states’ trying by their own exertions to save the credit of the nation. In most states in the Union, a minority of public creditors stood opposed in their interests to a debtor majority, and presumably creditors in other states too, would be facing uprisings if these states tried to pay their debts that favored the creditor minority.. The sole remaining possibility for a solution to the problem of the war debt seemed to be the development of a new form of polity capable both of organizing the total resources of the nation, as the separate states were not; and gathering them in without provoking the majority. So the convention that was called in 1787 most urgently recognized that gaining control of the colonies finances was of great urgency. Either the creditor majority would fail and the popular sovereignty would be in the hands of the popular minority of those who would continue to rely on a system of debt that continued to resolve itself with debt that could never be repaid and the creditor minority would lose their control of the financial system, or the government would maintain the financial ascendancy of the minority and allow a comparable international balance that would not collapse the leading houses of trade that would likely happen without such a comparable balance.}

^{Well this brought us to the constitution, and of course we all today congratulate Hamilton’s plan to put the government on a path towards fiscal responsibility, capable of paying the national debt and advancing the interests of the creditors. But it did nothing do alleviate the seasonal farm crisis that depended on debt and the ability to pays its debt as a bartered leverage, established by leveling the value of the produce to the value of the needs necessary to be able to finance the production. So in 1794 the farmers in Western Pennsylvania rebelled over the same attempt to tax their produce that conflicted with their need to barter that produce to continue to be able to produce it in what was to become the Whiskey Rebellion. It was not that the whiskey was taxed but that if the whiskey was taxed there was nothing with which to barter for the next day because the necessary production had nothing on which to exchange for the supplies to produce the next crop and would once again subject the farmers to the same liability of foreclosure that had been the problem that had led to Shay’s Rebellion seven years earlier, and then only a few years later, the third farm revolt since separating from England within less than twenty years, occurred when the Heesses-Wasser Uffschtand riots began when a tax was imposed on dwellings, measured in Western Pennsylvania by the number of windows in a dwelling rather than the number of slaves because they had few slaves in western Pennsylvania. Auctioneer John Fries organized the largely Hessian residents and they chased the assessors who had come to count windows away. Of course Congress had passed no law about counting windows, it was Pennsylvania who decided to direct the federal tax assessors towards counting windows as the best way for determining the value that Pennsylvania was assessed to pay on the house-and-slave tax on property that had been levied by congress. The long and short of the rebellion was John Fries and thirty others were brought to trial . Fries, and two others were convicted of treason and sentenced to hang. John Adams took a narrower view of treason than the courts and commuted the sentences; then issued a general amnesty for all involved in May of 1800.}

^{Silly as it seems to be, nevertheless, farmers were the first Americans convicted of treason, simply because they didn’t want their windows to be counted (and taxed accordingly). So attempting to overthrow a session of Congress to count the electoral votes is not treason in this country., but refusing to let someone count your own windows most assuredly was. Of course just preceding this treasonous action of refusing to having one’s windows counted and the reasoning for the justification for the house-tax’ passage was the fear of war with France sparked by French landowners who had fled to the US after the Haitian revolution. Ostensibly this caused a run on Americans withdrawing their specie from the bank of England forcing the Bank to suspend payouts in species. In reality though ,it was a temporary repast from the panic four years earlier that had resulted from the creation of Hamilton’s first bank. During this time speculation in land was the prime way to achieve rapid wealth (or increase wealth rapidly.) The establishment of the first bank and the method set up for funding it led in late December 1791, the price of securities begin to increase once again, and the eventual crash in March 1792 caused many investors to panic and withdraw their money from the Bank. One of the primary causes of the sudden run on the bank was the failure of a scheme created by William Duer and William Macomb and other bankers in the winter of 1791. Duer and Macomb's plan was to use large loans to gain control of the US debt securities market because other investors needed those securities to make payments on stocks in the Bank of the United States. Duer and Macomb were able to create their own credit by endorsing one another's notes, and did so in hopes of creating a new bank in New York to overtake the existing bank in New York. On March 9, 1792 Duer stopped making payments to his creditors and simultaneously faced a lawsuit for actions he had taken as Secretary of the Treasury Board in the 1780s. As Duer and Macomb defaulted on their contracts and found themselves in prison, the price of securities fell more than 20%, all in a matter of weeks.}

^{The Panic of 1792 was further instigated by the sudden restriction of previously overextended credit by the Bank of the United States. When the Bank of the United States first began accepting deposits and making discounts in December 1791, it expanded credit extensively. By January 31, 1792, monetary liabilities exceeded $2.17 million, and discounts reached $2.68 million. Speculators then took advantage of this new credit source, using it to make withdrawals from the Bank of America in New York, which placed undue stress on the bank's reserves. From December 29 to March 9, cash reserves for the Bank of the United States decreased by 34%, prompting the bank to not renew nearly 25% of its outstanding 30-day loans. This forced many borrowers to sell other securities they owned to satisfy the un-renewed loans, which caused prices for these other investments to fall sharply, aggravating the financial panic of 1792. In setting up the bank a control commission consisting of vice-president Adams, cabinet members Jefferson, Randolph and Hamilton, and Supreme Court Chief Justice Jay had been established. Jay was absent from voting at the time and Hamilton, with Adams supporting him, wished to purchase an open market purchase to deposit $100,000 into the bank. Nothing could be done, however with Randolph supporting Jefferson’s blockade against the purchase. Seeing the panic could possibly crash all of the ground the new government had made in consolidating its finances, Randolph abandoned Jefferson’s opposition, and by March switched his vote. Hamilton was able to then make a few other maneuvers and save both the New York bank and the Maryland Bank and preventing a severe financial crisis in the very first term of the new government.}

^{But four years later the government was not to be so lucky and it was the beginning of the failed land speculations that would thereafter to continue to pox the American land market. This time it was Boston merchant John Greenleaf and revolutionary war financier and constitutional signatory Robert Morris “the richest man in America” Greenleaf and Morris had bought large tracts of lands in the proposed national capital of the District of Columbia intending to sell the lands in the capital to Dutch investors. War between the Dutch and the French put the kibosh into that effort, so Morris began to issue his own notes backed by his immense personal fortune. These notes themselves became a source for speculation that caused a severe devaluation as they began to be overpurchased. One of those caught up in this scheme was constitutional signer and supreme court justice James Wilson who tried to flee his debt and was pursued as fled to avoid his arrest, and eventually imprisoned for debt where I believe he ended up dying, or he might have died just before incarceration.. Morris himself would be imprisoned as his specie bloomed to a total beyond ten million but could be traded for a mere eight and the paper pyramid came tumbling to a complete default. But the scheme had created panic by speculations in western lands. But in this first major panic that would persist until 1800 , the west suffered least as it had not yet developed much interconnection with the eastern banks. Many of the speculators who lost their holdings actually increased the opportunities for other, and lead less well off citizens to venture into claims for the titles of those lands. The national commerce suffered serious setbacks, port cities saw its seagoing facilities and the industries that supported it collapsed, workers in the coastal industries were unemployed, shopkeepers and artisans fell into bankruptcy and food couldn’t be purchased from nearby farms. Unable to sell their produce, farms foreclosed as foodstuffs rotted and much of the seaboard suffered severe hunger.}

^{The consequence of a supreme court justice and the nations’ wealthiest man being cast into debtor’s prison, did give rise to the America’s first bankruptcy act passed in 1800 that would allow debtors the opportunity to cooperate with creditors. Opposed by Jefferson he would lead the legislation to end the act three years later. The ultimate of debtor’s prisons in the US would persist until finally (almost) abolished by Congress, and then supported by theAmerican judiciary, in 1833.}

^{Jefferson’s horrendous economic misconceptions, no matter what side of any economic perspectives one might choose to believe to be responsible, led directly to the next economic panic. During the Napoleonic wars, both Britain and France began to board American shipping vessels and impress sailors upon those vessels into military service in their own fleets. Both stated that they were impressing only deserters from their service back into their service. Be that as it may, the impressments did not go over well with the Americans. Especially in light of the infamous}^{Chesapeake-Leopard}^{affair, Congress felt a reaction was required. Jefferson was timid and felt that the United States would be unable to sustain any successful military response. Considering the cowering and surrender of the}^Chesapeake^{he was generally considered correct. But Jefferson’s meager attempts at soft negotiation seemed to result in an even more bellicose British attitude, especially considering that Jefferson took no aim at all against any impressments by the French. With Congress, mostly in his pocket with a strong dominance by his supporters, conceived of a novel method to exact revenge. He told congress that instead of responding militarily we would respond by asserting an economic warfare with Britain. Jefferson thought that he was conceiving a novel new manner in which to wage war and the Embargo Act was passed into law in 1807. There may have been a bit of personal vendetta involved because I believe he actually thought his opponents in the northern cities might be crippled as well. But the British, as a consequence of the war and allying themselves with the Spanish and Portuguese who were also trying to eliminate Napoleon’s dominance upon the European continent, opened their markets in their colonies in the new world to England, and the Americans were unable to obtain much in the way of any markets. But everything Jefferson had been hoping to achieve backfired upon him. The north, unable to be able to import began home growing industry at a rapid pace and producing textiles and other goods on American soil. The Southern cotton planters unable to market their cotton abroad had to subject themselves, at severely reduced rates, to sell to the textile industries springing up in the north. Farmers and the planters couldn’t sell their crops , and mid-Atlantic states that relied heavily on shipping saw their ships sitting idle and their political allegiances shift strongly away from Jefferson’s party. The Federalists regained popularity in much of the country and nearly returned to power in Congress, although Madison did become president, it would be nearly as a minority president.}

^{The embargo also failed in some of the northeastern sates . Smuggled goods from Canada increased Vermont’s economy by 31% between 1807 and 1808, Over a 140,000 pounds of produce were apparently smuggled from St. John in lower Canada into the northeast. In Vermont, the economy became an exciting game of smugglers outwitting the revenuers and Vermonters giving tacit support to the lawbreakers, and participation with the smugglers brought high profits to many formerly mediocre wealthy of many Vermonters. In some other states ships were simply redocumented to foreign companies and continued their businesses of importing and exporting and bypassing American markets entirely. Jefferson’s own secretary of the treasury, Albert Gallatin wrote to him, “As to the hope that it may... induce England to treat us better.. I think it is entirely groundless.”}

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^{Of course, even though Jefferson often challenged the efficacy and propriety of retaining slaves, his extremely poor economic management of his own lands at Montpelier, left him devoid of any net value of his properties apart from the wealth that his slaves brought him. Despite his fame as an enlightened thinker he managed to be void of any sense whatsoever about the nature of humanity and seems to lack all sense of any managerial understanding. And of course his famous purchase of the Louisiana purchase, Napoleon had hoped upon approach of the idea that he might be able to hold Jefferson up for double what Napoleon thought the Americans might be willing to offer… then Jefferson began the negotiations by offering Napoleon double what Napoleon had thought would be double what he would be able to obtain. Of course, perhaps Jefferson did get a good deal for the Americans of the future, it just wasn’t a very good deal considering he could have made the purchase for half of what he offered.}

^{The only real success of Jefferson’s embargo against itself occurred when the British Parliament repealed the 1807 Orders of Council which had caused similar strife to English trade that had preventing British trade with any nation that participated in trade with France. But for the Americans we learned of the repeal of the Orders only after we had submitted our own declaration of War against the English in 1812. The War is famous for the burning of the American capital, however militarily we proved quite successful winning most of the battles both in the battle at Plattsburgh and Baltimore that secured the northern surrender of the British, as well as enabling the Americans to successfully faction off the Creek who had allied with the British, forcing the Creek to mostly retreat to the Spanish lands in Florida thereafter. The new lands we obtained from the French were secured and the British were forced to release all of their remaining forts in the northwest as the Americans mostly defeated the British and their Native allies to release the forts from British control, although it is true we couldn’t succeed in wresting victory in Canada militarily, we did successfully maintain the American presence with Naval success on Lake Champlain and our success in the Atlantic, while not great, allowed us to emerge from the war as a maritime presence in the Atlantic that would soon equal and eventually surpass the British in Atlantic waters. Makes one wonder once again whether Jefferson’s fear of military competition with the British only four years prior might itself have been misplaced, another Jeffersonian calculation that failed to ring true. In the 1960’s a series of historians (Risjord, Horsman, Brown, et. al.) began to view the successes of the War of 1812 in a much more positive light that reflected the rise of industrialism in the north that had begun with Jefferson’s embargo. At the same time the consequences of both Jefferson’s embargo and his territorial purchases from the French enabled the spread of southern slavery but doomed the southerner’s eventual success by binding them under greater economic suppression by the industries in the north that had been enabled by the embargo. Coupled with the expansion of slavery and large plantations into the southern arena that prevented a more diversified southern economy, or even too much of a rural economy apart from the plantations that the embargo permanently imposed upon smaller rural farms in the south; the region slowly descended into being indebted to such a great extent to the north that their wealth was totally invested in their labor (slaves) and nearly non existence beyond it as their land increasingly frayed into less and less productivity by a cotton crop that depleted the grounds’ nutrients, that in return made their own crop less economically viable with cotton from other locales in the world, and more and more dependent on the manufacturer in the north that took possession of most of their wealth, leaving them dependent upon the very slaves they thought they were the masters of but had less than nothing of their own beyond those very slaves and the value they brought that enabled them to secure the debt they needed to plant their cotton in each succeeding year.}

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^{But out at Davis bend in Mississippi, on the Hurricane Plantation, there might have been an exceptional plantation, one of the biggest in the entire antebellum south, where its proprietor's wealth was not dependent upon his slaves who themselves had some wealth of their own, who maintained a diversified crop that continually revitalized the land and kept it rich and productive. He became not only one of the wealthiest men in the south, but he actually prospered each year to an extent that he primarily escaped going into debt to produce his crops. He was a disciple of English industrialist-socialist Robert Owen and he attempted one of the most unusual historical economic experiments I have ever encountered–to create a socialist plantation of humane treatment of people with decent living facilities for his laborers, health facilities as advanced for the time that may have existed in the country, a community of self-proprietors educated enough, or at least enough so that they were to manage the plantation at a profitable level that Owen’s own American colony was never capable of achieving. And all of the self-proprietors, all of the plantation managers, all of the educators, and all of the health workers were of African descent, brought to Americas as chattel. And every single one of those workers remained chattel, completely owned by the socialist proprietor of the Hurricane Plantation. The man’s name was Joseph Emory Davis. He was the elder brother (by twenty-three years) and surrogate father of Jefferson Davis. I find his story completely mind boggling. And completely incomprehensibly, unimaginably absurd that anyone could actually believe in the possibility that one could run a slave plantation as a socialist enterprise.}

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The Rights Never Given to the American Farmer pt. 2

Initial Conflicts

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