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Understanding and Teaching the Roots of the Civil War, part 3 EDS 112 Summer Institute 2009

Understanding and Teaching the Roots of the Civil War, part 3 EDS 112 Summer Institute 2009. Jenny Wahl Economics Department Carleton College.

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Understanding and Teaching the Roots of the Civil War, part 3 EDS 112 Summer Institute 2009

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  1. Understanding and Teaching the Roots of the Civil War, part 3EDS 112 Summer Institute 2009 Jenny Wahl Economics Department Carleton College

  2. [I]t is the opinion of the court that the Act of Congress which prohibited a citizen from holding and owning property of this kind in the territory of the United States north of the line therein mentioned, is not warranted by the Constitution, and is therefore void . . . -- Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857), 19 How. 393,452 (1857)

  3. Distribution of Slave Population by Region, 1840-1860

  4. Population Distribution, 1840-1860

  5. Canal and Rail Mileage, North and South, 1830-1860

  6. Number and Price of Acres, Public Land Offices, 1850-60

  7. Estimated Annual Growth Rate, Iowa Population, 1847-60

  8. Commodity Price Index, 1850-60

  9. 3500 3000 2500 2000 1500 miles of rails added investment index 1000 1856 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 Railroad Investment and Added Mileage, 1850-56

  10. 75.0% % total % additional 65.0% 55.0% 45.0% 35.0% 25.0% 15.0% 5.0% 1848 1849 1850 1851 1852 1853 1854 1855 1856 % Total and Added Rail Mileage in OH, IN, IL, MI, WI, IA

  11. Railroad Stock Indices 1850-1856

  12. State Banks of Indiana (1837) and Louisiana (1821)

  13. Iowa Land Prices, 1857

  14. Railroad Stock Indices, 1/3/57-10/10/57

  15. % Change in Railroad Earnings and % Passenger Receipts % change earnings %passenger receipts %passenger 1855/56 to 1859 1855/56 receipts 1859 New England (ME, NH, VT, MA, CN, RI) 18 52 46 North Atlantic (NY, NJ, PA) -4 41 37 North Central (OH, IN, IL, MI) -16 50 45 South Atlantic (DE, MD, VA, SC, NC, GA, FL) 26 32 35 South Central (KY, TN, AL, MI, LA) 209 47 46 Tennessee 43 58 South West (TX, MO) 1500 40 51

  16. Railroad Stock Indices 1857-59

  17. Stock Prices, Major Railroads, 1850-59

  18. Municipal Bond Prices by Region and Time Period

  19. Salient Regional Differences NORTH SOUTH Banking Call loans Specie reserves Most suspended Few suspended Commerce Depressed prices Stable prices Failure rate 3.24% Failure rate 1.21% $142 million loss $15 million loss RR Stocks Speculators Local investors High volatility Low volatility Depressed prices Quick recovery

  20. When the abuse of credit had destroyed credit and annihilated confidence;  when thousands of the strongest commercial houses in the world were coming down, and hundreds of millions of dollars of supposed property evaporating in thin air;  . . . what brought you up?   Fortunately for you it was the commencement of the cotton season, and we have poured in upon you one million six hundred thousand bales of cotton just at the crisis to save you from destruction.   That cotton, but for the bursting of your speculative bubbles in the North, which produced the whole of this convulsion, would have brought us $100,000,000.   We have sold it for $65,000,000 and saved you.   Thirty-five million dollars we, the slaveholders of the South, have put into the charity box for your magnificent financiers, your "cotton lords," your "merchant princes." . . . The South have sustained you in great measure.   You are our factors.   You fetch and carry for us. . . . Suppose we were to discharge you;  suppose we were to take our business out of your hands; -- we should consign you to anarchy and poverty.  Source: “King Cotton” Speech by S.C. Senator James Hammond, 4 March 1858, quoted at http://www.sewanee.edu/faculty/Willis/Civil_War/documents/HammondCotton.html.

  21. Brief Schema, Panic of 1857 Escalating prices for Western real estate ↓ Pyramid of debt, new investment vehicles ↓ Shocks: Dred Scott, Bad info about RR ↓ Long-reaching effects on multiple interlocking markets ↓ Sound enterprises recover quickly, shady operations experience stock price declines, South is emboldened

  22. The Costs of the Civil War (Millions of 1860 Dollars) DIRECT COSTS Govt Physical Lost Total Per exp. destructn human cap. capita South 1032 1487 767 3286 376 North 2302 1064 3366 148 Total 3334 1487 1831 6652 212 INDIRECT COSTS Lost L mkt Cotton Total Per cons. adj. mkt. adj. capita South 6190 -1960 -1670 2560 293 North 1149 1149 51 Total 7339 3709 118 TOTAL Overall per 1860 cost capita population South 5846 670 8.73 North 4515 199 27.71 Total 10361 330 31.43 Source: Ransom, (1998: 51, Table 3-1); Goldin and Lewis. (1975; 1978)

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