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During the War the Yankee invader intentionally destroyed much of the South’s livestock in an effort to exterminate through starvation their Southern enemy. Shortly after Appomattox a U.S. Congressional Committee toured the area between Washington and Richmond. They were assured that General Sheridan had the foresight to remove all cattle and horses. The lack of draft animals to pull plows forced the surviving population to use primitive methods of cultivation. 19 One historian observed that from 1865 to 1895 “most cotton farmers worked with implements that were as primitive as those in use in the Balkans and India.”50420 The intentional destruction of Southern wealth (capital that should have been used to re-create the post-war Southern economy) has been conveniently ignored or glossed over by the Federal Empire’s apologists (aka, national historians).21
The loss of the capital investment in slaves is overlooked by politically correct historians but its impact on both black and white Southerners post-War should not be ignored. It should also be remembered that Yankees establish, for themselves, a system of gradual emancipation that allowed the Yankee slave master to maintain his slave’s service until a given point in the future and then he would sell his slaves south of the Mason Dixon Line. This allowed the Yankee slave master to recover his capital investment as well as to remove from his white society a people with whom the Yankee did not wish to associate.22 What was felt to be necessary for the thrifty Yankee (reclaiming their capital investment in slaves) was denied—at the point of bloody bayonets—to Southerners. In 1860 Louisiana’s per capita wealth was ranked as first in the South and second in the entire United States but after Yankee “liberation” she joined the ranks of the intentionally impoverished. In Louisiana alone over $170,000,000 of capital investment in slave property disappeared overnight.23 That would be in excess of $4,063,000,000 in 2015 dollars!24 Louisiana did not suffer alone—every one of her sister states were equally punished by a calloused and arrogant conqueror. No civilized nation had abolished slavery in such an economically disastrous manner—a manner that guaranteed the impoverishment of both former slave, former slave master, white Southerners who had not been a part of the plantation system and all future generations of Southerners. The Yankee slave master had used his recouped capital investment in his slaves to establish industries such as textile mills thereby allowing the Yankee to remain prosperous by milling slave grown cotton purchased from the South.
Even exclusive of the destruction of the South’s vast investment in slaves, the property destruction resulting from the Federal Empire’s invasion of the South was on a level not exceeded until the total war on Japan and German in the 1940s. But even though Germany and Japan suffered greater material loss, they none-the-less recovered much faster than did Dixie. Within five years these foreign nations were well into economic recovery.25 But five years after Appomattox the South had not begun a recovery—in fact “we the people” of the once sovereign and prosperous South were sinking deeper into poverty. Yet, no one dare ask “Why?” The reason they dare not ask is that the correct answer would bring damnation upon the “exceptional” nation so loved by America’s “conservative” talking heads and make void the left’s claim to being the advocate and protector of black and white working people. After the War the South was ruled by Northern controlled scallywags and carpet baggers. Northern controlled Reconstruction state legislatures enacted enclosure laws which closed off much of the South’s open range on which the plain folk had freely grazed their hogs and cattle prior to the War.26 Indeed many of the plain folk were “landless” prior to the War but were rich due to their ownership of large numbers of hogs and cattle roaming on the South’s open range.27 Post Appomattox a large portion of the Southern population was reduced to poor whites and even poorer blacks. In order to make a crop the farmer had to borrow money (similar to grub staking of prospectors out west) and hope that he made enough on his crop to repay the debt and carry him and his family through the winter months. The winter months were referred to as “the lean times” when they often had virtually nothing to eat.28 In spring the endless cycle of borrowing, planting and hoping for a fair harvest began again. This debt bondage was unheard of prior to Appomattox but debt peonage29 became the norm for millions of black and white Southerners after Yankee victory and occupation. The War created a situation in which cash (capital) became almost nonexistent30 in the Yankee occupied Confederate States of America. This had not been an issue before Yankee conquest and occupation! Southern banking capital in 1860 was $61 million but in 1870—five years after Appomattox—it was only $17 million and currency in circulation had crashed from $51 million in 1860 to $15 million in 1870.31 In addition to destroying or stealing Southern resources, after Appomattox the Yankee victors began to systematically exploit the meager Southern resources that remained in Dixie. Northern politicians, businessmen and financiers viewed the conquered and occupied South as an opportunity for personal gain and exploitation.32 This Northern exploitation of the South was done with no concern for what they were doing to the occupied people of the Confederate States of America. The New England Loyal Publication Society celebrated this opportunity for profit by publishing a series of articles titled “The Resources of the South.” 33 After Yankee conquest and occupation the South became in many ways “a colonial appendage to industrial and grain-growing sections of the country.”34 All were beholding to our Yankee masters. Most of the profit gained by landlords and merchants ended up in Northern hands. 35 The Republican Party, now in complete control of the Federal Empire’s Congress, passed taxes on Southern cotton that extracted from the defenseless and cash strapped Southern people $68 million by 1868.36 These monies were “legally” looted from starving and struggling Southerners and flowed into the pockets of Northern politicians and their crony capitalist allies.
Due to the lack of capital Southern industries and food production could not develop but this too was also turned into a windfall for Northern commercial interests. Because the South did not have the capital to develop local industries and food production it was forced to purchase over $80M of food and agricultural supplies from Northern sources.37 This represented Southern capital flowing into Northern pockets that should have been used to recover and develop a sustainable Southern economy.
In 1938 almost two million nomadic tenant families fed a constant stream of migrants moving across the South from one landowner’s farm to another’s— the cost of this constant moving was estimated to be $25M annually.38 Post Appomattox, poverty, malnutrition, and disease became epidemic across the South. Bound to his miserable existence of debt peonage the poor Southern sharecropper became gist for the mills of Northern propagandists eager to promote their leftist/ progressive political agenda. These Northern wordsmiths interpreted the Southern sharecropper’s existence using the Northerner’s Marxist, socialist, and/or progressive mindset.39 Northern ideologues were eager to use the sharecropper’s pathetic existence to further their Northern ideological agenda while ignoring the North’s responsibility for the very existence of debt peonage in the post-War/Reconstruction South. Northern ideologues in the 1930s and thereafter treated sharecropping, and the South in general, with the same intellectual dishonesty as their abolitionist forefathers had treated slavery in the 1800s—both have had disastrous results for “we the people” of the once free, sovereign and prosperous states of Dixie.
