Reply #61: Yes, but... [View All]

[Syntheto]

... I would argue that the peasants out in the Egyptian cotton fields (All The Way To Memphis?), while not slaves, probably worked within a system of exploitation and brutality not far removed from slavery, much as the system of sharecropping that began after the War in this country. My point is that, if the British had stopped dealing with the Southern planters in the 1840's and 1850's, it might have made cotton plantations untenable in terms of profit. Bottom-line for me is that the British hemmed and hawed about concerning trading manufactured goods (including military equipment) for raw Southern cotton. It wasn't until Lincoln promulgated the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 that the war was put into a moral perspective. Then, overwhelming British public opinion forced the government to put the kibosh to that sort of trade relationship, and it, in fact, sealed the fate of the rebellion. Even more so, it forced the world to accept the fact that Washington was the final arbiter of American diplomacy, and not any other region, state or city. No free system of labor can compete with a system based on slave labor. Whatever other problems that slavery causes, in terms of societal woes and inequality are beside the point. It's all about, and always has been about, the bottom-line of the balance sheet.

Finally, there was a huge glut of raw cotton on British docks in 1863. When you add that to the political dynamite of the Emancipation Proclamation, the British mill owners and government officials would have seen that paying a few extra pounds a ton of cotton from Egypt was a small price to pay.

After Vicksburg and Gettysburg, everyone knew that it was all over, and the players in Britain decided to cut their losses, or at least forgo a portion of their profits.