Themes of the American Civil War
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| Southern Modernization? But it is still worth considering the extent to which there was a modernization crisis in the lower South during the s. The argument fora modernization crisis contends (simply summarized) that the incumbent Democrat establishment came under increasing suspicion as having sold out to essentially Whig ideas, and therefore provoked a drive by radical younger politicians to return the South to Jacksonian verities of rampant individualism, closely controlled banks and business corporations, and more widely celebrated agrarian virtue. The purification of the Democratic Party therefore meant opposition to banking and to state financial assistance to railroads as well as the promotion of secession. Although the outcome of that process might have proved to be politically and ideologically complex, the basic premise remains that modernization reshaped the political order Yet the case for widespread modernization can be gravely overstated. Southerners did indeed buildup their railroad system in the s but the railroads themselves were instruments of changing commercialization rather than vehicles for economic revolution. There were, after all, only railroads. They were very useful in speeding up access to the market, but most of the Southern effort put into the building of railroads in the s took the form of lumber, for constructing the track and rolling stock as well as for providing fuel. 34 Southern railroad systems had very little manufacturing impact on the slave states in the mid-nineteenth century moreover, there were relatively few new towns arising as railway junctions. Atlanta did indeed flourish in this role but it was still a very modest-sized town by 1860. So, too, in banking the Deep South maintained almost exactly the same share of US. bank liabilities of circulation and deposits by 1860, as it had in 1850, and it remained a 50 • Bruce Collins section of the country with relatively primitive banking facilities. In the case of Alabama, where the modernization crisis has been described by Thornton, the number of banks did indeed multiply during the decade, but only from two into eight in 1860. This hardly constituted the rather extensive banking system described by Thornton. 35 To illustrate more fully the difficulties of establishing a close relationship between secessionism and a modernization crisis let us turn to the example of Georgia. 36 There anew Governor, Joseph E. Brown, was elected in as a young ambitious politician who was to become a keen secessionist in 1859–61 and who represented the hill country of the state, which was economically deprived by comparison with the seaboard and the middle section. Georgia faced intense disputes over banking and railroads in the late sand this would fit in with the general notion of public concern about the impact of economic change on social and political values. Following the years 1850–56, when numerous new banks were chartered in the state, the banking system suspended specie payments in October, in the midst of a national banking crash. Under a law of 1840 any bank suspending payments lost its charter, so there was clearly a demand immediately from the banks for special legislative permission for such suspension. The state House of Representatives passed a Bill permitting suspension by sixty-four votes to fifty in December, 1857. But, among the members whose party affiliation has been identified, a small majority of Democrats (thirty- seven to forty) failed to support this major piece of legislation. Governor Brown decided to veto the suspension legislation measure amidst a burst of pure Jacksonian anti-banking rhetoric. This veto was itself overturned by a two-thirds majority, with more Democrats now favoring the banks than opposing them. Such a legislative reversal led Brown to engage in a public campaign during 1858 against the banks and their behavior during the financial crash. Many politicians commented that Brown planned to make bank reform and the establishment of a state subtreasury system a key plank in his own reelection campaign in 1859, and newspaper rhetoric began to depict Brown as anew Jacksonian hero waging a populist crusade against vested economic interests. This image would fit the model of a secessionist Jacksonian crusader opposed to the political establishment and to economically privileged institutions. But in fact the issue emerged only as a result of the panic 1857, and not as a structural issue before that crash, and it receded from public consciousness and debate during 1859 and when the financial panic’s consequences ebbed for the South. Cotton prices remained buoyant and cotton exports boomed at the end of the decade, so acting countercyclically to the remainder of the American economy. The other area in which state policy intersected with major economic institutions concerned railroad development. Georgia had provided substantial Southern Secession • 51 state financial aid for railroads before 1853, with the state debt burgeoning during the years 1851–53. The state’s finances then stabilized from 1855 to 1860 when the state enjoyed one of the most stable periods in its fiscal history to that date. Although one might have assumed that the Democrats’ opponents, political descendants of the Whigs, would have favored state support for the extension of the state’s transport infrastructure, in fact the opposition pressed before 1857 for the sale of the state-owned Western Atlantic Railroad. In response, Democrats input up proposals for further state aid to four railroads, although these schemes were defeated in the state legislature in both 1857 and 1858. While small majorities of Democrats favored further aid, the opposition members overwhelmingly opposed extension. Given this record, little pressure remained by 1859 for big new financial schemes to aid the state’s railroads. Yet some of the keenest support for additional state aid to the railroads came from northern Georgia, the mountain region from which the Governor himself came, and which wanted extra support for railroads to overcome the area’s remoteness and economic backwardness. This area, which on the whole was anti-banking in sentiment, was at the same time favorable to railroad development in 1857–58. The most thoroughgoing enemies to further modernization in the later 1850s were not the Jacksonian radicals. The so-called promotional, Whiggish opposition party’s lack of enthusiasm for further state aid was both partisan (since they wished that the ruling Democrats should get no further jobs or patronage) and related to the fact that the opposition was strongest in established urban centers which already had adequate transport services. The dynamics of political competition, and the regional and subregional balance of economic self-interest, had far more to do with the way in which economic issues were handled than did an ideological crusade to restore Georgia to Jacksonian simplicities. But Democrats who opposed corporate power were not necessarily frustrated political outs In the midst of the row over railroad development, the Secretary of the Treasury, Howell Cobb, urged Governor Brown not to involve their home state in aiding railroads Guard our good old state, I pray you, from this quicksand, which has foundered so many of our sister states.” 37 The experience of Georgia was in someways replicated in Mississippi. There, however, no banking expansion occurred during the s to provoke a need for radical reform. Efforts to loosen some of the very tight regulations governing the issue of small-denomination banknotes were defeated by anti-bank or anti-paper currency Democrats in 1857–58. The Democrats’ leading state newspaper at Jackson, the state capital, hammered away against any moves to bring about the wider issuance of paper currency, denouncing banks as vampires and soulless corporations It welcomed hints in late 1857 that a national debate over paper currency might lead to the 52 • Bruce Collins resuscitation of this old Jackson Democratic issue.” 38 Although the state Governor, William McWillie, in 1857–59 urged state aid to the development of railroads, the Democratic majority in the state legislature resisted any such recommendations. Interestingly enough, the argument for such promotion of the railroad network derived strength in the Governor’s mind from the need to bolster Mississippi’s independence as a state. 39 Even this argument cut no ice with the legislators, many of whom were reminded (if they did not themselves recollect) that the state had got into considerable debt in the late 1830s and s through the overambitious provision of financial assistance to railroad companies. The more general point from Mississippi stands out starkly. No process of state-backed modernization swept the state during the 1850s to provide a target for disaffected purists to criticize or reject. More generally, while important economic and commercial changes affected the South in the sand no doubt created anxieties for many old Jacksonians, it is impossible to link these anxieties to programmes of modernization in particular states. Moreover it is difficult to link them to secessionism, especially since many ideological secessionists argued for diversification and at least some degree of industrial development in order to strengthen the South’s chances of securing an independent economic existence in the future. Moreover, while it is easy to see that a Jacksonian model existed fora producerist economy, the practice of politics by the Democratic Party in the s meant that the ideological model was often ignored or severely qualified by Democratic state parties. The strongest potential example fora politician trying to launch a Jacksonian-style crusade in the late s was Governor Brown of Georgia and he did not subscribe to anti-modernization ideas on the state’s role in assisting railroad development. Nor did economic circumstances encourage him to persist with anti-banking themes after 1858. Download 2.25 Mb. Share with your friends:
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