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Jefferson Predicted the Civil War

posted 14 years ago by skybailey16
13 replies | jump to latest

During the 5th part (Unite or Die), Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton begin to debate differing philosophies. Pay close attention to Jefferson's responses.
Alexander Hamilton: The future prosperity of this nation rests chiefly in trade. Trade depends, among other things, on the willingness of other nations to lend us money.
Thomas Jefferson: And how would you propose to establish international credit?
Alexander Hamilton: Our first step would be to incur a national debt. The greater the debt, the greater the credit. And to that end I have recommended to the president that Congress adopt all the debts incurred by the individual states during the war through a national bank. The idea being that if the states owe Congress money, then other nations will feel more inclined to lend it to us.
Thomas Jefferson: If the states are indebted to a central authority, it increases the power of the central government.
Alexander Hamilton: There you have it exactly. The greater the government's responsibility, the greater its authority.
Thomas Jefferson: The moneyed interest in this country is all in the north, so the wealth and power would inevitably be concentrated there in a federal government. To the expense of the south.
Alexander Hamilton: If that is the case, it is unavoidable if the Union is to be preserved.
Thomas Jefferson: I fear our revolution will have been in vain if a Virginia farmer is to be held in hock to a New York stock jobber, who in turn is in hock to a London banker. The opportunities for avarice and corruption would certainly prove irresistible.

[–] BLOOD_kane 14 years ago

True enough, except the North controlling the South's financial interests is just the very broad scope of all the problems that caused it. Slavery being the most important one. And I will agree that I believe the slavery issue was a financial one at the time for Southerners. Very few in the North I would say cared about blacks personally, as evidence of racism when the migrations happened, but there were tons of reasons as to why the Union broke apart with the slavery issue being the hottest button "topic".

[–] cdz6969 14 years ago

Could it be the North outlawed slavery not for moral reason but to financial ones? Slave labor would drive down earning potential of white men in the north who depended on their skilled labor to make a living. When it came to hiring a white blacksmith, carpenter, etc.. the slave owner would benefit the most.. Which is why in the south there were very few industrial centers which required skilled labor because the white slave owner (Rich ones) would corner the market. Not to mention the plantation owners cornered the farming and cotton industry not only in the south but their goods would drive down the price of the north which was made with honest labor.

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[–] Demelz 14 years ago

the OP and the comments are wrong. Financial issues don't lead to such bloody wars, ideology leads to war. If not for slavery, there would have been no civil war. The question was not only was the south going to hold slaves, but was the entire nation going to be a slave holding nation? Contrary to what anti americans believe, this is not a small issue.

For their different reasons, both the left and the right deny that. The right wants to pretend that slavery was no big deal. They want to deny the moral wrong. The left wants to pretend that the US could never possibly care about slavery because we are so evil. So a war could never be caused by that.

as for Jefferson, he built Monticello with slave labor and never freed a slave. Although he noted that it was wrong, he would be among the first to deny that anyone could legitmately object to slavery. Once you admit how bad it is, there is no justification for continuing the practice. So you deal with your own wrong by saying that those who object to your wrong are liars and hypocrites.

[–] Yorick_Brown 14 years ago

Financial issues don't lead to such bloody wars...

Well aren't you naive.

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[–] hachmom-1 14 years ago

Sam Adams predicted it too...saying at the time of the Declaration that if the Colonies gave in on the slavery issue there would be trouble 100 years hence. (I know that John Adams says the line in 1776, but they had to compress charecters a bit and gave some of Sam Adams' lines to his cousin)
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[–] Hancock_the_Superb 14 years ago

There's some truth to this. Most Southerners of the 18th Century viewed as a necessary evil. They didn't like enslaving blacks but felt it was necessary to maintain their economy. It wasn't until the 1830s, when the sectional debate really began heating up, that the South began ferociously defending its "peculiar institution" as not only necessary, but good, and even beneficial for the slaves. John Calhoun was instrumental in promoting this viewpoint. Slavery became a point of Southern pride, moral implications aside, and thus a trigger in the tensions leading up to the Civil War.

Also, it's rather naive (or perhaps cynical) to pretend that the strong anti-slavery sentiment in North had nothing to do with its gradual abolition. Anti-slavery does not mean "not racist," or accepting blacks as equals; certainly most of the Founders and many later abolitionists were white supremacists. However, one needn't believe in racial equality to believe enslaving an entire race of people is wrong. Adams, Franklin and Hamilton were certainly vocal in their anti-slavery opinions.

This is a point many of the anti-Lincoln revisionists miss. Lincoln was certainly a racist by modern standards, was involved in schemes to repatriate blacks to Africa, even pandered to racist elements in his Illinois campaigns, but who cares? That doesn't mean he couldn't oppose slavery from a moral perspective. If he was slow to act on his beliefs, and didn't do so for purely atruistic reasons, at least he ultimately did it.

Economics were an important fault-line in colonial America, but hardly the only one.

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[–] jaystarstar 13 years ago

Another historical movie, "Amistad," features John Quincy Adams predicting the Civil War some 20 years before it broke out.

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[–] jaystarstar 14 years ago

Slavery was a HUGE bone of contention during the framing of the Constitution, and certainly Jefferson along with most of the other Founders were fully aware that the nation undoubtedly faced major conflict in the future over the subject.

The 3/5 compromise and other stopgap agreements were not going to hold forever.

Of course at the time the Constitution was adopted, nobody, not even the far-sighted Jefferson, could really foresee how changes in manufacturing and transportation technology would change the whole dynamic of labor in the first half of the 19th Century (and beyond).

As the North became more and more mechanized, the economic disparities with the heavily-agrarian South widened and exacerbated the frictions between the regions.

[–] Hancock_the_Superb 14 years ago

Frankly it seems that it was an easy thing to predict. I took a colonial history class freshman year of college that really opened my eyes to how different the various regions were. Not only economics but also climate, sensibility, religion and political ideology. The fact that these colonies were able to form a unified country, however loose and shaky in its early days, was quite an achievement in and of itself. You could forgive the Founders for sweeping slavery under the rug, even if it had consequences later on.

"Lola, I love you, you selfish bitch!"

[–] rawsir 13 years ago

It wasnt swept under the rug imo. They were trying to form a new nation and it wasnt central to going to war with England. There were freed men at this time. Not alot but some free men. Jefferson actually was widely believed to be married in secret to a slave. The movie actually points this out with his death scene.

To the Jefferson prediction of Civil War, he actually spoke about it much earlier. When they were talking to him during the First Congress and reviewing the Declaration Of Indy, he spoke about States Rights. Prior to the first election of Washington, Virginia was deemed the power of 13 colonies. North Carolina was strong in textiles and tobacco as well. The Fed Bank creation spelled the doom of the South. There was no way around it.

[–] decroissance 12 years ago

I think the first person in the series to predict the Civil War was John Dickinson of Pennsylvania, while (or just after) they were debating whether to declare independence at all. I can't remember what precisely he thought would lead to the "rupture" of the union (not his word but something like that). Was it slavery? He said something like, "in that case I fear for the rupture of the union." And John Adams replied, "yeah, well, can't get around that now." (or words to that effect."

Jeez I just saw it two weeks ago.

[–] katholiday 13 years ago

oh ma god!
This is the best thread ever!
K.

[–] jgroub 12 years ago

Oh, he did far more than predict it. He made it possible.

When Adams signed the Alien and Sedition Acts into law, Jefferson raised the concept of state nullification of federal law. He wrote bills for the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures that abrogated these laws.

Nullification is the concept that led to South Carolina wanting to secede in 1832, and did lead to its secession in 1860. Thanks to Jefferson, my least favorite President.

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