YANKEE MYTH # 3
We (Southerners) are Better Off Because We Lost The War
There is perhaps no other Yankee myth that brings more anger to the Southern heart than does this one - especially when we know the truth of our colonial existence and when we meet with a "fellow" Southerner who like a puppet having his strings pulled salivates on cue this Yankee propaganda line, "Yes, but you know we are better off since we lost the war." How do we uncondition an individual who has, for an entire lifetime, accepted the Yankee myth of history?
The loss of political rights and the loss of our Constitutional Republic can be covered at a later time, as they are subjects unto themselves. But I will review a very small portion of the economic consequence of our failure to maintain our independence.
An idea of the
human loss of a war that we did not start, we did not want, but we could not avoid is demonstrated by the fact that in the first year after the war the state of Mississippi allotted one-fifth of its revenues for the purchase of artificial arms and legs. The enduring
economic impact is demonstrated by the fact that it was not until 1911 that the taxable assets of the state of Georgia surpassed their value of 1860. The state of Louisiana lost $170,000,000 in slave property. Now remember, pious Yankee and Southern Scalawag, the Northern slave owner had been very careful to liquidate his investment in his slave property before allowing for emancipation. Let us not also forget that it was the rich Northern merchants who STILL held the profits from the sale of these very same slaves! In Louisiana at the beginning of the war there were 1,200 operating sugar mills. By the end of the war there were ONLY 180 mills left. As a direct result of the war, at least one-half of the cattle, pigs, sheep, mules and horses had disappeared from the state of Louisiana alone. The percentage was even higher in other Southern states. Remember folks, they couldn't run down to the local Piggly Wiggly and buy the meat they needed, whenever they wanted to, they had to raise it, if they ate it.
In 1961 (the 100th anniversary of the war)
LIFE magazine published a one-page overview of the economic loss experienced by the South as a direct result of the war. Shortly after the war ended, Yankee speculators chartered special trains to come down South where they were able to buy over
50 Million acres of prime Southern virgin forest for as little as
50 cents an acre! Because the North completely controlled the United States Government, they were able to raise high protective tariffs for Northern manufactured goods while Southern cotton was left Unprotected.The price of cotton dropped to an all-time low. Three years after the close of the war, Northern-controlled Congress levied a special tax on cotton. This tax cost the already struggling Southern economy approximately
$70,000,000 in three years! The effect of the exploitation of the post-war South is demonstrated by the fact that ten years after the end if the war more than 60% of the town of Greenville, Mississippi was sold at the sheriff's auction for delinquent taxes! In Sumpter County, Georgia, Dr. David Bagley's 1860 net worth was $18,000, a hefty sum for that day. After enduring the devastating effect of Yankee invasion, conquest, and occupation, his 1870 net worth was only $900.
The ever persistent Yankee myth-maker would have us believe that even if this were true, "It all happened long ago and is no longer relevant to us today." Yet the death, destruction, and poverty that is our legacy from the United States government placed us in a permanent secondary economic class. The South, at worst, was forced from a position of plenty to one of peonage. At best, we were transformed into second-class citizens of the U.S. economy.
Both Black and White Southerners suffered as a result of our second-class economic status. Forrest McDonald and Grady McWhiney, in an article entitled "
The South from Self-Sufficiency to Peonage," described this demeaning situation:
Tenancy and sharecropping reduced most white farmers to a system of peonage... Not one in a hundred makes a crop now without mortgaging for his year's support and supplies... burdened by debts, tenants were essentially fixed to the soil... During the late Antebellum period, 80% or more of the farms in the Lower South were operated by owners. During the post - antebellum period this figure declined steadily until, in 1930, more than one million White Families and nearly 700,000 Black Families were tenants. In that year only 37% of Southern farms were fully owned by their operators, and most of those were heavily mortgaged. The 1960 U.S. Census provides another example of how the effects of the war remain with the South. The per capita income for all the states in the Union was given. Not a single Southern state appeared in the top 50% ! At a time when the North was preparing to celebrate the centennial of its glorious victory in the "Civil War," the South was STILL reeling from the economic impact of Yankee aggression. In 1980, the United States Census Bureau found that the poverty rate for the South was 20% higher than the nation as a whole. ALL of the states with the highest poverty levels were in the South, whereas ALL the states with the lowest poverty rates were in the North.
One nation with justice for all? Not if you speak with a Southern accent !!!
