[lbo-talk] The North's burden of enlightening the South (was Re: T he "NAFTA Superhighway" Urban Myth)

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Mon Nov 19 09:59:14 PST 2007


On Nov 19, 2007, at 5:30 PM, farmelantj at juno.com wrote:


> In antebellum days wasn't the South basically an economic colony of
> Great Britain, whose textile mills were dependent upon Southern
> cotton?

Via New York City. Most of the South's cotton was exported by New York merchants, and the imported fabrics and garments were shipped back through New York. The city's elite was very sympathetic to the South until the moment the Civil War broke out, when they made the necessary patriotic turn. The upper-class boys of the 7th regiment - whose armory is where Steve Schwarzman held his 60th birthday party last February - actually went off to war for a few weeks, but came back because of the press of business. There's a lot about all this in Sven Beckert's book.

Doug



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