WEBVTT NOTE Confederate Blockade of the South 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 On the blockade, that's certainly a big part of the overall scheme of things. 2 00:00:08.000 --> 00:00:15.000 But in terms of the southern shipbuilding effort, they laid down many of these vessels, 3 00:00:15.000 --> 00:00:24.000 the iron-clad vessels with the coal-fed engines, but most of those were never completed. 4 00:00:24.000 --> 00:00:30.000 Every time it got close to completion, it seemed the Union would show up to destroy it or capture the ships. 5 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:36.000 That really wasn't a very effective endeavor. 6 00:00:36.000 --> 00:00:43.000 And as I said, they largely dropped the idea of buying ships from Europe, 7 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:52.000 whether it was because Great Britain wouldn't provide them with a ship because of politics, 8 00:00:52.000 --> 00:00:57.000 or whether they weren't willing to pay the money that would have gotten in the ships, 9 00:00:57.000 --> 00:01:04.000 maybe through surreptitious means, and some of the ships that they did receive were through 10 00:01:04.000 --> 00:01:10.320 surreptitious means where they would buy a ship and then bring it out to sea and then 11 00:01:10.320 --> 00:01:17.320 another ship would show up with the guns and combine the two to create warships. 12 00:01:17.320 --> 00:01:26.960 One of the big problems that we've discovered in our research that's in this book and in 13 00:01:26.960 --> 00:01:34.840 some of our articles, is that the Confederate policy was not only productive in the sense 14 00:01:34.840 --> 00:01:42.000 of building ships to test the blockade fleet, but it was actually mostly counterproductive. 15 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:49.540 And this is something we label in the book, and it's the title of one of our articles 16 00:01:49.540 --> 00:02:09.380 in the quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics, The Confederate Blockade of the South, where 17 00:02:09.380 --> 00:02:18.660 where the South refers to the Southern economy and where the Confederacy refers to the Confederate 18 00:02:18.660 --> 00:02:28.060 government. Essentially, what we find is that they were making a bad situation worse. In 19 00:02:28.060 --> 00:02:34.620 other words, the blockade was a bad situation for the Southern economy and Confederate policy 20 00:02:34.620 --> 00:02:39.660 essentially made things worse. 21 00:02:39.660 --> 00:02:47.820 And so what we did was we looked at some of the policies that are either directly or indirectly 22 00:02:47.820 --> 00:02:54.580 related to the blockade and see what economic theory would predict would happen. 23 00:02:54.580 --> 00:02:57.100 So what would these policies cause? 24 00:02:57.100 --> 00:03:03.380 And then of course we looked at the evidence to see if theory was guiding us in the right 25 00:03:03.380 --> 00:03:14.620 One of the things you look at that occurs at the beginning of the war is the policy 26 00:03:14.620 --> 00:03:17.580 of impressment. 27 00:03:17.580 --> 00:03:24.740 Impressment is a policy where basically the government grants itself the right to buy 28 00:03:24.740 --> 00:03:30.300 your goods at whatever price they decide. 29 00:03:30.300 --> 00:03:35.980 Not what price it's worth, not what price you would agree to, not the price that's actually 30 00:03:35.980 --> 00:03:40.780 in the market, but the price that they set. 31 00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:50.340 And very often, officers of the Army would basically take your products and give you 32 00:03:50.340 --> 00:03:58.000 a certificate that says the Confederate government owes you so much money. 33 00:03:58.000 --> 00:04:07.000 So they're buying goods at below market prices. Now, whenever you have a situation where a 34 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:16.080 big buyer gets to buy products at below market prices, that sends negative signals to the 35 00:04:16.080 --> 00:04:22.160 producers of these products. So if the Confederate government is buying grain at half the market 36 00:04:22.160 --> 00:04:30.720 Market price, grain producers are going to be discouraged from growing more grain. 37 00:04:30.720 --> 00:04:36.200 What's ever is left over, of course, is actually going to pump up the market price because 38 00:04:36.200 --> 00:04:41.040 there's less left for the civilian population. 39 00:04:41.040 --> 00:04:43.600 It also creates a lot of bad feelings. 40 00:04:43.600 --> 00:04:49.440 And when a government is going to war, the last thing you want is for your population 41 00:04:49.440 --> 00:04:53.960 to have bad feelings towards the government. 42 00:04:53.960 --> 00:04:54.960 You don't want that. 43 00:04:54.960 --> 00:04:59.800 You want people to feel good about your government, you want them to feel patriotic, you want 44 00:04:59.800 --> 00:05:06.080 all the support possible and you don't want any dissension in the ranks of the civilian 45 00:05:06.080 --> 00:05:07.080 population. 46 00:05:07.080 --> 00:05:13.320 So you get bad feelings, you get lower supply in the future because suppliers are being 47 00:05:13.320 --> 00:05:20.640 and People are even reluctant to bring their products to market. 48 00:05:20.640 --> 00:05:25.820 And the problem with that is if you're a farmer in the South during the Civil War and you're 49 00:05:25.820 --> 00:05:33.160 out in the country someplace and you're growing grain and raising hogs and raising chickens 50 00:05:33.160 --> 00:05:39.560 and all this kind of stuff, the officers of the Confederate government may never come 51 00:06:09.560 --> 00:06:21.400 Often, some of the worst situations for the Confederate government, for the South, is 52 00:06:21.400 --> 00:06:23.400 when the Army would get trapped, right? 53 00:06:23.400 --> 00:06:28.280 When the Army would get trapped in a place like Vicksburg. 54 00:06:28.280 --> 00:06:29.280 And what happened? 55 00:06:29.280 --> 00:06:38.720 Well, they didn't have enough food to survive the holdout, or being surrounded by Grant's 56 00:06:38.720 --> 00:06:47.280 It turns out there was tons and tons of food and provisions in the countryside, which is 57 00:06:47.280 --> 00:06:54.080 how Grant and Sherman survived. 58 00:06:54.080 --> 00:07:00.840 So this is just an isolated example that I'm going through here, but I think it's worthwhile 59 00:07:00.840 --> 00:07:12.240 Now, something's not in the book, but I think it's pretty instructive, okay? 60 00:07:12.240 --> 00:07:20.880 This is the Mississippi River, my art teacher would be so proud. 61 00:07:20.880 --> 00:07:26.880 And this is Vicksburg. 62 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:36.760 Now the problem with attacking Vicksburg is it was well defended, militarily it was well 63 00:07:36.760 --> 00:07:37.760 defended. 64 00:07:37.760 --> 00:07:43.520 They couldn't breach the city of Vicksburg under really almost any circumstances. 65 00:07:43.520 --> 00:07:52.240 And also in addition to this, there were tributaries and I think like swampland that made it very 66 00:07:52.240 --> 00:07:57.240 They're difficult to get to Vicksburg. 67 00:07:57.240 --> 00:08:03.080 There was a railroad line and a way in, but they tried that before. 68 00:08:03.080 --> 00:08:08.880 They tried the land route, and what would happen would be the Southerners would go behind 69 00:08:08.880 --> 00:08:14.080 their backs, cut off their supplies, destroy the railroad, and Grant would have to turn 70 00:08:14.080 --> 00:08:20.240 back around and go back up to Memphis, up here someplace. 71 00:08:20.240 --> 00:08:25.000 So, and they couldn't really use this side of the river, and so this was basically their 72 00:08:25.000 --> 00:08:35.760 only way in, where they could keep a large army, 50 to 100,000 soldiers involved in this 73 00:08:35.760 --> 00:08:40.720 effort to capture Vicksburg and open up the entire Mississippi. 74 00:08:40.720 --> 00:08:46.800 This was part of the Anaconda Plan, remember, that we would surround, the Union would surround 75 00:08:46.800 --> 00:08:55.680 The South cut the Mississippi through so that they would control that along with all of 76 00:08:55.680 --> 00:09:02.760 the cotton growing area that that would entail and so at that point the Union would have 77 00:09:02.760 --> 00:09:10.280 possession of all of the best cotton land and the ability to export it back to the North 78 00:09:10.280 --> 00:09:19.960 through New Orleans, which they had already captured, and it would prevent reinforcements 79 00:09:19.960 --> 00:09:28.000 and commodities moving from the Trans-Mississippi territory of the Confederacy, basically Louisiana, 80 00:09:28.000 --> 00:09:34.240 parts of Louisiana, Texas, and Arkansas, and so on. 81 00:09:34.240 --> 00:09:40.200 So what Grant does is he decides on a very, very unusual strategy. 82 00:09:40.200 --> 00:10:10.200 He's going to get his ships with his soldiers, a big armada, and he's going to run them past Vicksburg, and Vicksburg has guns trained on these things, but still ironclad ships can get through, but prior to this strategy they didn't want to get through, they didn't want to get past Vicksburg and then have to go back up, that's no good, eventually you're going to lose 83 00:10:10.200 --> 00:10:24.720 What he did was he landed the troops. Tens and tens of thousands of troops behind enemy 84 00:10:24.720 --> 00:10:32.760 lines, essentially cut off without any provision for new supply. But what they were able to 85 00:10:32.760 --> 00:10:41.520 to do is live off all this land. They were able to live off the land, they were able 86 00:10:41.520 --> 00:10:47.880 to live off all of the commodities, all of the foodstuffs that were available on all 87 00:10:47.880 --> 00:10:58.380 the farms. But very little of that had been brought into Vicksburg and of course the Confederate 88 00:10:58.380 --> 00:11:12.380 The army there held out for quite a while, but it was reduced to basically no rations, very little food, the soldiers were starving to death, and so they had to surrender. 89 00:11:12.380 --> 00:11:21.380 I think they surrendered on July 3rd or 4th, 1863, is that right? Same day as Gettysburg. 90 00:11:21.380 --> 00:11:46.380 Yes, well it was an important moment, it was probably one of the pivotal moments of the land battle, but basically the loss resulted from the fact that Grant and Sherman could live off the land, the soldiers could not. 91 00:11:46.380 --> 00:11:52.660 If all of those provisions had been brought into Vicksburg, those soldiers could still 92 00:11:52.660 --> 00:11:54.940 be fighting out there in Vicksburg. 93 00:11:54.940 --> 00:12:01.460 And Grant would have never been able to breach the city without massive, massive casualties. 94 00:12:01.460 --> 00:12:05.520 So when you say impressment, you first start thinking, oh, you know, that doesn't seem 95 00:12:05.520 --> 00:12:07.880 like that would have much to do with anything. 96 00:12:07.880 --> 00:12:16.960 But in reality I think it plays a pivotal role in events and in the economy. 97 00:12:16.960 --> 00:12:17.960 Now... 98 00:12:17.960 --> 00:12:31.460 Well, yeah, you can, and that can be conscription too. 99 00:12:31.460 --> 00:12:35.920 But impressment is anytime the government is basically taking things without paying 100 00:12:35.920 --> 00:12:39.440 for them, or without paying the full market price. 101 00:12:39.440 --> 00:13:03.440 Was there a vote in the country? I mean, was there a representation for their representation, the Confederates, about the lawfulness of it? Did the Confederate Congress exceed the idea that the government should take commodities at low prices? 102 00:13:09.440 --> 00:13:20.160 Law. But I don't know what happened in subsequent, you know, legal proceedings, because I'm almost 103 00:13:20.160 --> 00:13:25.940 positive, like in any other case, that legal proceedings would have resulted from this 104 00:13:25.940 --> 00:13:31.880 kind of law because of abuses of the law. And, you know, there's a lot of commentary 105 00:13:31.880 --> 00:13:40.280 that this policy in certain places would break down into sheer robbery where the military 106 00:13:40.280 --> 00:13:46.440 officers would not be taking things because they were necessary, but taking things because 107 00:13:46.440 --> 00:13:52.560 they just wanted to take them and they had the authority to do so, and so the military 108 00:13:52.560 --> 00:13:58.920 in some cases would take too much, they would hoard these resources, they would waste some 109 00:13:58.920 --> 00:14:08.920 and resources because they had this extraordinary legal authority, power, to get resources at much reduced rates. 110 00:14:08.920 --> 00:14:27.920 The end of it, I think, is the Fed had to go back to the Fed again, and then they were talking about Georgia, because they were still in the uniform, but they were going to be harder to come to, and they were learning how to do other things, so it made them a little bit less. 111 00:14:38.920 --> 00:14:47.160 Apparently the government and the governor of Georgia was more emphatic about states' 112 00:14:47.160 --> 00:14:48.160 rights. 113 00:14:48.160 --> 00:14:52.920 And so he and a couple of the other governors were on the front lines in terms of advocating 114 00:14:52.920 --> 00:14:59.680 states' rights and trying to block the Confederate government from doing certain things. 115 00:14:59.680 --> 00:15:08.160 And so they were very activist when it came to provisioning their soldiers. 116 00:15:08.160 --> 00:15:09.880 That's definitely true. 117 00:15:09.880 --> 00:15:13.880 One of the things that the Confederate government did at the beginning of the war was they impressed 118 00:15:13.880 --> 00:15:14.880 ships. 119 00:15:14.880 --> 00:15:22.040 After the foreign ships left the South at the beginning of the war, there were only 120 00:15:22.040 --> 00:15:35.720 about 10 ocean-going, iron-based, ocean-going ships. 121 00:15:35.720 --> 00:15:40.840 Now these all could have been used for trade, if they had been put to that use. 122 00:15:40.840 --> 00:15:50.320 They could have been outfitted like a blockade runner and put to use running Confederate 123 00:15:50.320 --> 00:15:59.360 cotton to Europe and bringing things back, like marine engines and weapons and weapon 124 00:15:59.360 --> 00:16:03.960 building equipment that would have been very easy to get into. 125 00:16:03.960 --> 00:16:18.960 Yeah, exactly. And like we have here on the Auburn campus. They could have gotten that stuff in on a, you know, just one or two runs would have made a big difference at the beginning of the war. 126 00:16:18.960 --> 00:16:27.960 If they could have brought in heavy capital equipment into the South, that would have made a big difference. 127 00:16:27.960 --> 00:16:33.960 And remember, at the beginning of the war, the blockade was mostly a paper blockade. 128 00:16:33.960 --> 00:16:38.960 So there were a lot of open ports and not many Union vessels patrolling. 129 00:16:38.960 --> 00:16:44.960 But they were all impressed either by state navies or by the Confederate Navy. 130 00:16:44.960 --> 00:16:48.960 And they were almost all not put to any good use at all. 131 00:16:48.960 --> 00:16:53.960 Most of them really didn't do anything during the war. 132 00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:58.960 And so they were wasted and very often destroyed. 133 00:16:58.960 --> 00:17:04.120 Amongst the best ships, the biggest and most powerful of the ships, one was sunk as an 134 00:17:04.120 --> 00:17:15.120 obstruction in the James River to protect Richmond against any possible naval run at 135 00:17:15.120 --> 00:17:19.200 the city of Richmond that may or may not have been a good idea. 136 00:17:19.200 --> 00:17:23.200 Another one was used for the Confederate Naval Academy to train sailors. 137 00:17:23.200 --> 00:17:32.480 I think that was probably a particularly nonsensical use to train sailors for ships you don't even 138 00:17:32.480 --> 00:17:36.440 have and you're using one of your best ones in that capacity. 139 00:17:36.440 --> 00:17:41.160 Another one, the Nashville I think it was, really wasn't of any use to the war effort 140 00:17:41.160 --> 00:17:48.840 until after it was sold back to private interest in 1862. 141 00:17:48.840 --> 00:17:58.920 So not only did Impressment really do anything for the war effort, really it was a waste 142 00:17:58.920 --> 00:18:05.640 of resources, but it also would have discouraged anybody from trying to bring new ships in. 143 00:18:05.640 --> 00:18:13.800 I mean if the Confederate government has the authority to confiscate new ships, then by 144 00:18:13.800 --> 00:18:21.740 By running a new ship into the Confederacy, you're putting yourself at a lot of risk, 145 00:18:21.740 --> 00:18:32.900 a lot of cost, and you may end up just losing your ship to the Impressment Policy. 146 00:18:32.900 --> 00:18:38.900 Now another thing that was done was that the governments actually got into the business 147 00:18:38.900 --> 00:18:39.900 of blockade running. 148 00:18:39.900 --> 00:18:44.980 The Confederate government and the state governments got into the business of running the blockade 149 00:18:44.980 --> 00:18:53.980 themselves, competing against the blockaders. 150 00:18:53.980 --> 00:18:59.220 And anytime government comes in and competes with private enterprise, the private enterprise 151 00:18:59.220 --> 00:19:06.620 people get pretty nervous because they know that the government can operate at a loss 152 00:19:06.620 --> 00:19:13.180 and drive down your profits and essentially ruin your business. 153 00:19:13.180 --> 00:19:18.220 They can ruin your business simply by being in business. 154 00:19:18.220 --> 00:19:22.020 And so that was also a problem. 155 00:19:22.020 --> 00:19:28.700 Later on, the Confederate government would declare that 50 percent of all cargo space 156 00:19:28.700 --> 00:19:35.920 on blockade runners had to be allocated to the Confederate government. 157 00:19:35.920 --> 00:19:39.760 So this further discouraged private blockade running. 158 00:19:39.760 --> 00:19:45.600 As a matter of fact, a lot of private blockade runners made special deals with state governments 159 00:19:45.600 --> 00:19:51.360 to become state enterprises, you know, of the state of Georgia, North Carolina. 160 00:19:51.360 --> 00:19:55.560 They were really private enterprises, but they wanted to be called state enterprises 161 00:19:55.560 --> 00:20:04.360 so they wouldn't have to be subject to that confederate 50% of your cargo because the 162 00:20:04.360 --> 00:20:11.880 The state ships were essentially supposed to be immune to that tax. 163 00:20:11.880 --> 00:20:19.320 The case in the book here in Chapter 2 of the Little Ada, which was a blockade running 164 00:20:19.320 --> 00:20:27.640 ship out of Savannah, I believe, is very instructive here. 165 00:20:27.640 --> 00:20:37.120 Governor Brown of Georgia refuses to allow the Confederate government to get 50% of the 166 00:20:37.120 --> 00:20:43.760 cargo space on this blockade run, the Little Ada. 167 00:20:43.760 --> 00:20:52.360 As a result of that, President Davis refuses clearance to allow Little Ada to leave harbor 168 00:20:52.360 --> 00:20:57.120 because the Confederate soldiers are guarding the entrance to the harbor. 169 00:20:57.120 --> 00:21:02.400 So Governor Brown doesn't let the Confederates use the ship. 170 00:21:02.400 --> 00:21:06.320 So the Confederates say, well, you're not going to get to leave the harbor, we'll fire 171 00:21:06.320 --> 00:21:07.320 on you. 172 00:21:07.320 --> 00:21:12.320 I thought Davis was a great performer in the states, right? 173 00:21:12.320 --> 00:21:18.760 So he's up against the state of Georgia? 174 00:21:18.760 --> 00:21:19.760 Yeah. 175 00:21:19.760 --> 00:21:23.440 Well, I mean, these are politicians. 176 00:21:23.440 --> 00:21:29.620 And you know, you may be a great person for states' rights if you're the senator from 177 00:21:29.620 --> 00:21:34.400 Mississippi, but if you find yourself as president of the Confederate states, you know, all of 178 00:21:34.400 --> 00:21:38.040 a sudden your little deal starts to change. 179 00:21:38.040 --> 00:21:40.880 You know, we see that in politicians all the time. 180 00:21:40.880 --> 00:21:44.480 A governor from Texas, for example, may say certain things while he's governor, but if 181 00:21:44.480 --> 00:21:49.560 he becomes president of the United States, all of a sudden he looks like it's day and 182 00:21:49.560 --> 00:21:50.560 night. 183 00:21:50.560 --> 00:21:51.560 George. 184 00:21:51.560 --> 00:22:03.760 Oh yeah, limited government, you know, you have to have the authority to do everything 185 00:22:03.760 --> 00:22:10.280 and he just said, well it looked good at the time, so I just acquired something of a billion 186 00:22:10.280 --> 00:22:11.280 square acres. 187 00:22:11.280 --> 00:22:19.880 Yeah, so that kind of thing happens all the time, so this ship, this little ADA is in 188 00:22:19.880 --> 00:22:25.520 In the harbor, and while the confederates and the Georgians are debating all this issue 189 00:22:25.520 --> 00:22:40.520 back and forth between the capitals, the Yankees come in and capture the ship. 190 00:22:40.520 --> 00:22:48.600 I think this was middle late period. 191 00:22:48.600 --> 00:22:54.600 So the Yankees see an opportunity, this boat is just sitting there, loaded down with cargo, 192 00:22:54.600 --> 00:22:58.680 without much crew there because they don't have the authority to leave, so they come in 193 00:22:58.680 --> 00:22:59.680 and take the ship. 194 00:22:59.680 --> 00:23:03.000 You cut it out like the British used to do in the past? 195 00:23:03.000 --> 00:23:09.440 No, they tried to run it out of the harbor, but they found that the Confederates were 196 00:23:09.440 --> 00:23:15.720 blockading it in, so they had to turn around and run back out the way they came. 197 00:23:15.720 --> 00:23:24.260 So that gives you some idea of the state, of what the states and the Confederates were 198 00:23:24.260 --> 00:23:28.360 up to with respect to trade. 199 00:23:28.360 --> 00:23:34.740 Now when we get into 1864, the Confederate government becomes a lot more draconian with 200 00:23:34.740 --> 00:23:36.320 respect to trade. 201 00:23:36.320 --> 00:23:45.700 In February of 1864, Confederate Congress is in session and they're getting desperate. 202 00:23:45.700 --> 00:23:49.200 But both sides are actually getting pretty desperate at this point. 203 00:23:49.200 --> 00:23:55.220 Lincoln has also had a lot of troubles in his facing reelection, so things are bad on 204 00:23:55.220 --> 00:23:56.220 both sides. 205 00:23:56.220 --> 00:24:07.540 In 1864, in February, the Confederate Congress passed a prohibition on importing luxury goods. 206 00:24:07.540 --> 00:24:11.740 Now like the policy of impressment, I forgot to mention with impressment, historians have 207 00:24:11.740 --> 00:24:15.980 I've always said, you know, it was a good policy, but it was just too little, too late. 208 00:24:15.980 --> 00:24:21.380 They just didn't do enough impressing to give the supplies to the army. 209 00:24:21.380 --> 00:24:25.940 So historians think that it was, impressment was a good idea, but they just didn't do enough 210 00:24:25.940 --> 00:24:26.940 of it. 211 00:24:26.940 --> 00:24:31.020 And likewise, with this prohibition on luxury goods, you very often find them saying, you 212 00:24:31.020 --> 00:24:33.780 know, this is a good idea, but they did it too late in the war, they should have done 213 00:24:33.780 --> 00:24:34.780 it right away. 214 00:24:34.780 --> 00:24:39.540 And they should have eliminated many, many more luxuries than they actually eliminated. 215 00:24:39.540 --> 00:24:48.060 We provide a list in the book, in chapter 2, page 50 and 51, of all the things that 216 00:24:48.060 --> 00:24:56.940 were prohibited, large classes of things, all kinds of alcohol products, all kinds of 217 00:24:56.940 --> 00:25:10.020 jewelry items, perfumes, paintings, playing cards, clothing, wines, manufactured good 218 00:25:10.020 --> 00:25:18.100 glasses, dolls, toys, cabinets, household furniture, the list goes on and on. 219 00:25:18.100 --> 00:25:25.440 Well in economics, in contrast to the historian's view, in economics, this kind of prohibition 220 00:25:25.440 --> 00:25:32.320 on Luxury Goods had a doubly negative effect. 221 00:25:32.320 --> 00:25:40.040 One of the things that was really unnoticed or unknown to the Confederate Congress was 222 00:25:40.040 --> 00:25:48.760 a lot of these luxury goods came into the South in the hands of the blockading running 223 00:25:48.760 --> 00:25:49.760 crew. 224 00:25:49.760 --> 00:26:00.760 Okay, so they weren't, it wasn't necessarily the cargo of the ship, it was the crew's own stuff. 225 00:26:00.760 --> 00:26:02.760 If you're on a crew... 226 00:26:02.760 --> 00:26:04.760 They bought it on their own. 227 00:26:04.760 --> 00:26:06.760 Right, they bought it on their own. 228 00:26:06.760 --> 00:26:09.760 Well, now, it's very, very important. 229 00:26:09.760 --> 00:26:17.760 Now, you're on the crew of a blockade-running vessel, and you get to bring your own bag on board. 230 00:26:17.760 --> 00:26:25.560 You get a little space for your own stuff. That's true on any ship. They have to have 231 00:26:25.560 --> 00:26:30.560 place for stuff. Now, they really didn't need it on a blockade running thing because you 232 00:26:30.560 --> 00:26:39.320 would just go from, you know, Nassau to Wilmington in one or two days. And sailors don't have 233 00:26:39.320 --> 00:26:44.020 to change their clothes or anything like that. So, but what they did was they would have 234 00:26:44.020 --> 00:26:50.300 had these luxury items in their hold or in their bag. So they would be bringing in, you 235 00:26:50.300 --> 00:26:58.340 know, prized goods, luxury goods, medicines, playing cards, all sorts of things, tea and 236 00:26:58.340 --> 00:27:07.100 coffee. And then when they got to port, they would sell those things on their own account. 237 00:27:07.100 --> 00:27:12.300 And that essentially was their profit. So their rationale for doing this, the captain 238 00:27:12.300 --> 00:27:19.880 and Human Crew was based not as much on pay as it was on this idea that you could bring 239 00:27:19.880 --> 00:27:24.080 your own stuff in and you could make a lot of profit off of it. 240 00:27:24.080 --> 00:27:30.080 So this really took away a lot of the incentive of the Captain and the Crews. 241 00:27:30.080 --> 00:27:38.900 It also cut off the whiskey supply, wine, whiskey, alcohol, products of all sorts. 242 00:27:38.900 --> 00:27:44.700 And many states passed prohibitions on making alcohol because they thought, well, we need 243 00:27:44.700 --> 00:27:45.700 the grain for bread. 244 00:27:45.700 --> 00:27:50.660 We need to sustain the local population of bread if we started, you know, making whiskey 245 00:27:50.660 --> 00:27:51.660 with it. 246 00:27:51.660 --> 00:27:54.900 Well, that's frivolous and, you know, people might get upset and so on and so forth. 247 00:27:54.900 --> 00:28:00.540 So they, alcohol was in very short supply and, you know, when you first think about 248 00:28:00.540 --> 00:28:04.180 it, you know, this is wartime, we don't need alcohol, you shouldn't be drinking anyways. 249 00:28:04.180 --> 00:28:06.740 I mean, this is a serious situation. 250 00:28:06.740 --> 00:28:15.020 But of course, that ignores the fact that alcohol is very important for military effort. 251 00:28:15.020 --> 00:28:21.700 Not in terms of getting the troops juiced up, but just in the fact that alcohol has traditionally 252 00:28:21.700 --> 00:28:26.320 been in the rations of all armies and all navies. 253 00:28:26.320 --> 00:28:33.520 Until modern times, alcohol, in the classic example, is the rum ration for the British 254 00:28:33.520 --> 00:28:34.520 navy. 255 00:28:34.520 --> 00:28:46.520 It's a compact way of carrying around lots of calories in a little thermos or a little jug or a little something. 256 00:28:46.520 --> 00:28:56.520 You can carry around the equivalent of a whole giant bag of bread in a little liquid container of alcohol. 257 00:28:56.520 --> 00:29:03.520 It doesn't have a lot of nutrition, but it has the calories there that can sustain troops. 258 00:29:03.520 --> 00:29:08.520 It's a morale booster too. There's no doubt about that. 259 00:29:08.520 --> 00:29:12.520 And thirdly, it's very important for medicines. 260 00:29:12.520 --> 00:29:20.520 It's very important for the medical profession in terms of sterilization. 261 00:29:20.520 --> 00:29:23.520 Of course, they didn't know much about that. 262 00:29:23.520 --> 00:29:38.520 In terms of reducing pain, there was a lot of amputations and they didn't have a lot of great anesthesia at the time, and alcohol was often used to dull pain. 263 00:29:38.520 --> 00:29:59.520 And thirdly, most medicines were produced in some form or another with alcohol, tinctures and all sorts of medical drugs were required in the era of human life. 264 00:29:59.520 --> 00:30:14.520 As a doctor, I would say looking at the armamentary medicine between 1850 and 1850, I think the people in the countryside making their own medications, 265 00:30:14.520 --> 00:30:27.560 We're swallowing down the rural bark and things like that effectively, except we're looking at 10,000 or 50, 20,000 men or something. 266 00:30:27.560 --> 00:30:39.560 But in the south, I'm sure a lot of them don't need medicine, as every business was, to do the commercial products. 267 00:30:39.560 --> 00:31:09.560 and they did, for a long time, one other thing I want to mention, I was reading about the battle of Antietam in Kathmandu, that the Union soldiers were going for the battle, and Lee and McFarlane were getting together, these soldiers were coming off of the first battle before Antietam that they had actually won, and they all felt good about, and they were marching through the country, Maryland country, they looked to see 268 00:31:09.560 --> 00:31:19.560 The death of Confederate soldiers and they all had a lot of remarks that, what a terrible thing these guys were killing themselves. 269 00:31:19.560 --> 00:31:31.560 They really had a lot of respect for Confederate soldiers, considering the supplies they had and the equipment they had, 270 00:31:31.560 --> 00:31:43.560 and standing up against the Union, and in the end of 1862, they were already feeling the effects of starvation. 271 00:32:01.560 --> 00:32:31.560 in the South. And a lot of that would have been greatly amplified if people had access to alcohol, which they didn't. Now, except for the quinine, I don't think they could make that. And that was something that was actually brought in through the blockade in pretty good numbers because people needed it so badly for malaria. Now in 1864, February, they also had a regulation on 272 00:32:31.560 --> 00:32:38.080 on Trade. This is when the one half of the cargo space requirement comes into play so 273 00:32:38.080 --> 00:32:45.640 that the Confederate government is essentially commandeering half of your cargo space. Now 274 00:32:45.640 --> 00:32:49.880 you still got to export cotton. I mean you were still going to be exporting cotton but 275 00:32:49.880 --> 00:32:55.400 you were going to be doing it for the Confederate government. Now one of the things we looked 276 00:32:55.400 --> 00:33:06.840 at here to try to see what would be the result of this is we looked at Wilmington North Carolina, 277 00:33:06.840 --> 00:33:18.640 which before February of 1864 there were some open ports in the south. After 1864 Wilmington 278 00:33:18.640 --> 00:33:24.920 was one of the very few that was open on the eastern seaboard. So it was the only game 279 00:33:24.920 --> 00:33:31.320 Human Town, so to speak, after this cargo requirement was put into place. 280 00:33:31.320 --> 00:33:37.500 Also after February of 1864, there were a lot of new ships that were coming online. 281 00:33:37.500 --> 00:33:42.040 The Confederate government had ordered some blockade running ships which were put into 282 00:33:42.040 --> 00:33:49.680 service and a lot of private blockade runners had acquired new blockade running ships that 283 00:33:49.680 --> 00:33:56.680 were faster, sleeker, better blockade running ships. 284 00:33:56.680 --> 00:34:03.000 So we would have expected to see the number of blockade runs in and out of Wilmington 285 00:34:03.000 --> 00:34:08.480 to be much greater after February of 1864. 286 00:34:08.480 --> 00:34:13.020 It turns out it was only about the same number. 287 00:34:13.020 --> 00:34:20.380 So you have fewer ports to run into, more ships to do the running, and yet the runs 288 00:34:20.380 --> 00:34:23.220 stay the same. 289 00:34:23.220 --> 00:34:27.740 And so we think that that's good evidence that this requirement where the Confederate 290 00:34:27.740 --> 00:34:34.660 government gets one half of your ship, combined with the fact that you're not allowed to run 291 00:34:34.660 --> 00:34:44.660 in Luxuries was the reason that they didn't get any excess or any increase in runs. February 292 00:34:44.660 --> 00:34:52.780 1864, another piece of legislation, also established price controls on imported goods. So there 293 00:34:52.780 --> 00:34:59.540 was a whole class of goods, mostly clothing and textiles, that the Confederate government 294 00:34:59.540 --> 00:35:04.540 You can bring it in, but you can only charge so much for it. 295 00:35:04.540 --> 00:35:10.540 So that was a big disappointment to the blockade runners. 296 00:35:10.540 --> 00:35:14.540 Now, how do the blockade runners think about this? 297 00:35:14.540 --> 00:35:16.540 Well, that's actually a pretty good piece of evidence. 298 00:35:16.540 --> 00:35:18.540 It's not necessarily reliable. 299 00:35:18.540 --> 00:35:23.540 I mean, business people, if you say, well, what do you think of the government? 300 00:35:23.540 --> 00:35:31.220 Government. How do you like your taxes? Of course they're going to complain. It's always 301 00:35:31.220 --> 00:35:37.700 a bad thing for you. So you're never getting a fair deal. You're either getting rooped 302 00:35:37.700 --> 00:35:43.020 or you're getting some kind of special deal. So we went in and we looked at prominent blockade 303 00:35:43.020 --> 00:35:50.100 runners who wrote their memoirs and had official records of what they said at the time as to 304 00:35:50.100 --> 00:35:58.560 and how they felt, to see if it complied with what we thought would be told based on our 305 00:35:58.560 --> 00:36:05.420 understanding of economic theory. Well, Captain Roberts was one of the most successful blockade 306 00:36:05.420 --> 00:36:14.660 runners during the Civil War. But after this 1864 legislation, he ceased all blockade running 307 00:36:14.660 --> 00:36:21.020 Banking Activities, saying, quote, the game indeed was fast drawing to a close. 308 00:36:21.020 --> 00:36:30.020 Its decline was caused in the first instance by the ______ behavior of the people at Wilmington 309 00:36:30.020 --> 00:36:35.220 who, professively acting under orders from the Confederate government at Richmond, pressed 310 00:36:35.220 --> 00:36:40.540 the blockade runners into their service to carry out cotton on government account in 311 00:36:40.540 --> 00:36:46.260 in such an arbitrary manner that the profit to their owners who had been put to an enormous 312 00:36:46.260 --> 00:36:55.260 expense and risk in sending vessels in was so much reduced that the ventures hardly paid. 313 00:36:55.260 --> 00:37:02.740 So basically what he was saying is taking your cargo space that running the blockade 314 00:37:02.740 --> 00:37:09.460 was no longer a paying or profitable operation. 315 00:37:09.460 --> 00:37:21.460 Now we also quote from Thomas Taylor, and Thomas Taylor is reputed to be the real life 316 00:37:21.460 --> 00:37:32.180 model for Rhett Butler. So this is somebody's memoirs that Mitchell apparently read and 317 00:37:32.180 --> 00:37:38.180 absorbed a lot of her character content from this particular person, but he was also a 318 00:37:38.180 --> 00:37:46.180 He was a famous blockade runner with close ties to the Confederate government. 319 00:37:46.180 --> 00:37:48.180 Let's see. 320 00:37:48.180 --> 00:37:55.180 Now, he did continue to run the blockade after Roberts had ceased, after this legislation went into effect. 321 00:37:55.180 --> 00:38:05.180 But he had a special deal, a secret deal with the Confederate government so that he would run in their supplies and be paid handsomely for doing so. 322 00:38:05.180 --> 00:38:11.180 So he was sort of an insider with the Confederate government. 323 00:38:11.180 --> 00:38:20.100 Let's see, writing to his superiors on January 15, 1865, he said, I never saw things look 324 00:38:20.100 --> 00:38:25.160 so gloomy, and I think spring will finish them, the Confederates, unless they make a 325 00:38:25.160 --> 00:38:27.500 change for the better. 326 00:38:27.500 --> 00:38:34.020 And as he put it, had blockade running been encouraged, quote, instead of having obstacles 327 00:38:34.020 --> 00:38:40.380 was thrown in the way, I am convinced that the condition of affairs would have been altered 328 00:38:40.380 --> 00:38:47.140 very materially and perhaps would have led to the South obtaining what it had shed so 329 00:38:47.140 --> 00:38:52.420 much blood to gain independence. 330 00:38:52.420 --> 00:39:08.860 So Taylor thought this was the pivotal issue, that the South was falling, it was doing poorly, 331 00:39:08.860 --> 00:39:13.800 but that if blockade running had been encouraged rather than discouraged, that it would have 332 00:39:13.800 --> 00:39:18.900 made literally all the difference in the world. 333 00:39:18.900 --> 00:39:27.620 As Captain Roberts, our first captain, explained, the enterprise had lost much of its charm. 334 00:39:27.620 --> 00:39:36.460 For unromantic as it may seem, much of that charm consisted in making money. 335 00:39:36.460 --> 00:39:45.540 Which I think is very, very true, it's very, very real, and I think that's very, very meaningful. 336 00:39:45.540 --> 00:39:53.180 I don't think people were running the blockade for their health, it wasn't the most dangerous 337 00:39:53.180 --> 00:39:58.320 thing in the world, but as a business enterprise it was very dangerous. 338 00:39:58.320 --> 00:40:05.220 You could make a lot of money, you could also lose a lot of money because of the risks of 339 00:40:05.220 --> 00:40:12.100 being captured or destroyed or just running a blockade running ship at night. 340 00:40:12.100 --> 00:40:20.580 You can imagine trying to get into Wilmington harbor in the middle of the night without 341 00:40:20.580 --> 00:40:29.140 you know any lights or anything and ships firing at you, the risks, the currents, yeah. 342 00:40:29.140 --> 00:40:41.700 At the beginning of the war there were a fair number of sailboats, sail powered boats running 343 00:40:41.700 --> 00:40:48.180 And by the end of the war, almost all blockade running into the major ports was under steam 344 00:40:48.180 --> 00:40:49.180 power. 345 00:40:49.180 --> 00:40:53.460 Coal fed, steam powered. 346 00:40:53.460 --> 00:41:00.980 They would still use sailboats out of smaller places and that kind of thing, but the sailboats 347 00:41:00.980 --> 00:41:09.700 were not very effective against when the other side had steam powered boats and they were 348 00:41:09.700 --> 00:41:16.820 Undependable, you know, if there wasn't wind, you were sunk. 349 00:41:16.820 --> 00:41:21.700 And so we saw that at the beginning of the war, but a lot of those ships would get captured 350 00:41:21.700 --> 00:41:30.380 and weeded out, and by the end of the war, we're talking basically about sail power boats 351 00:41:30.380 --> 00:41:31.380 being out of the picture. 352 00:41:31.380 --> 00:41:32.380 Yes? 353 00:41:32.380 --> 00:41:48.980 Yes, that's a good question. 354 00:41:48.980 --> 00:41:50.660 That's a very good question. 355 00:41:50.660 --> 00:42:02.020 There were a lot of independents, let's say, who were basically a one ship, one craft operation 356 00:42:02.020 --> 00:42:17.020 and they would pick up their cargo in the Bahamas, Bermuda, possibly places like Mexico or Cuba. 357 00:42:17.020 --> 00:42:19.140 That didn't happen very often. 358 00:42:19.140 --> 00:42:23.660 They needed to make that run. 359 00:42:23.660 --> 00:42:31.940 Things were most needed on the eastern seaboard and Bermuda and the Bahamas were the closest 360 00:42:31.940 --> 00:42:32.940 to that. 361 00:42:32.940 --> 00:42:39.020 And they would run in and sell all that stuff, buy cotton and run back out to the Bahamas 362 00:42:39.020 --> 00:42:44.500 and then bigger boats would take the stuff to Europe, back and forth to Europe. 363 00:42:44.500 --> 00:42:52.980 There were larger companies, most of them southern companies from the south or firms 364 00:42:52.980 --> 00:43:01.020 that developed the blockade running businesses, financial houses, shipping houses, things 365 00:43:01.020 --> 00:43:09.460 and other things of that nature, who would attract capital from a large number of individuals 366 00:43:09.460 --> 00:43:17.180 and buy several ships running lots of cargo into multiple ports. 367 00:43:17.180 --> 00:43:25.380 I think that there was a big advantage to that, you were pooling the risk of investment, 368 00:43:25.380 --> 00:43:31.560 You were basically calculating a certain number of your ships would be captured, you'd get 369 00:43:31.560 --> 00:43:37.700 a certain number of ships captured, whereas the individual, if the ship was captured on 370 00:43:37.700 --> 00:43:41.460 the first run, they were out of business and bankrupt. 371 00:43:41.460 --> 00:43:47.380 But the larger companies could make more of a science of it. 372 00:43:47.380 --> 00:43:56.180 They had the wherewithal to take advantage of market situations, contacts in England, 373 00:43:56.180 --> 00:44:06.540 contacts in Bermuda and the Bahamas, agents who were working for them to get the harbor 374 00:44:06.540 --> 00:44:23.540 and so I think that those firms, those operations tended to do better and stay in operation longer than the independents did. 375 00:44:23.540 --> 00:44:32.540 Although there were some very successful independents who ran the blockade over and over and over again very successfully. 376 00:44:32.540 --> 00:44:47.540 So they found a way which could not be beaten. For example, running into Wilmington on certain nights with certain weather conditions was almost a sure thing. 377 00:44:47.540 --> 00:44:59.540 But you had to know what you were doing. You had to have a pilot on board who knew all the aspects of the harbor and that kind of thing. 378 00:44:59.540 --> 00:45:11.540 So, it's a very good question. There's both, essentially, but I think there's a big advantage to the larger firms that had multiple votes. 379 00:45:13.540 --> 00:45:14.540 Yes? 380 00:45:24.540 --> 00:45:25.540 You know, I really don't know. 381 00:45:29.540 --> 00:45:44.380 yeah the no be weeks yeah probably probably at least 20 days but I'm not 382 00:45:44.380 --> 00:45:52.420 really I'm not really sure yeah the the large boats would come unobstructed 383 00:45:52.420 --> 00:46:00.420 from England to Nassau, to Bermuda, to the Bahamas, places like that. 384 00:46:00.420 --> 00:46:06.820 And so they could run slower, they could run heavier, they were basically normal operations. 385 00:46:06.820 --> 00:46:11.540 Stuff would get to those places and then be put on the blockade running ships. 386 00:46:11.540 --> 00:46:17.380 And the blockade running ships, I think, were depending upon where they started and where 387 00:46:17.380 --> 00:46:22.380 In the time they ended up, they could probably run it in a couple of days. 388 00:46:39.380 --> 00:46:46.380 If you could run from the Bahamas into Savannah, it could be done in just a couple of days. 389 00:46:47.380 --> 00:47:00.380 One thing to conclude if I would run across is the fact that Matthew Murray was a naval officer. He was between about 1840 and 1850. 390 00:47:00.380 --> 00:47:10.380 He was injured in a stagecoach accident, and he threw on to his career in the Navy, so he became interested in motion science. 391 00:47:10.380 --> 00:47:19.740 and he plotted these things from about that time to about 1850, from Melville, Mises, 392 00:47:19.740 --> 00:47:39.740 this big story won't be depth about the whales being in certain areas of the ocean for one time of the year and then the other time of the year and he went over to the south and he took all this data that he could and gave it to the south so they have an invaluable 393 00:47:39.740 --> 00:47:51.740 Mass of the current kinds of things, we would mention in this book, a man with all the country by the author, 394 00:47:51.740 --> 00:47:58.740 as being one of the arch-beams of his Confederacy, because he contributed so much to their shipping. 395 00:47:58.740 --> 00:48:05.740 He was a naval captain, wasn't he? He had his own ship. 396 00:48:05.740 --> 00:48:09.740 I think it was a... 397 00:48:09.740 --> 00:48:14.740 Like the Coast Guard and the Coast, like they had NOAA. 398 00:48:14.740 --> 00:48:20.740 He was chartered and got all this together from all around the world. 399 00:48:20.740 --> 00:48:23.740 It went years and years after. 400 00:48:23.740 --> 00:48:41.740 He was the first person to develop those currents, and all that stuff, and I think he was a ship captain on one of those ships that went out to destroy Union commerce, commerce raider. 401 00:48:41.740 --> 00:48:48.220 and was I think if I'm not I get these fellows mixed up sometimes because the 402 00:48:48.220 --> 00:48:53.800 Secretary of the Navy has a very similar name to that but I think he was one of 403 00:48:53.800 --> 00:49:00.860 the most successful of the the commerce raiders out of the Confederacy that was 404 00:49:00.860 --> 00:49:05.220 another problem they had because they allowed the blockade to become so 405 00:49:05.220 --> 00:49:09.660 effective their commerce raiders had a hard time of it because if they captured 406 00:49:09.660 --> 00:49:15.660 The idea was you had to bring it back to port to claim your prize, and then you'd have to sell it. 407 00:49:15.660 --> 00:49:23.660 But the problem is if you got a commerce ship and tried to run it back into the Confederacy, you'd have a hard time with it. 408 00:49:23.660 --> 00:49:32.660 A lot of the European powers didn't want to be involved in this, so they didn't have the access of commerce rating 409 00:49:32.660 --> 00:49:41.660 and the commerce rating that really might have been the basis of a very effective naval force. 410 00:49:41.660 --> 00:49:51.660 You know, prior to the Civil War, and with the exception of some European powers like England and France, 411 00:49:51.660 --> 00:49:58.660 and even in their cases, most naval power was actually in private hands. 412 00:49:58.660 --> 00:50:10.660 Larry Seacrest has a wonderful article in a new book out that we have called The Myth of National Defense, edited by Hans-Hermann Hoppe, 413 00:50:10.660 --> 00:50:17.660 and he goes back and gives you a very nice summary of some important historical facts, 414 00:50:17.660 --> 00:50:24.660 which basically show that most of the fighting, most of the capturing, most of the destroying, 415 00:50:24.660 --> 00:50:35.700 in terms of naval power was done by private enterprise and the the government's ships were 416 00:50:36.580 --> 00:50:44.260 therefore shows of authority shows of force to to support the colonial empires and that kind of 417 00:50:44.260 --> 00:50:50.580 thing but when they went to war with one another they would authorize these private ships become 418 00:51:20.580 --> 00:51:39.580 I'll get his name for the next class, I'll try to remember. 419 00:51:39.580 --> 00:52:09.180 No, the submarine was not of Columbus. They have a Confederate naval yard here and they were trying to build ships which were based with wood and then iron clad so that they were using existing ships. 420 00:52:09.180 --> 00:52:39.180 were very good at making ships and the only good places were in Virginia and most of those people left and Pensacola Union maintained control of that throughout the war and in New Orleans which the Union got a hold of very quickly so places like Columbus were the next sort of line of defense and so they had ships there for repair but they tried to create these ironclads 421 00:52:39.180 --> 00:52:59.260 I don't know. 422 00:52:59.260 --> 00:53:06.700 I don't know. 423 00:53:06.700 --> 00:53:13.380 I think that there was, there was something, some obstacle that they, between Columbus 424 00:53:13.380 --> 00:53:22.180 and New Fall, but I think they had a way around that where they could get around that somehow. 425 00:53:22.180 --> 00:53:27.620 These were not large boats though, these were not going to be going out into the ocean as 426 00:53:27.620 --> 00:53:28.620 far as I know. 427 00:53:28.620 --> 00:53:34.260 Did they have a lock system there to get them up and over or whatever? 428 00:53:34.260 --> 00:53:35.860 Not back then, no. 429 00:53:35.860 --> 00:53:46.660 Now, the, but it wasn't long after that though, and so the, but the Union came in late in 430 00:53:46.660 --> 00:53:57.340 the war, of course they came through Alabama, through Selma, in Montgomery I think, to Auburn, 431 00:53:57.340 --> 00:54:03.660 no no, they're coming from Mississippi, and they're coming from the west to the east, 432 00:54:03.660 --> 00:54:10.980 and they basically came through I think Selma, Montgomery area, Auburn area and into Columbus 433 00:54:10.980 --> 00:54:19.180 and I think the ships were sunk by the Confederates because they weren't complete and they didn't 434 00:54:19.180 --> 00:54:27.180 want the Union to get their hands on them and they were later raised and what's left 435 00:54:27.180 --> 00:54:32.280 of them is in the museum so that was a very common occurrence. 436 00:54:32.280 --> 00:54:38.480 They would start these projects. They really weren't very good at making ships. They really 437 00:54:38.480 --> 00:54:47.480 didn't have the materials like iron. The type of iron that was needed to withstand a rifle 438 00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:58.680 cannon was two inches thick. And I think the only place that you could roll two-inch thick 439 00:54:58.680 --> 00:55:09.080 Cladding for these ships was in Richmond and yeah now how do you transport it from Richmond 440 00:55:09.080 --> 00:55:16.320 to Columbus now you've got you know you've got railroads but with railroads those railroads 441 00:55:16.320 --> 00:55:22.880 were busy with other things and they were wearing out you know back now we have right 442 00:55:22.880 --> 00:55:27.800 Right now we have steel rails that last a good long time. Back then there were iron 443 00:55:27.800 --> 00:55:35.920 rails and would wear out like iron horseshoes and have to be replaced, but they didn't have 444 00:55:35.920 --> 00:55:43.760 any replacement rails. So they would have to cannibalize part of their railroads in order 445 00:55:43.760 --> 00:55:51.960 to keep the existing ones going. You know, Lee said that if we only had a railroad from, 446 00:55:51.960 --> 00:56:21.960 I can't remember one harbor up to Richmond or something where they could have gotten more supplies up there that he could have held out forever, but there wasn't any labor or materials to do such a thing, because those things just weren't available, so this use of autarky to try to overcome the blockade, of trying to produce everything on your own, is really self-defeating. 447 00:56:21.960 --> 00:56:32.960 It really doesn't get you anywhere. You really can't produce much when you don't have the expertise, when you don't have the resources and the comparative advantage. 448 00:56:32.960 --> 00:56:41.960 The British had the comparative advantage in building ships, and of course the Union had some, a lot of ship building capacity as well. 449 00:56:41.960 --> 00:56:55.960 and but the South never really managed to get enough European shipping in its own in its own cause. 450 00:56:55.960 --> 00:57:19.960 Because of the evolution of the ship, I mean the cargo ship from wood to steel frames and wooden decks and things, but as time went on, they were more and more toward the steel that they are today. 451 00:57:19.960 --> 00:57:31.960 Yeah, but they were part wood and part steel, steel frame and wood between, but as you move into the 20th century, they wouldn't be able to support. 452 00:57:49.960 --> 00:57:56.960 and of course with iron guds and in many cases even iron decking. 453 00:58:19.960 --> 00:58:35.960 It's a steel step with a flat back, it's just a big flat back with one break in it, three breaks on it, and a bunch of dopey old-fashioned cannons sitting on wooden trucks running on the deck. 454 00:58:35.960 --> 00:58:45.960 You know, the real classic part of that, you know, the engine, the engine would be there, and the engine would be the carer. 455 00:58:45.960 --> 00:58:53.960 A minimum of the carer would be the driver, the very shit is top of the water. 456 00:58:53.960 --> 00:58:57.960 So we've got the Federal Reserve leading with a great engine. 457 00:58:57.960 --> 00:59:26.960 This is the confederate ship? No, this is the union ship. 458 00:59:26.960 --> 00:59:31.960 Well, you know, the logistics of all this... 459 00:59:31.960 --> 00:59:34.960 ...or the... 460 00:59:34.960 --> 00:59:38.960 ...items for the armistice... 461 00:59:38.960 --> 00:59:52.960 Yeah. Yeah, which wasn't the best solution, but the Confederates even in Texas, in Galveston Harbor, 462 00:59:52.960 --> 01:00:08.960 The Union had taken over Galveston Island and made that a very effective blockade of the Houston area, which was the export-import place for basically all of Texas. 463 01:00:08.960 --> 01:00:15.960 It had to go through Galveston, and so they took over the island, effectively cutting that off. 464 01:00:15.960 --> 01:00:26.040 The Texans outfitted a ship clad in cotton, so they just wired cotton bales all around 465 01:00:26.040 --> 01:00:35.360 the outside of the ship, and the Union fired their cannons at it, and it didn't do anything 466 01:00:35.360 --> 01:00:41.680 to the ship, so the ship was able to land, get its soldiers off, and they were actually 467 01:00:41.680 --> 01:00:47.680 able to retake the island and break the blockade in Texas for quite a while, I'm not sure 468 01:00:47.680 --> 01:00:55.160 if they used that opportunity effectively, but the southerners were very inventive people. 469 01:00:55.160 --> 01:01:05.800 They tried everything and things like technology, things like inventiveness were not the problem. 470 01:01:05.800 --> 01:01:13.920 There wasn't anything that the Confederates didn't try in terms of technology, so that's 471 01:01:13.920 --> 01:01:14.920 really not the answer. 472 01:01:14.920 --> 01:01:23.160 I think the answer is really just this basic resource problem that shows incomes declining 473 01:01:23.160 --> 01:01:33.080 and resources declining, all the while southern capital is being depreciated, whether it's 474 01:01:33.080 --> 01:01:40.640 the railroads, or the guns that existed in the South that were being worn out. 475 01:01:40.640 --> 01:01:47.340 That was all being depreciated and there was nothing there to reestablish all this stuff. 476 01:01:47.340 --> 01:01:53.560 Another good example of the technology was the submarine. 477 01:01:53.560 --> 01:02:00.800 The Confederates built the first submarine, there was a lot of trial and error with that. 478 01:02:00.800 --> 01:02:09.120 It was done privately, I believe, and it was successful at sinking a very large ship, and 479 01:02:09.120 --> 01:02:17.320 probably would have been more successful if they had continued to do that kind of thing. 480 01:02:17.320 --> 01:02:25.920 But I believe it was a privately funded effort, and there was a naval person who was actually 481 01:02:25.920 --> 01:02:46.920 They didn't have the technology that the union shipbuilders had. They couldn't test stuff and give it all in all ways. It was a manufacturer. I mean, they just didn't have that. 482 01:02:46.920 --> 01:02:53.920 They did not have the capital, they did not have the expertise, they did not have the facilities, but they were not... 483 01:02:53.920 --> 01:02:57.920 But they were just as inventive as the Northern inventors in America. 484 01:02:57.920 --> 01:03:05.920 Yeah, so there was no lack of trying, there was no lack of inventiveness or entrepreneurship. 485 01:03:05.920 --> 01:03:14.920 They just basically, every time you open a door, you find not enough men, not enough food, not enough iron, not enough resources. 486 01:03:14.920 --> 01:03:21.920 of Money, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money and State, The Theory of Money 487 01:03:44.920 --> 01:03:53.400 As bad as things were, the issue was still in doubt. Even late in the war, if they had 488 01:03:53.400 --> 01:04:00.320 turned their policy instead of these stupid things that they did in February of 1864, 489 01:04:00.320 --> 01:04:06.480 if they had done the right things, things were not looking good for, for example, Abraham 490 01:04:06.480 --> 01:04:09.280 and Lincoln in the election of 1864. 491 01:04:09.280 --> 01:04:13.480 Lincoln just barely won that election 492 01:04:14.840 --> 01:04:18.920 by a very, very close margin. 493 01:04:18.920 --> 01:04:21.240 The Democrats were very strong. 494 01:04:21.240 --> 01:04:23.480 There was a candidate running for governor, 495 01:04:23.480 --> 01:04:26.440 I think in Ohio, was a peace Democrat. 496 01:04:27.300 --> 01:04:32.300 In the Midwest, if the Midwest had walked out on Lincoln, 497 01:04:32.300 --> 01:04:41.220 Lincoln, the Union war effort would have been in serious, serious danger, and if two economists, 498 01:04:41.220 --> 01:04:48.140 Gary Anderson and Robert Tolleson, looked at the electoral situation for that presidential 499 01:04:48.140 --> 01:04:54.700 election, found it was very close, that a small number of votes swung some very important 500 01:04:54.700 --> 01:05:00.800 states like Pennsylvania, and that Lincoln actually had to do some very unscrupulous 501 01:05:00.800 --> 01:05:08.720 In these things, he and his generals, to get the vote to come out the way it did, for example, 502 01:05:08.720 --> 01:05:17.320 they found a tendency for generals to throw regiments from democratic areas into battle, 503 01:05:17.320 --> 01:05:22.880 more often in 1864, and to withhold troops from republican areas. 504 01:05:22.880 --> 01:05:29.840 There was also, they talked about misreporting the votes and things of that nature, sending 505 01:05:29.840 --> 01:05:32.840 and the troops home, you know, to vote. 506 01:05:32.840 --> 01:05:34.840 The soldier vote was going down. 507 01:05:34.840 --> 01:05:35.840 Yeah. 508 01:05:35.840 --> 01:05:38.840 Absolutely. 509 01:05:38.840 --> 01:05:44.840 These guys, you know, I'm close to not to die. 510 01:05:44.840 --> 01:05:45.840 Right. 511 01:05:45.840 --> 01:05:48.840 He could have lost that. 512 01:05:48.840 --> 01:05:54.840 And there was a lot of northern people, the landing-hands, those guys were for an all-nighter. 513 01:05:54.840 --> 01:06:20.840 Anderson and Taliesin is just a little journal article in a journal called Defense Economics and there's a quote from them near the end of the chapter and there's a reference to the article. 514 01:06:20.840 --> 01:06:33.840 It's not an obscure journal, but it's a very specialized journal, so it's not going to be something you're going to find at Books-a-Million, that's for sure. 515 01:06:33.840 --> 01:06:42.840 But it might be in the Auburn Library or be available online someplace. It's very, very interesting stuff that they report in there, though. 516 01:06:42.840 --> 01:07:12.840 They're public choice economists, they're always thinking that politicians are, you know, always trying to rig a vote here and there, and so they started looking around and they found some pretty good evidence that, you know, Lincoln was not sitting back idly, waiting for events to play out, that he and Republican generals and Republican leaders were very active 517 01:07:12.840 --> 01:07:21.840 You know, just as politicians are today, you know, they're always looking for the key state and what's the key issue and what will drive our voters out and what will drive their voters home. 518 01:07:21.840 --> 01:07:28.840 You know, if we can just rig that one election, the presidential thing will all fall in our way. 519 01:07:28.840 --> 01:07:55.840 and they found pretty much the same thing except in Lincoln's case you know they're finding you know essentially them sending the Democrats out to be killed more often than the Republicans and so it's very interesting that other people have also looked at that same issue too. 520 01:07:55.840 --> 01:08:07.840 You know, Lincoln's election of 1864 is something a lot of scholars should take another look at in the Confederacy. 521 01:08:07.840 --> 01:08:15.840 You know, the Confederates adopted the U.S. Constitution with some changes. 522 01:08:15.840 --> 01:08:22.840 And we're going to look at some of those changes towards the end of this course. 523 01:08:22.840 --> 01:08:27.720 One of the things they did differently was, they said a president would have a six-year 524 01:08:27.720 --> 01:08:32.640 term and could only have one term in office. 525 01:08:32.640 --> 01:08:43.760 So Jefferson Davis could not seek re-election and did not have to seek re-election in 1864. 526 01:08:43.760 --> 01:08:55.080 So politically the situations were very different for Lincoln and for Davis and politically things 527 01:08:55.080 --> 01:09:00.800 were very different for both North and South or should I say both Union government and Confederate 528 01:09:00.800 --> 01:09:01.800 government. 529 01:09:01.800 --> 01:09:09.800 From the beginning of the war, 1864 and 1865, both of those political climates changed rather 530 01:09:09.800 --> 01:09:10.800 dramatically. 531 01:09:10.800 --> 01:09:14.800 and President, and so on. 532 01:09:14.800 --> 01:09:18.800 This is a really important part of his life. 533 01:09:18.800 --> 01:09:22.800 He lost this month and year when he lost most of his money. 534 01:09:22.800 --> 01:09:26.800 That's more than he's worth. 535 01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:30.800 I think was 536 01:09:30.800 --> 01:09:34.800 Well, I mean 537 01:09:34.800 --> 01:09:38.800 Stevens was more 538 01:09:38.800 --> 01:09:51.080 more idealistic than Davis and everybody else and I'm pretty sure he's a real, true classical 539 01:09:51.080 --> 01:10:04.200 liberal and who these ideas really meant something to and he was most interested in establishing 540 01:10:04.200 --> 01:10:14.320 Peace and most everybody else was just headlong into the war and Stevens was 541 01:10:14.320 --> 01:10:23.920 making efforts to try to re-establish peace to negotiate and as far as he was 542 01:10:23.920 --> 01:10:29.640 concerned the solutions were we're all open to debate including re-entering 543 01:10:29.640 --> 01:10:36.080 Union, and no one would really pay attention to him or give him the authority, and I think 544 01:10:36.080 --> 01:10:42.640 he did try to negotiate, set up negotiations with the North a couple of times, but essentially 545 01:10:42.640 --> 01:10:51.640 he was somebody who was not listened to, and his only opportunity would be basically as 546 01:10:51.640 --> 01:11:00.280 He saw it as if Davis was killed, captured or died of natural causes and so I think going 547 01:11:00.280 --> 01:11:11.560 back home was his statement that he wasn't going to leave the office, but that he wasn't 548 01:11:11.560 --> 01:11:17.680 going to condone, condone what was going on. 549 01:11:17.680 --> 01:11:30.680 When asked a few questions, what was the style sort of, uh, and put incentives in all privateers to do the running? 550 01:11:30.680 --> 01:11:31.680 Blockade? 551 01:11:31.680 --> 01:11:32.680 Blockade running. 552 01:11:32.680 --> 01:11:35.680 Maybe from somebody else in some other country. 553 01:11:35.680 --> 01:12:05.520 Well, yeah, I mean Halliburton is a government contractor, and in a sense, privateers are 554 01:12:05.520 --> 01:12:09.280 are government contractors and that they're private and that they're working for the government, 555 01:12:09.280 --> 01:12:18.280 but privateers are a little different and it's an important sense that privateers have 556 01:12:18.280 --> 01:12:27.280 an incentive. They basically are paying all the cost of running that ship, of paying those 557 01:12:27.280 --> 01:12:34.680 soldiers, and they get all of the benefit of capturing ships and of claiming prizes. 558 01:12:34.680 --> 01:12:46.720 Calvertin is much different than that in the sense that they are getting paid to do a stated 559 01:12:46.720 --> 01:13:03.240 task and so, yeah, they're both privatizing but they're privatization in a very different 560 01:13:03.240 --> 01:13:10.440 and the Halberton type of privatization of government contracts doesn't have the same 561 01:13:10.440 --> 01:13:15.440 type of incentive structure. With Halberton they're given a million dollars let's say 562 01:13:15.440 --> 01:13:24.440 to supply toilet paper in Iraq and they might or might not get in trouble if everybody doesn't 563 01:13:24.440 --> 01:13:27.920 have toilet paper but basically that's their job and they're going to get paid a million 564 01:13:27.920 --> 01:13:34.320 dollars, no matter what. Well economists see that situation that has some problems in the 565 01:13:34.320 --> 01:13:41.080 sense that Hal Burton might not get the toilet paper to the right people at the right time, 566 01:13:41.080 --> 01:13:48.080 they might use inferior quality toilet paper, you know, those sorts of things, they'll cut 567 01:13:48.080 --> 01:14:05.680 not cost and yes and that's that's the other thing is it wasn't bid out 568 01:14:18.080 --> 01:14:42.760 Right. Exactly. That's the kind George likes. But notice there are two very, very different 569 01:14:42.760 --> 01:14:52.640 types of privatization, where one is open and costs are controlled for rational reasons 570 01:14:52.640 --> 01:15:01.100 and there's a profit incentive to do a really good job, whereas the other type, the cost 571 01:15:01.100 --> 01:15:07.240 incentives are skewed and biased and there's no incentive to do a really good job. 572 01:15:07.240 --> 01:15:12.200 So those are two different approaches, but before we get out of here, I do want to go 573 01:15:12.200 --> 01:15:18.520 I want to go back to the point that you raised originally, because I think that that was 574 01:15:18.520 --> 01:15:28.160 a solution that the Southerners should have, could have, and done, which is, you mentioned 575 01:15:28.160 --> 01:15:38.760 just briefly, is to offer prizes for the sinking of blockade ships. 576 01:15:38.760 --> 01:15:45.680 If the southerners offered a significant monetary prize for the sinking of certain ships in 577 01:15:45.680 --> 01:15:55.160 these blockade forces out there in front of the harbors, and they had their own mediocre 578 01:15:55.160 --> 01:16:06.360 ships in the harbor, but if they could get somebody like the little submarine that sunk 579 01:16:06.360 --> 01:16:13.240 With that warship, if you sink a few warships in these blockaded fleets, the rest of the 580 01:16:13.240 --> 01:16:15.120 blockade fleet is just a bunch of ships. 581 01:16:15.120 --> 01:16:19.400 I mean, they're not that powerful, they're not that well-armed, they're just ships out 582 01:16:19.400 --> 01:16:20.400 there. 583 01:16:20.400 --> 01:16:22.880 In fact, some of them were even wooden ships. 584 01:16:22.880 --> 01:16:30.080 So you know, if you sink a few warships and then send your moderate, mediocre Navy ships 585 01:17:00.080 --> 01:17:15.080 I think this is shit first. That doesn't cause a lot of big government. And if you open up the harbor to cotton exports and imports, the economy will benefit tremendously even in the short run. 586 01:17:15.080 --> 01:17:25.080 So I think that that would have been the best solution possible. The most immediate, you know, you could have done it right off the bat. 587 01:17:25.080 --> 01:17:30.080 and it doesn't require any resources other than the gold itself. 588 01:17:30.080 --> 01:17:35.080 So I think that that would, that's about it, ladies and gentlemen. 589 01:17:35.080 --> 01:17:38.080 I'm afraid I've talked our way through another hour and a half. 590 01:17:38.080 --> 01:17:44.080 And the next week, we're going to move on to the topic of inflation 591 01:17:44.080 --> 01:17:51.080 in both the North and South, which is probably the most important economic phenomenon, 592 01:17:51.080 --> 01:17:54.080 amazing economic phenomenon of the war itself.