THAT’s what it’s called! Thanks! Um, Mods, please move my topic there. TIA.
lol VA and twig are like two sides to the same coin, Adam and Even, Alpha and Omega
The reason the Constitutional Convention was convened was that the Confederation was on the verge of collapse due to impotence. At the time there was speculation/anticipation that the confederation would have broken up into at least 3 pieces. Further down the road, that would have set the stage for possible inter-state wars over lands west of the Appalachians, and the stage would have been set for potential reconquest by the British (would have depended on the chaos in Europe; no telling how the British might have allocated their military differently).
The history of Florida would have been quite different, likely remaining in Spanish hands until the Spanish colonies gained independence. And lands west of the Mississippi River probably would have been under European control until Mexican independence and/or until Canadian confederation occurred.
I do not agree with this statement. Several individuals/families would have been poorer, but the generation of raw materials would’ve continued; more likely with different people.
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Quote your post, navigate to the desired thread, remove your quote tags, click “Reply”.
You’ll see a dialog pop up asking if you want to post in the “current thread” (which should be the desired thread) or the “original thread” (in this case, this thread).
No need to bother the mods for this one.
Would we have started the war of 1812 if we weren’t a country?
I think the South might have started it on their own, since that’s what they actually did, but it at least seems unlikely…??
And then would the result have been any different? The North already didn’t help, so would their not helping matter?
And even assuming we started it with a weaker army, would the final outcome have changed? Like basically we lost the war either way. Would we have lost territory or just quit sooner?
That war was pretty dumb.
Maybe the resident Canadians can answer this?
We’ll have to disagree on this one. The US had a competitive advantage in the production of cotton due to slavery and was able to produce and export more than otherwise would have happened. The wealth did primarily accrue to the owners and the financial industry that supported them but that does not change the fact that total wealth increased. As I mentioned earlier, the distribution of wealth is a separate issue that warrants discussion.
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The War of 1812 demonstrated to me that the Brits might have earlier squashed the American Revolution if they had devoted the proper resources to do so. By the time of the war of 1812 the British had given up on reclaiming America and were content to just repel the 1812 American invasion and inflict a few black eyes.
The 1812 American invasion of “Canada” was as deluded as the recent Russian invasion of Ukraine. This excerpt from Wikipedia may sound familiar:
“US politicians assumed American troops would be greeted as liberators, guaranteeing an easy conquest. Thomas Jefferson believed taking “…Canada this year, as far as Quebec will be a mere matter of marching, and will give us the experience for the attack on Halifax the next and final expulsion of England from the American continent”.
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A personal footnote on the War of 1812.
My ancestor, who was expelled from the US after the American Revolution, got to see two of his sons fight on the British side in the War of 1812 so he had some measure of revenge. It was incredible that the Americans believed these expelled loyalists would want to side with the invading Americans rather than with the British who had given them land in Canada after being expelled from the US.
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I mean, I suppose your GDP/capita would be much higher if you just don’t count half the country in your capita count
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I assume that, without the competition from slave owners, free Europeans would have settled in the south and grown cotton as a cash crop. They would have probably been more productive than slaves because they were working for their own benefit.
I might have a different opinion about sugar. The health conditions in the humid areas where sugar seemed to thrive might have been so bad that free people just wouldn’t do the work.
But, I don’t see how this revenue “made the US stronger”. I think of per capita economic growth as driven by technical innovations, cotton and sugar didn’t drive much of that.
The wealth generated by cotton and sugar also benefitted the banks which enabled them to finance other industries where that capital was well deployed. Wealth begets wealth.
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Women would’ve been excluded from this calculation at that time. I’d also guess that any unlanded peoples would also not have been counted (i.e., you were counted only if you owned property). So most Blacks of that time would have zero impact on this number regardless of their status.
However, representation in Congress might’ve been impacted.
It depends on what the relationship among the regions/states had been like in the intervening years. While I can imagine impressment being a big enough problem to have created an incentive for the states to come together for this common cause, it’s also possible that tensions between states or groups of states would have been such that they would have been unwilling to commit to action against Britain due to the risk that they posed to each other.
I think it’s more likely that, given the rise in American trading and the impact that had to British interests, Britain would have taken advantage of disunity in North America to impose its will on at least some of its former colonies.
I mean, even as one nation, we didn’t come together for a common cause. The North didn’t want it. The declaration vote was split in partisan lines. There were protests. Some New England militias refused to come. Some New England banks refused to finance it. The army itself dog-legged around NY.
So really the question is whether the South and West would have declared war on Canada… I’m guessing no. Maybe they would have just take Florida or something though. I don’t know.
It has been almost 50 years since the televised Watergate Hearings. It was pretty boring tv until James Dean showed up. I assume high school American history discusses Watergate?
I noticed that the January 6, 2021 televised hearings start soon. More likely to be a damp squib rather than something that will be discussed in history class 50 years from now?
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Would free people, farming the same land, also generate wealth? I think so.
We might have gotten more than just financial wealth. Most Americans seem to have supported some level of education for their kids. Many more people living in the South would have been able to read and write with free people doing the farming instead of slaves. Possibly that human capital would have made the US stronger.
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Good comments.
I think it partially comes down to whether the US would have had the same competitive advantage with paid farm workers? Cotton was a huge export crop for the US because it was a labour intensive industry and the US used slave labour. Other countries may have been able to produce the cotton cheaper if the US had had to pay its workers a reasonable wage.
When I said earlier that the US was stronger because of slavery I meant only in the amount of wealth generated at the time from exports, etc. Stronger does not mean better! Less total wealth more evenly distributed might have produced a better society as you have indicated. However most histories I have read have concluded that a great deal of wealth was created in the US by slavery.
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I would not assume that.
I’m guessing they barely get to WWII. There is a lot of history, probably would take the whole four years to do it justice.
Could show “All The President’s Men” in two or three classes. Dramatic effects, sure, but stays pretty close to the facts.
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