Final Thoughts

Old Homes & Old Grievences Still Part Of America

I was reading about a festival that is held every year in Columbus, Mississippi. The town has the largest collection of restored antebellum homes in the U.S.

Owners dress in period costume and show off their properties to people from all over the U.S. and beyond. It is a celebration of the “Old South” with the graciousness and courtliness depicted in Gone With The Wind. It was a time when manners and customs were revered by White slaveholders while the slaves were in the fields with a small subset keeping the homes graciously run and an even smaller subset were the artisans who had learned the crafts necessary to build and maintain the homes.

I love to tour old homes, north or south. I owned a home in Connecticut built in 1859 that we restored and lived in for a decade. I would have a great time in Columbus.

A few months back, there was a controversy with a Republican primary candidate regarding what caused the Civil War. Was it slavery or something else? Most of us came down on the cause being slavery but others cited economics, states’ rights and I even heard someone say it was a misguided religious belief that perpetuated the institution.

Taking Columbus as an example, how were the original owners of the homes able to amass the wealth necessary to live in the opulence they did? It was without a doubt their ability to farm thousands of acres planted in cotton which they then sold to the mills of the North and England. If left there, those southern planters seem like any other farmers only much better off than those in other parts of the U.S.

Before the development of farm machinery, large tracts of land were tilled by hand. The crops of the North and Midwest were vegetables and grains, and farms were at best a couple of hundred acres. There weren’t enough hands to work the farm and make a profit if a farmer had thousands of acres.

In the South, pay wasn’t an issue. Slaves worked for room and board and not much of that because they had no choice. An economic class arose that had privilege and money, and it was all based on the enslavement of millions of people.

The argument is often made that the war was caused by the rural South conflicting with the industrialization taking place in the North. That is true. Further the North needed the raw materials the South produced for their mills. King Cotton was king because it put huge amounts of wealth into the pockets of White people in the North but nowhere near as much money as the slave-holding Southern landowners.

The argument about states’ rights was the constitutional hook that the South used in its battle against the elimination of slavery. Slavery was a right guaranteed in the U.S. Constitution. A Black person was chattel and the only way that they were not is if their owner gave them their freedom.

It is easy to say that the Civil War was about economics or state sovereignty over the federal government. In the end, these arguments are nothing more than weak reasons for allowing one group of people to become and stay rich and powerful by keeping another group in bondage. Slavery was the root cause of the Civil War. The institution is America’s Original Sin.  

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Friends and Neighbors of Martin County is your eyes and ears so that you know what is going on in Martin County’s municipal and county governments. I attempt to be informative and timely so that you may understand how your tax money is being spent. Though I go to the meetings and report back, I am no substitute for your attending meetings. Your elected officials should know what is on your mind.

Tom Campenni 772-341-7455 (c) Email: thomasfcampenni@gmail.com