Category: American History

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The Southern Defense of Slavery Shifted. Civil War Followed.

Pro-slavery broadside

Recent “woke” campaigns have raised a legitimate question: How could the founders of our country espouse the ideals of freedom, especially in the Declaration of Independence, and still support slavery?

A related question (not so often asked by critical theorists) is: How did the country ultimately conduct a deadly war (with 600,000 combatants killed) to end slavery?

Two related essays shed light on both questions. One is by Jeffrey D. Grynaviski and Michael Munger, the other by Michael Munger and Daniel Klein.[1]

The argument reflected in these essays is that ideological, emotional, and political support for slavery changed over time. Southern founders such as Washington and Jefferson believed that slavery was a “necessary evil,” but a  temporary one. Beginning around 1830 (after most if not all the founders were dead) Southern elites argued instead that slavery was a “positive good.” The development of what Grynaviski and Munger call institutional racism was a “conscious project of ideological reconstruction.”[2]

Continue reading “The Southern Defense of Slavery Shifted. Civil War Followed.”

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Why Was St. Louis an “Also-Ran”?

St. Louis Union Terminal now a Doubletree

Urban historians sometimes puzzle over why one city grows and its competitors do not. One rivalry, between St. Louis, Missouri, and Chicago, Illinois, is particularly interesting.

In 1840, St. Louis was a thriving part of the “urban frontier,” with a population of 35,979. It managed a rich fur trade, was a major transfer point for goods coming upriver from New Orleans (the nation’s third-largest city at the time), and its two major rivers enabled it to send grain from Midwestern prairies down the Mississippi for shipment east.  Indeed, as one historian noted,

“Perhaps no American city was born under such favorable auspices as St. Louis, Missouri. It was located at the confluence of navigable water courses which drained over a million square miles of the continent, and it was built by a number of big businessmen (“big” for that time, which was 1764) who knew precisely what they were doing.”[1]

In contrast, Chicago was a hamlet of 4,470 people.

But by 1880, when St. Louis had grown to 350,158 people, Chicago’s population had galloped ahead to 503,185.[2] Continue reading “Why Was St. Louis an “Also-Ran”?”

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How Taxes and Regulations Shaped Architecture

Above is a photograph of two houses in Nashville, Tennessee. They are narrow buildings, connected by a one-story hallway in the middle, and they share a driveway. Do they look a little strange? To me, they do—handsome but strange.

They show how a Tennessee law led to creative designs.

Taxes and regulations often have unintended consequences. In this post, I will share three examples of distinctive housing that came about in an effort to work around government fiats.

Nashville’s Connected Houses

Let’s start with Nashville’s connected houses. The reason is simple. Nashville has been growing, with population increasing at about double the U.S. rate during the past decade. [1] This puts pressure on housing supply, and subdividing a lot to build two houses is attractive.

Until 2014, however, zoning laws required builders who wanted to build two homes on a single lot to connect the houses—to make them legally duplexes  or condominiums.  So, as having two homes on one lot became financially attractive, we got homes like those above. Continue reading “How Taxes and Regulations Shaped Architecture”

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What Happened to the Electric Vehicles of 1904?

Baker Electric Car

We may be on the verge of a widespread switch in the auto industry from gasoline-powered cars to electric ones.

While wondering if such a massive switch will  occur, I began to look into what happened to the early electric vehicles.  First developed in the 1880s, electric cars were popular for several decades. An electric car won a celebrated race in Chicago in 1895, [1] and in a 1904 brochure, 21 of the 88 automobile models listed were electric. [2]

The disappearance of the electric vehicle illustrates capitalism’s “creative destruction,” a term coined by economist Joseph Schumpeter to explain how new products and services sweep away the old. (We would use the term “disruptive technology” today. ) Overall, the advent of the “horseless carriage” caused creative destruction,  as it demolished entire industries— horse breeding, horse feed, carriages, saddles and, of course, buggy whips.

But why was the electric car swept up in that destruction? The usual answer is that the technology was inferior.  Batteries were too heavy, too weak, and had to be constantly recharged. True, but I don’t think technology was the main reason. Continue reading “What Happened to the Electric Vehicles of 1904?”

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Was Southern Soil Exhaustion a Cause of the Civil War?

Cotton field

Studying U. S. agricultural history, as I have been doing, sheds new light on historical issues that once seemed solved. Thus my question: Could the deterioration of Southern soil have been a cause of the Civil War?

We know that the Civil War was not fought over freeing slaves but over whether slavery would expand as the nation moved westward. [1] It is less well-known that the South experienced widespread deterioration of its land during the half-century before the Civil War. Much of the South was planted in large monocultures, first tobacco and then cotton. Growing cotton and tobacco year after year takes the nutrients out of the soil.

What could southerners do? Continue reading “Was Southern Soil Exhaustion a Cause of the Civil War?”