While watching ‘The Civil War’ series on PBS, John Fremont was not mentioned once. I did see his name on a map, his army off in the mountains of Kentucky. What gives?.
I suspect Blair and his British kindred, feared the German troops under Fremont’s command, that they would do well in defeating the Confederacy that had strong ties to England, and invite the New German Republic to colonize the conquered South, and intercept the export of cotton to British weavers, and make Germany the weaving capital of the world. I suspect British leaders told Lincoln, if Fremont’s Germans enter the war, they will invade on the side of the Confederacy. Lincoln placed this army where the Confederacy could not get at them, and vise versa. McCullen – did nothing – too! If Fremont and McCullen acted in tandem, the war would have been over, and, the slaves freed? Lincoln did not want the slaves to be free! What, and who forced his hand? It had to be Fremont.
Jessie Benton said the British were going to send a Irish Catholic army to take the San Joaquin Valley, which was ideal for growing cotton. Fremont emancipated the slaves of Missouri so they could fight in the Civil War, but, I suspect he wanted them to come to California and grow cotton as free men. The 200,000 Germans in the Union army would defeat the Confederacy, come to California, and establish the West as King Cotton. They would form a trade alliance with the German Zollverein.
Jon Presco
http://dash.harvard.edu/bitstream/handle/1/3207344/Beckert_EmancipationEmpire.pdf?sequence=2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Americans_in_the_American_Civil_War
Cotton diplomacy refers to the diplomatic methods employed by the Confederacy during the American Civil War to coerce the United Kingdom and France to support the Confederate war effort by implementing a cotton trade embargo against the United Kingdom and the rest of Europe. The Confederacy believed that both the United Kingdom and France, who before the war depended heavily on southern cotton for textile manufacturing, would support the Confederate war effort if the cotton trade were restricted.
Ultimately, cotton diplomacy did not work in favor of the Confederacy. In fact, the cotton embargo transformed into a self-embargo which restricted the Confederate economy. Ultimately, the growth in the demand for cotton that fueled the antebellum economy did not continue.[1]
By the late 1850s, Southern cotton had accounted for “77 percent of the 800 million pounds of cotton consumed in Britain, 90 percent of the 192 million pounds used in France, 60 percent of the 115 million pounds spun in the German Zollverein, and as much as 92 percent of 102 million pounds manufactured in Russia.”[2]
The myriad of customs barriers restricted trade and hampered the industrial development, but the rulers of the states were reluctant to forgo their income from the customs. The impasse was overcome through external forces. With the repeal of the Continental System, the German tradesmen stood in direct conflict with the English industry. A united German Trade and Tradesmens Union demanded protection from English exports.
By 1835, the German Customs Union had expanded to include the majority of the states of the German Confederation, even Saxony, Thuringia, Württemberg and Baden, Bavaria, and the Hessen states. Functionally, it removed many internal customs barriers, while upholding a protectionist tariff system with foreign trade partners.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zollverein
http://www.dw.com/en/european-cotton-industry-centered-in-bremen/av-17510878
Disputes over the proper tariff rate had been a sectional political issue between northern and southern states at one point almost leading to a prior dissolution of the Union. Southerners mostly opposed protectionist tariffs for finished goods, fearing they would lessen the value of their raw material exports, as foreign manufactures would be blocked sale back to the United States. Southern political pressure kept the tariffs at low levels from 1847 through 1860. The founders of the Confederate States codified this opposition in the Confederate States Constitution with a prohibition of protectionist tariffs. One of the first acts of the Confederate Congress was the lowering of import tariffs from the then current US average rate of 20 percent to 10 percent.
However the Confederacy proposed to impose its tariffs on all imports from the USA, which would have been a vast increase in taxes for the Southerners. In practice almost no tariffs were collected; the total customs revenue collected was about $3.3 million (Confederate dollars), from 1861 through 1864. [Historical Statistics (2006) series Eh201]
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