For North Rothschilds’ August Belmont & Company
For South: Rothschilds’ Erlanger & Company
by Elbert O. Kelsey
THE ECONOMIC FRICTION between the trading and manufacturing interests in the northeastern states and the agricultural interests in the southern and western states, in the first half of the nineteenth century, reached a climax in 1836 when the second “Bank of the United States” was forced out of business in President Andrew Jackson’s second term. The southern cotton – producing – exporting states were providing the foreign exchange which paid for the bulk of imports into the United States. Yet, the federal government persisted in taxing imports so heavily that import duties bore most of the cost of the government. This meant that the southern cotton producers were almost directly paying the whole cost of the central administration.
The well-informed people of the country, both North and South, were acutely aware of the problems, ethical as well as economic, of Negro slavery and were giving careful thought to the best way of ridding the country of its curse. It was not a sectional political issue of any serious consequence until irresponsible (and alien backed) agitators brought it forward as the moral standard needed to arouse emotions to fighting pitch.
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