Did England Win the American Civil War?

During my days as a college student, I had the great honor of shaking hands and speaking with John Kenneth Galbraith. I still remember the sweat on the palms of my hands. Dr. Galbraith had been the American ambassador to India during the Kennedy administration and there was an exhibit by an Indian artist at Wesleyan.

I had just written a paper for a history class in which I argued that the ironclads provided to the Confederacy by England during the American Civil War, so crippled New England shipping that the British Merchant Navy remained the dominant force in world commerce after the war. The progress of our country continued, despite this fact, due to Westward Expansion. Dr. Galbraith listened politely and nodded.

As I have tried to argue in this blog, today we are engaged in another civil war. The war is not between the economic interests of the manufacturing states in the North and the economic interests of the agrarian states in the South; and the developed countries competing with the North for the raw materials of the of the South. It is much more obscured and much more political. It is between Republicans and their super rich constituents, and those aspiring to join their ranks; and the Democrats and moderate Republicans, and the rest of us, including those that grasp the realization that the Tea Party Republican platform makes it virtually impossible for anyone to ascend the financial aristocracy.

We voluntarily have given away much of our manufacturing base to the rest of the world, specifically Southeastern Asia. And our agrarian base is challenged in the Southern Americas. We must do everything we can to ensure that China does not win this Civil War.