What are you reading now?

[L Verge]

As time permits, I have been sneaking in a chapter or two of Clint Johnson's A Vast and Fiendish Plot. While the book is ultimately about the Confederate incendiary attacks on New York City, Mr. Johnson's background of the city's history from colonial times to the Civil War in terms of its pro-slavery, anti-abolitionist, Southern-leaning sentiments is fascinating. As we all know, economics was the driving force, but the author puts it in terms that are easily understood. King Cotton ruled that city just as much as it ruled the South -- maybe even more so -- from shipping to factories to trade with the South and even tourism as the richer Southerners traveled to the cosmopolitan city.

Chapter 3 ends with an interesting statement: "On the issue of continuing slavery in the South, New York would support the South." By Chapter 7, however, Ft. Sumter has been fired on; and the New York businessmen were turning their backs on the South -- not over the slavery issue, but over the impending loss of their income now that trade with the South was wrecked. Their allegiance with the South was switched to the Union in order to guarantee federal protection of their industries. New Yorkers did not especially want Lincoln as President, but they would follow whomever could offer protection of their investments.

More will be revealed...