Katrina NOT the worst disaster - Commentary by Frank Gillispie

Katrina NOT the worst disaster – Commentary by Frank Gillispie

As I followed the wandering storm Ophelia in the Atlantic this weekend I suddenly realized that a similar storm may have created the series of events that produced the most bloody war in America's history. I refer, of course, to the War Between the States.

Yes, I am sure some of you will immediately think that I am looking for any way to avoid the obvious fact that the Confederacy was all about slavery. I urge you to read on. You might be surprised to learn that there were many causes of that conflict, including the one I am about to reveal.

This story begins in California where gold was found in a mill run. Thousands of men and a few women with picks shovels and pans filled the streams of California and the found tons of the golden metal.

The problem was that the gold was on the west coast of North America and the financial center was in the east, specifically New York City. Travel between the two sites was extremely difficult. Gold was loaded on boats in California, shipped to Panama, hauled overland to the Atlantic, loaded on another boat and sailed to New York.

Just such a boat was passing the coast of North Carolina when it encountered an Atlantic storm. The boat, with a fortune in gold, was lost.

New York business interests decided that they needed a railroad across the continent to more safely ship gold eastward and manufactured goods to the west. But they did not want to pay for it. They ask the U.S. Congress for help.

Webmaster's Note: Forgive the intrusion, but do you see a pattern here? Today, we have money interests in Atlanta squealing for Georgia taxpayers to pay for Atlanta projects and infrastructure to benefit mostly Atlanta. They pressure and bribe (legal contributions) the General Assembly to spend our money their way.

Congress agreed to subsidize the railroad companies with tax money. But to do so they needed a massive tax increase. So they voted to dramatically increase the excise taxes paid on all goods shipped in from England and other European nations.

Now, the people who bought most of this merchandise were the farmers of the agricultural South. Dixie was already paying eighty percent of federal taxes, and now they would be hit for nearly twice as much.

The Northern dominated federal government refused to negotiate a fair tax program. The Southern states felt that they could not tolerate the unfair tax burden being imposed on them, so they seceded and formed the Confederate States of America.

Now, I admit that I am not a trained historian. I may be wrong about this. But the sequence of events following that storm appear to be related to me.

If I am right, Katrina is not the most dangerous storm ever to strike America. That unnamed Atlantic storm in the 1850's nearly ripped this country apart and caused the death, injury and economic devastation of millions of Americans.