Strong circumstantial evidence supporting piracy as a cause of the Civil War.

[Solvedit]

You mention this in conjunction with the Civil War (and then swing back to the Proclamation Line, which was 100 years earlier in the newly formed United States.)

Their numbers declined sharply about the time the 13 colonies formed the United States and shrank after that...

"Good at foraging" doesn't seem to make any impact on anything.  If they survived and quit piracy, they just melted into the population of whatever place they found themselves in, had a family and kids, and kept out of trouble.  They didn't run off to become "mountain men"; that takes a special set of skills that pirates (who were generally from seaside towns and ports) don't have.  

Newcomers, this thread referenced points raised on another forum which is closed.  There is a synopsis of the point of this thread on Post #14.

No special skills?  What do you think they did when they foraged in the Caribbean?  They kept themselves and transatlantic shipping fed. 

Seaside towns and ports?  Some of them were probably born and raised in the woods of some Caribbean island. 

When their numbers declined sharply, how do you know it wasn't because they melted away into the area west of the Colonies?

[Solvedit]

The pirate heyday is more than 150 years before the Civil War.  This was before the United States became the USA.  There was no North or South or free states vs slave states.  Whatever they did had not impact on the Civil War.

The ones left raided European ships to sell goods tax free for the early colonies, but this was on an individual basis.  This was nipped in the bud about 50 years before the Civil War, around the time that the Barbary Pirates were defeated and France conquered the area.  Piracy in the Caribbean ended in the 1830's

 The big issues of the 1830's were the westward expansion ("manifest destiny") and the Indian Removal Act as well as the question of states rights and whether (and which) states could have slavery.  None of those was impacted by pirates.

Newcomers, this thread referenced points raised on another forum which is closed.  There is a synopsis of the point of this thread on Post #14.

The colonies banned expansion west of the Proclamation Line in 1763, and the US respected the line until about 1830.  Before and during that time, it is possible the area was steadily filling with heavily armed bands of former pirates. 

Perhaps expansion was banned in 1763 so the colonists wouldn't lose their lives to former pirates and the world wouldn't realize where the pirates went?

[Solvedit]

Newcomers, this thread referenced points raised on another forum which is closed.  There is a synopsis of the point of this thread on Post #14.

No special skills?  What do you think they did when they foraged in the Caribbean?  They kept themselves and transatlantic shipping fed. 

Seaside ports and towns?  Don't you think quite a few of them were born and raised in the woods of some Caribbean island? 

When their numbers declined sharply, how do you know it wasn't because they melted away into the area west of the Colonies?

[Byrd]

Newcomers, this thread referenced points raised on another forum which is closed.  There is a synopsis of the point of this thread on Post #14.

The colonies banned expansion west of the Proclamation Line in 1763, and the US respected the line until about 1830.  Before and during that time, it is possible the area was steadily filling with heavily armed bands of former pirates. 

Perhaps expansion was banned in 1763 so the colonists wouldn't lose their lives to former pirates and the world wouldn't realize where the pirates went?

The triggering point for the Proclamation was Pontiac's Rebellion (Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1765) was an armed conflict between the British Empire and Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskogean, and Siouan-speaking Native Americans following the Seven Years’ War)  It originated in the Great Lakes area and the battles were fought throughout the Ohio Valley area.  This would mean that the pirates somehow turned up in Ohio and beyond in great numbers -- larger numbers than the people sent in by investors like Benjamin Franklin.  And the pirates would have to be undetected by the British who were by that time stationed in a lot of military forts.  Forts that were well armed and well supplied.
(https://www.jyfmuseums.org/learn/researc...on-of-1763)


Let's run the scenario so we can see what's likely to turn up:

• pirates come ashore in 1650.  Nobody's around.  They have guns, so they can shoot game but have no way of making more gunpowder and they don't know where to find lead ore to smelt to make lead for bullets.  They have to find shelter, find food, find a way to live while surviving the American winters in the area of Ohio, which killed a lot of people (if they ended up in the Ohio Valley to cause problems with the Native Americans, then the quickest way would be to march through that area.  
  
• They have their shipboard supplies, no women, no farming tools -- and no horses, so they're on foot. 
  
• Once their food from the ship runs out, they have to hunt and the only edible animals that are easily found are squirrels (and they're not easy to hunt.  My dad was a squirrel hunter.)  Any deer hunter can tell you can spend weeks hunting them and not get close enough to kill one.  The pirates could fish, of course, but that means they have to stay near reasonably large bodies of water (because the only fish you get in tiny creeks are minnows.)
  
• The only clothing they have is what they owned so if pants or shoes or shirt wear out, nobody's coming with replacements. They can tear down the sails and use the canvas, but somebody's got to haul the stuff around.
  
• If knives or guns break, there's no forge around.
  
• To walk to Ohio is going to take more than a month and they don't have pack animals to carry supplies.  
  

At this same time, settlers who came prepared and had supply ships landing frequently in these areas died in large numbers.  (The Jamestown Colony, which had 105 men and boys to start, had a very difficult time in spite of picking a good deepwater defensive site and having farming tools and seeds with them.)

• If the total number of men who landed was more than one ship's worth, we'd find an entire graveyard of ships (or scuttled ships) in a certain area of the coast that wasn't associated with a port.
  
• What if they broke up their ship?  Well, carrying around a lot of lumber is a lot of trouble.  You're not going to trek 600 miles carrying boards and ropes strapped to your back.
  
• So what if Native Americans took them in?  We'd find their artifacts in Native American villages (they found some artifacts that de Soto left (he was travelling up through the Appalachians in the 1540's) so artifacts by pirates would be found)  About 1/3 of DeSoto's men died on that trip, and they had horses and pack animals and supplies.  DeSoto had native guides and trade goods.  If you're walking and the choice is between food and trade goods, you will live longer if you take the food.
  

I don't see any way for more than a handful of pirates to survive and reach that area.   Those numbers are far too tiny to have an impact on the Proclamation Line.

[Byrd]

Newcomers, this thread referenced points raised on another forum which is closed.  There is a synopsis of the point of this thread on Post #14.

No special skills?  What do you think they did when they foraged in the Caribbean?  They kept themselves and transatlantic shipping fed. 

Seaside ports and towns?  Don't you think quite a few of them were born and raised in the woods of some Caribbean island? 

When their numbers declined sharply, how do you know it wasn't because they melted away into the area west of the Colonies?

They didn't keep the transatlantic shipping fed.  They ate what they bought in port and occasionally had live animals for short periods of time (until they ate them) As for foraging, they did it sometimes but foraging in the Caribbean (turtles, very large lizards (in Puerto Rico they call them "tree chickens")) https://waynesavage.com/what-did-pirates-eat-2/

But that's a whole different ecosystem than the Ohio Valley area (where the wars started that led to the Proclamation)

As to where they were raised, if you look at the names of the captains and ships (and their histories) it's unlikely that they had lots of men aboard raised on foraging in the Caribbean.  They often took in men from the ships they captured; most were European stock, except for the Barbary Pirates, who were Arabic.

And if you look at my response above, you can see how unlikely it was that they got into the area and escaped the notice of the Europeans already moving in and the French and British forts there.


...and none of this had much of an impact that I can see on the Civil War since it took place before the USA became a country.

[Solvedit]

The triggering point for the Proclamation was Pontiac's Rebellion (Pontiac’s Rebellion (1763-1765) was an armed conflict between the British Empire and Algonquian, Iroquoian, Muskogean, and Siouan-speaking Native Americans following the Seven Years’ War)  It originated in the Great Lakes area and the battles were fought throughout the Ohio Valley area.  This would mean that the pirates somehow turned up in Ohio and beyond in great numbers -- larger numbers than the people sent in by investors like Benjamin Franklin.  And the pirates would have to be undetected by the British who were by that time stationed in a lot of military forts.  Forts that were well armed and well supplied.

Newcomers, this thread's OP references threads on another forum.  There is a summary of the point in Post #14.

Why would it mean the pirates had to go to "Ohio and beyond in great numbers?"

Why couldn't they go to what became the western Carolinas, Mississippi, western Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, western Virginia and West Virginia?  Those areas were the Indian Reserve according to the Proclamation of 1763. 

Ohio was a part of Quebec.  That's probably where the forts you mentioned were located. 

Bullets could be recovered or purchased.  Animals can be trapped.  Powder can be purchased.  

They could probably build a forge in the back woods but they could have sold furs or other valuable items for new utensils.  

You just posted a few days ago that they lived successfully in the Caribbean.  The conditions may have been similar to the South in the 1700s, except trading posts were further away. 

They surely do find shipwrecks all over the place.  Not all of them can be identified.  But how can you say it's a mystery where they went after just having said supplies were an issue for them?  They surely would have pulled ships apart for building materials and metal.

[Solvedit]

They didn't keep the transatlantic shipping fed.  They ate what they bought in port and occasionally had live animals for short periods of time (until they ate them) As for foraging, they did it sometimes but foraging in the Caribbean (turtles, very large lizards (in Puerto Rico they call them "tree chickens")) https://waynesavage.com/what-did-pirates-eat-2/

But that's a whole different ecosystem than the Ohio Valley area (where the wars started that led to the Proclamation)

As to where they were raised, if you look at the names of the captains and ships (and their histories) it's unlikely that they had lots of men aboard raised on foraging in the Caribbean.  They often took in men from the ships they captured; most were European stock, except for the Barbary Pirates, who were Arabic.

And if you look at my response above, you can see how unlikely it was that they got into the area and escaped the notice of the Europeans already moving in and the French and British forts there.


...and none of this had much of an impact that I can see on the Civil War since it took place before the USA became a country.

Newcomers, this thread's OP references threads on another forum.  There is a summary of the point in Post #14.

The very name Buccaneers references the green branches they used to smoke meat for sale to ships.  It is from the French word boucan.  They were called boucanieres when they started raising or foraging and then preserving meat for sale, probably mostly to ships which needed non-perishable food.  The association of the barbecue-adjacent name with pirating suggests they continued to pirate while selling preserved meat.  

The idea was that when their shore-based preserved meat business started to thrive, they may have started families who had never known city life.  My point was they did have the skills to live in the backwoods because they may have had to live deep in the woods  without amenities.  They may have had no right to be there or exploit the land.  They may have had to remain out of sight because of navy patrols.  Then they may have gotten pushed out by sugar plantations or overhunted the land and had to go somewhere else.

[Byrd]

Newcomers, this thread's OP references threads on another forum.  There is a summary of the point in Post #14.

The very name Buccaneers references the green branches they used to smoke meat for sale to ships.  It is from the French word boucan.  They were called boucanieres when they started raising or foraging and then preserving meat for sale, probably mostly to ships which needed non-perishable food.  The association of the barbecue-adjacent name with pirating suggests they continued to pirate while selling preserved meat.  

The idea was that when their shore-based preserved meat business started to thrive, they may have started families who had never known city life.  My point was they did have the skills to live in the backwoods because they may have had to live deep in the woods  without amenities.  They may have had no right to be there or exploit the land.  They may have had to remain out of sight because of navy patrols.  Then they may have gotten pushed out by sugar plantations or overhunted the land and had to go somewhere else.

Not according to historians.

From Wikipedia: Originally the name applied to the landless hunters of wild boars and cattle in the largely uninhabited areas of Tortuga and Hispaniola. The meat they caught was smoked over a slow fire in little huts the French called boucans to make viande boucanée – jerked meat or jerky – which they sold to the corsairs who preyed on the (largely Spanish) shipping and settlements of the Caribbean. Eventually the term was applied to the corsairs and (later) privateers themselves, also known as the Brethren of the Coast. 

As you see, the name came first and applied to French hunters.  They were chased off their hunting grounds and turned to robbery and piracy.  Unlike most pirates, the ones in the Caribbean did have certain cities that they controlled... and lost.  

Pirates weren't grocers.  They did sell goods -- but not things they produced themselves.  They stole goods and people from ships that they captured.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buccaneer

The Caribbean pirates stayed in the Gulf area and never made it to the British colonies.  By the time the USA was founded, they were mostly gone.  While they may have left behind illegitimate children, there is no indication that these kids grew up to be pirates or invaded the US in any great numbers or had an impact on the Civil War.

They did not affect the Proclamation Line.

[Byrd]

Newcomers, this thread's OP references threads on another forum.  There is a summary of the point in Post #14.

Why would it mean the pirates had to go to "Ohio and beyond in great numbers?"

Why couldn't they go to what became the western Carolinas, Mississippi, western Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, western Virginia and West Virginia?  Those areas were the Indian Reserve according to the Proclamation of 1763. 

Ohio was a part of Quebec.  That's probably where the forts you mentioned were located. 

Bullets could be recovered or purchased.  Animals can be trapped.  Powder can be purchased.  

They could probably build a forge in the back woods but they could have sold furs or other valuable items for new utensils.  

You just posted a few days ago that they lived successfully in the Caribbean.  The conditions may have been similar to the South in the 1700s, except trading posts were further away. 

They surely do find shipwrecks all over the place.  Not all of them can be identified.  But how can you say it's a mystery where they went after just having said supplies were an issue for them?  They surely would have pulled ships apart for building materials and metal.

Your idea posited that they were the reason for the Proclamation Line of 1763.  I looked up the history of that proclamation and the incidents that started it.  It was the result of the French and Indian Wars, which the colonists took to mean that the land west of the Appalachians was open to settlement (see https://www.mountvernon.org/library/digi...ne-of-1763).  Wealthy colonists (including Franklin) sponsored people to go into that area and start growing crops that they could sell (tax free) to the rest of the colonies.

This land takeover incensed the Native Americans.  Chief Pontiac led a rebellion and eventually the British (no USA at that time) decided to restrict people from moving into that area.

If the pirates didn't make it to Ohio in large numbers and start farming the land, then they had no part in the reason for the Proclamation Line.

[Solvedit]

Your idea posited that they were the reason for the Proclamation Line of 1763. 

That's the official reason.  


Newcomers see post 14 for a synopsis of the point.  The OP referenced threads on a now-closed forum.