Thank you. I woke up in the "Emperor's New Clothes" universe, and suddenly realized I couldn't see these "new clothes" of which everyone spoke. :)
God love you, and I thank you for providing me something I’ve long sought - a graphical explanation for the War of Northern Aggression.
And here you hit the nail on the head. A visual representation of what happened is the absolute best way of explaining the start of the Civil War. That map (which incidentally was produced by a Union supporter intent on showing the war couldn't be about tariffs because New York was paying most of the tariffs) is what eventually convinced me that I had been misled.
When I first saw it, I accepted it's claim that the North was paying all the tariffs because I didn't know any better. It wasn't until I ran across this information that I realized what that map showed didn't make any sense.
The numbers outlined in this book demonstrate that the South was producing the vast majority of total export value to Europe, and therefore the import value returned in exchange was being paid for by those Southern exports.
What the page of that book revealed, (and I believe PeaRidge has even better sources that show the South paid an even larger percentage) is that the South was paying about 80% of all the taxes for the entire nation!
It also showed that despite 80% of the money being produced in the South, it was somehow ending up in New York. It took me awhile to learn why this was happening, but I finally cracked that conundrum too! It was a combination of Geography and various US laws that funneled everything into New York.
As always, it was about cash.
Exactly.