that is hard to say. Given the Courts Decision in Sanford v Scott (Dred Scott). I could easily see the Taney court deciding for SC.
The South was not the only people to make money off of the cotton trade. The bankers in Philadelphia, New York City and Boston lent millions to Southern planters. A prime field slave cost over a thousand dollars. Each years cotton crop was planted with borrowed money and it was paid back when the crop sold. The vast majority of ships used to carry Southern Cotton to markets in Europe and to New England were owed by Northerners. The companies that insured those ships and cargos were largely Northern based.
When cotton shipped by rail, it was shipped in cars made in the North, on rails made in the North and pulled by locomotives made in the North. Even if the South seceded, Northern business would still loan, insure and transport Southern cotton because all the South could actually do is grow the stuff. The great wealth generated by cotton did not generate any significant political power for the South. The House of Representatives was firmly in the hands the more populous Northern states. The Senate majority was controlled by States where slavery was illegal, and in 1860, a Northerner won the Presidency. The South actually had almost no influence in the Government of the United States.
Thank you for the informative reply. Those are some great business and political insights that provide a good perspective on a complicated issue.
Best regards. I look forward to reading other comments by you.
Sorry, some of what you've posted is just fine, but you're pushing your points way too far.
Let's start here:
In 1860 the Southern economy was not nearly as industrialized as the North's, but in the whole world it was second only to the North and small areas of Britain or Germany.
Both Virginia and Tennessee had significant industries which became important in the war effort.
Yes, railroads in the South were not as advanced as Northern, but there were still enough to move products to market, or troops to battle.
Perhaps most interestingly, by 1860 white Southerners were, on average, the most prosperous people on earth, and they well knew it.
More important, they fully understood the sources of their prosperity.
As for their political power, the South had dominated Washington DC politics from Day One of the Republic.
That was due both to the well-earned respect for such Southern leaders as George Washington, Jefferson & Madison, and to the Constitution's 3/5 rule, which gave slave-holders disproportionate representation over Northern non-slave holders.
One result was, before 1860 there had never been an openly anti-slavery President, and Southern Democrats had dominated Congress, the Supreme Court and the military virtually continuously, from the beginning.
As recently as 1856 many Northerners joined the South in electing sympathetic ("doughfaced") Democrats to Congress and the Presidency, giving them almost a monopoly over the Supreme Court.
And that was the rub: with the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scott decision, many Democrat Northerners suddenly found they had more in common with their abolitionist Republican neighbors than with Southern Democrats.
So in 1858 Democrat majorities began to wither, and after November 1860, for the first time ever, both Congress and the Presidency were controlled by Republicans.
But the key point to remember is that the Deep South did not wait for any anti-slavery actions from Washington, DC, but began to organize for secession within a few days after the election in November 1860.
That means they declared secessions "at pleasure", rather than for material just cause, and that made their actions constitutionally illegitimate.