Did it ever occur to you that the artificially created condition of keep that product off the market stimulated the competition of which you speak? Without the Civil War holding back South produced cotton, would these markets have emerged as they did in it's absence?
Meanwhile New York City went on to prosper spectacularly in the late 19th century.
And why not? It had a symbiotic relationship with the seat of government, a condition that it has maintained ever since.
To be sure the Civil War had something to do with it, but so did Europe's demand for grain, flour, and meat,
New York City produces a lot of grain and meat does it?
and the ability of Americans to sell machinery and manufactured goods in the wider world.
Wipe out your competition and the pickings are much easier. Who's left to oppose you? Who could have challenged you economically?
For the North, too, cotton was never the king you make it out to be.
Without unraveling the artificial economic pressures on the existing system of that time, we can't say what would have happened. I am thinking that anyone in the trade with any sense would have diversified into other businesses like shipping and manufacturing. It is a poor theory that they would have simply chosen to do nothing else than keep planting cotton.
Extra capital would have created extra industries.
Yes, because politics is all about our unexamined feeelings.
It pretty much is. Did you see Hillary's vote totals?
That's how wars start, countries become ungovernable and we end up in the messes we do. Thank goodness that people actually do have to argue and prove things with facts every now and then.
And when does that happen? Doesn't the media just tell us what are the "facts" nowadays? You know, that media out of New York?
Didn't Hillary win 64 million votes? Was it on the "facts"?
It didn't produce a lot of cotton, did it? Try not to be such a d*ck if you can. New York City was the East Coast's greatest natural port and thus the natural point of export for much of America's agricultural surplus.
Wipe out your competition and the pickings are much easier. Who's left to oppose you? Who could have challenged you economically?
What are you blathering about? The Southern states were competition in machine production and manufactured goods? Not very likely in the 1850s and 1860s. Even without a war, it would have taken some time for the Southern states to catch up, even if they wanted to.
I am thinking that anyone in the trade with any sense would have diversified into other businesses like shipping and manufacturing. It is a poor theory that they would have simply chosen to do nothing else than keep planting cotton.
Some people would diversify. Most of them weren't cotton planters or running the Confederacy. You never responded to the Wigfall quote and the rest of my post on the unwillingness of Southern elites to go into manufacturing.
You wrote about Charleston's shipbuilding being "frozen out" of the market by Northerners. The truth, so far as I've been able to find out, is that plantation owners who were involved in shipbuilding early on realize that they could make more money growing cotton. They didn't need the bother of shipbuilding. Cotton was king. It's like that when you have a highly desirable product. You put all your money and effort into it and when it stops being highly desirable, it's too late to invest in something else.