Sure, but it has to be done if we wish to refute claims of our Lost Causers that, what, 75% or 80% or even 90% of Federal revenues were "paid for" by Southern exports.
When you go looking for actual numbers it turns out there are various sources, but they all say pretty much the same thing: "Southern products" were very important but not as important as Lost Causers claim.
Indeed, when you get down to it, turns out there was only one major product which was indisputably Southern -- cotton.
And cotton alone accounted for roughly half of US exports.
And we know for certain it's Southern because in 1861, when all Confederate products were deleted from Union exports, cotton exports fell by 80%.
But no other alleged "Southern product" came anywhere close to 80% reduced exports.
Tobacco exports, for example, fell only 14%.
Even rice exports, which you'd think very Southern, fell just 46%.
Indeed, hops & clover seed, listed as "Southern products" increased exports hugely in 1861.
So clearly the term "Southern product" was quite loosely defined and not intended to be taken as some kind of gospel truth.
And the bottom line is this: in 1861, despite an 80% reduction in US cotton exports, overall exports fell only 35%.
And 35% sounds about right for the importance of the Confederate economy to the overall US national economy.
You disagree?
SoCal Pubbie: "Of course the whole debate is absurd.
These economic excuses arose after the war was over so that Southerners wouldn’t feel so bad about fighting to preserve slavery."
Well, actually Confederate propagandists figured out early-on that our European trading partners would not like a civil war over slavery, but could well understand "free trade" and "oppressive Federal government", so that is the line they used as early as 1861.
This link from my post #85 discusses the issue in some depth.
No, I don’t disagree. I simply meant that pinpointing exact numbers is not as easy as looking up voting tallies in 1856 or something. Even the numbers might be misleading. For example, post 1861 cotton export numbers might include a certain amount of southern cotton smuggled north, or shipped to Canada to avoid the embargo and then brought into the USA for export. On the other hand, do the numbers for cotton exports include some processing in the north that added dollars to the value?
The bigger question is what impact did all this have on motivations to go to war. Even if one were to stipulate to these Southren claims, how would it account for the desire for secession? It doesn’t add up, and the rebels hardly mentioned trade when they issued public pronouncements on their reasoning.
And the bottom line is this: in 1861, despite an 80% reduction in US cotton exports, overall exports fell only 35%.
And 35% sounds about right for the importance of the Confederate economy to the overall US national economy.
You disagree?
Charles Adams disagreed in his books on the subject and a whole slew of newspapers on both sides as well as foreign papers disagreed. The only major export the Northern states had at that time was Midwestern grain. That had only really started to be exported in abundance in the latter years before the war. As far as manufactured goods, the Northeast exported practically none. They struggled to compete against European manufacturers even in the US without a very high tariff because The Europeans had industrialized first and already had economies of scale.
Certainly they knew that however it could hardly be argued to be a war over slavery when the Northern states offered slavery forever by express constitutional amendment and when the US Congress passed a resolution saying they were not fighting over slavery.
Northern propagandists only “discovered” a full 2 years into the war and from Mill of all people a whole ocean away that what they had really been fighting and dying for all along was actually slavery....even though they still had slaves themselves and while they were busy subjecting the Plains Indians to ethnic cleansing and genocide. Oh well. I guess it sounds better than admitting they were fighting a war for money and empire.