Where it shipped from has nothing to do with it, as you very well know. New York had virtually total control of the shipping, and they had bought up virtually every cotton contract that came available.
The money came back through New York. It didn't go directly to the people who actually produced the commodity, it went first to New York where they skimmed off a big chunk of the profit.
Actually, it was slavery that paid for Southern luxuries.
And the bulk of Federal Revenues, and 73% of the trade going into New York.
The Fed gov was not induced so much to launch a "moral" war as they were to get that money back and stop any future competition to the Northern money men who had gotten their own agent in control of the government.
Say, I hate to break this to you, but there is no such a person as "New York", never was, never will be.
Many "New Yorkers" then as now, came from elsewhere and returned elsewhere in due time.
New York elites were long-term family, friends & political allies (Democrats) of the Southerners they did business with, and felt much closer to them than to those deplorable Republicans always ranting about abolition & such.
DiogenesLamp: "The money came back through New York.
It didn't go directly to the people who actually produced the commodity, it went first to New York where they skimmed off a big chunk of the profit."
Of course every resale adds a profit margin, but in 1860 there were no people anywhere else on Earth better off than your average cotton planter and his white neighbors.
For you to pretend otherwise is pure nonsense.
DiogenesLamp: "And the bulk of Federal Revenues, and 73% of the trade going into New York."
Roughly 50% of Federal Revenues and only a small fraction of the total trade going through New York.
Remember: less than half the $200 million in cotton exports shipped from New York, and the total trade still accounted for only 5% of the US $4.4 billion GDP.
DiogenesLamp: "The Fed gov was not induced so much to launch a "moral" war as they were to get that money back and stop any future competition to the Northern money men who had gotten their own agent in control of the government."
I get it -- that's your story and you're sticking to it, no matter what.
But the fact remains that those "New York elites" you obsess over were all Democrats and political, social & economic allies of Southern planters.
As such they were just as horrified by Lincoln's election as today's Democrats are by Trump's!
That's part of what makes your narrative as wrong as it can be.
You portray Lincoln's political enemies as his rulers when they were nothing of the sort.
Yes, once Confederates started civil war, those New York Democrats did ally temporarily with Republicans to help win it, but it was a very uneasy alliance, as witnessed by the 1863 NY draft riots.
And it did not for long outlast the war.