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It is already clear. If you think it is unclear, see my reference to the intentions of the Northerners to make everyone eat New England Clam Chowder.

But on the economic point I made when you entered this discussion, I dare say you have been shocked to discover that the South was paying for the vast bulk of all Federal expenditures, and you did not know that before.

I didn't either a few years ago, and when I learned of it, I immediately realized there is something wrong with the story that I had been taught about the Civil War growing up.

If the South was producing the vast bulk of the European money, how was it all ending up in New York?

Your clam chowder comment was beneath you, really. A rather sophomoric defection for someone with such a depth of knowledge, despite your obvious misinterpretation of the facts you’ve accumulated. Since returning to your discussion of economic matters in the antebellum period will be both time consuming and a defection from the very simple matter I wish to clarify, I will not do so until you state in clear and concise terms exactly what social changes you were referring to.

By the way, if you’re actually serious that efforts to get Southerners to eat clam chowder was the causation of Southern secession, then it makes Johnny Reb look even worse. The old Foghorn Leghorn stereotype of the hot headed, fire eating gentleman would be too milk toast a descriptive if Southerners got offended to the point of warfare over such an absurdity.

If the South was producing the vast bulk of the European money, how was it all ending up in New York?

Did it? A lot of it ended up here ...

... or in mansions like it. Or in the furnishings and gardens. Or in agricultural equipment, seed, livestock and land. Or in slaves.

Some was in banks in New Orleans or Charleston or New York or London. Some went to pay for shipping and insurance.

If you lived in a very agrarian part of the country, you'd be buying stuff that was made elsewhere, so it made sense to keep some of your money with commission merchants or cotton factors who sold what your plantations produced and bought the things you wanted or needed. Much of the money you made in the harvest would have to be spent on planting the next crop, so it didn't make sense to take it in cash and spend it all or stuff it in your mattress.

Western banks tended to be newer and less experienced and more likely to collapse when panics (what we'd call recessions or depressions) broke out. Western state governments also overextended themselves and became insolvent, leaving their bonds worthless. Those were two more big reasons why plantation owners in the Old Southwest may have liked to spread out their investments and keep some of their money in Northeastern or foreign hands.