You go to great lengths to deny the significance of the export value because you realize what it looks like if the true contribution of the South is acknowledged.
But does it not occur to you it still looks bad even using your deliberately minimized figures? 20 Million people in the North producing only 50% of the export value while 5 Million in the South are producing the other 50%?
Going all out to drop the real number from 34-25% does not suddenly make the point disappear. It still doesn't make any sense at your lowball number of 50%. (I've got SoCalPubbie up to 65%)
You think your 25-34% reduction in the number exculpates? It doesn't.
Also I don't care what the modern shipping patterns are now, they are irrelevant to what was going on in 1860.
You go to great lengths to avoid confessing that a huge portion of "Southern products" could be and were produced outside the Deep South.
DiogenesLamp: "But does it not occur to you it still looks bad even using your deliberately minimized figures?
20 Million people in the North producing only 50% of the export value while 5 Million in the South are producing the other 50%? "
But does it not occur to you that Union states produced not only about half of US total exports but also $200 million they "exported" to the South and several times that they consumed themselves?
DiogenesLamp: "Going all out to drop the real number from 34-25% does not suddenly make the point disappear.
It still doesn't make any sense at your lowball number of 50%. (I've got SoCalPubbie up to 65%)
You think your 25-34% reduction in the number exculpates?
It doesn't."
Exculpation is what DiogenesLamp is trying to do here for the slave-power's declarations of secession and war against the United States.
You desperately hope to focus enough attention away from "slavery, slavery, slavery" in the South and onto "money, money, money" up North, so people will just... sort of... forget, right?
DiogenesLamp: "Also I don't care what the modern shipping patterns are now, they are irrelevant to what was going on in 1860."
But you'll use any modern data that supports your own case, right?