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BroJoeK But how much of America’s imports in, say, 1860 were owned by the very cotton planters who exported their produce to Europe?
My guess is: very little.
And the reason is, when planters harvested & prepared their crops, they moved the bales to a rail siding or steamboat landing.
Merchants riding the train or steamboat would offer the planter a price for his cotton bales, which the planter may accept or wait for the next train-steamboat in hopes of a better price.
The merchants then move the cotton to port, export it and, on return fill the ships’ cargo holds with European products.

So who were these merchants, New Yorkers? Maybe.
Southerners? Maybe
Foreigners? Very likely, representatives of European importers there to make certain their companies get the quantities & qualities needed.

Point is: once the cotton leaves the rail siding or steamboat landing, our Southern planter has his money — that’s his payday — and ownership transfers to agents representing ultimate customers, agents who then also refill the ships’ cargo holds with European imports for their return trip.

So I’m thinking DiogenesLamp stumbled slightly closer to truth on this, though both Lost Causers are distorting actual history for their own propaganda purposes.

Agree? Disagree?

It will depend on the the Seller of the Cotton. Some were large Planters who acted as wholesalers buying up the cotton produced by yeoman farmers around them for a percentage and putting it together with their own, some were strictly wholesalers (”Factors” as they were called then).

Whether the Southern owned the cotton all the way through direct sale to say Lancashire mills OR whether he sold on to a Factor at the docks, the end result of the tariffs would be the same.

If the voyage of the ship and the costs associated with it could not be defrayed nearly as well by imported manufactured goods due to the tariffs, then the price he is going to be paid per bail of cotton is going to go down. That is money directly out of his pocket.

In addition to that, thanks to those high tariffs, domestic manufacturers can increase their prices so whether he buys an imported manufactured good that has been tariffed or whether he buys a domestic manufactured good, he is going to have to pay a higher price one way or the other - more money out of his pocket.

Notice how this affects the yeoman farmer who devoted say 10 of his 40 acres to cotton in order to raise money to buy the things he could not produce as well as Plantations like Tara in GWTW. Money out of their pockets two ways. They all feel it. Slavery only concerns that plantation owner. The tariff concerns everybody.

But of course its not surprising to see the PC Revisionists try to just scream “slavery slavery slavery” at every turn while denying how the Northern states were voting themselves other people’s money....how corporate fatcats had politicians in their pocket and manipulated government policy to increase their profits.

And it's still going on today. The Democrat Coalition (Led by Wealthy Coastal Urban Liberals) is made up of people with excessive influence on the government stoking astro-turf about the latest politically correct issues of the day like "Global Warming", and "Transgenderism" and "Sanctuary Cities" as well as "Gun Control" and "Choice".

A tiny wealthy minority leading a coalition of the stupid and the insane who they keep worked up into a frenzy about whatever is their kooky cause du jour, to keep them voting to put "establishment" agents back into power.

This is why they own the media. The media is an investment in electing Democrats to keep the government policies that send money into their pockets, such as excessive borrowing and spending.

And it has been going on since just before 1861.

FLT-bird: "Whether the Southern owned the cotton all the way through direct sale to say Lancashire mills OR whether he sold on to a Factor at the docks, the end result of the tariffs would be the same.
If the voyage of the ship and the costs associated with it could not be defrayed nearly as well by imported manufactured goods due to the tariffs, then the price he is going to be paid per bail of cotton is going to go down.
That is money directly out of his pocket."

That's a lot of "ifs", so here's what actually happened.
1860 a large cargo ship docks in New Orleans to load up on cotton.
Merchants on board will inspect, buy & load cotton they approve of.
Price of cotton in New Orleans is $.10 per pound, so planter with 50 bales of 500 lbs. each receives $2,500 roughly equivalent to $1 million today.
Planter goes home & pays his bills, orders more land cleared for next year.

Delivered cotton price in 1860 about $.135 per pound, meaning our cotton ship merchants carrying, say, 5,000 tons of cotton gross $1,350,000 of which $350,000 less freight is margin.
For the return trip they load up with a mixed cargo of woolens, silk, iron products and wine, all dutiable.

Their ship returns first to New York where merchants off-load some of their imports to a bonded warehouse, then continue on the return trip to New Orleans.
Imports remain in bonded warehouses (NY or NO) until buyers are found at which point tariffs are paid and products ship to end customers.

In the mean time, our cotton planter purchased imported silk for his wife & daughters, a new iron stove for the kitchen and some nice French wine.
So he paid directly for some of the import tariffs.
He also invested in a company building Southern railroads and they imported huge volumes of iron products from the North.
Northerners "exported" $200 million per year to the South and with their earnings also purchased imports from bonded NY warehouses.
So who paid the import tariffs?
Cotton's $200 million exports would cover about half, but there was another $200 million in "exports" from North to South which helped pay for imports.
If we figure that $200 million "exported" South plus the remaining $200 million (including specie) of non-cotton foreign exports, the total is $600 million of which cotton was 1/3 of 33%.

FLT-bird: "Notice how this affects the yeoman farmer who devoted say 10 of his 40 acres to cotton in order to raise money to buy the things he could not produce as well as Plantations like Tara in GWTW.
Money out of their pockets two ways.
They all feel it.
Slavery only concerns that plantation owner.
The tariff concerns everybody.
But of course its not surprising to see the PC Revisionists try to just scream 'slavery slavery slavery' at every turn while denying how the Northern states were voting themselves other people’s money....how corporate fatcats had politicians in their pocket and manipulated government policy to increase their profits."

Except, "slavery, slavery, slavery" is what Deep South Fire Eaters said in late 1860 & early 1861.
It's what Senator Davis proposed in December 1860 in his version of Corwin's amendment.
It's what Confederate VP Stephens said was the "cornerstone" of their new government.
So the notion there were really more important "other reasons" was simply concocted after the fact to put a prettier face on an otherwise very ugly business, FRiend.

He said it.