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1. The fact that trade did not fall as much as you claim it should have after 1861 shows that while the Confederates may have THOUGHT that New York was going to be cut out of a very lucrative income stream, in fact they were not.

So that 230 million dollars per year of Trade produced by the South just disappeared into thin air?

You aren't getting this. I guess it's too complicated for you to understand that without the blockade, that 230 million trade with Europe would have continued and it would have steered the trade traffic to the South.

You try to use the evidence of what did happen (with a blockade) to reassure what you want to believe about what would have happened. (without the blockade.)

No war, no Blockade, The South eats New York alive. That's why the power structure of New York and Washington DC absolutely needed a war. Without a war, they were in serious economic trouble.

That 230 million dollars per year in trade didn't vanish. It was forcibly suppressed by Union Warships stopping it.

BroJoeK has already explained it. “Southern” and “Confederate” were not the same.

And I don’t think it’s nice to accuse Southerners of being so dumb that mean old Mr. Lincoln could manipulate them into secession so easy just so New Yorkers could keep they’re money flowing. I do declare you must take them for country bumpkins!

DiogenesLamp: "So that 230 million dollars per year of Trade produced by the South just disappeared into thin air?
You aren't getting this.
I guess it's too complicated for you to understand that without the blockade, that 230 million trade with Europe would have continued and it would have steered the trade traffic to the South."

Well... there was that matter of the 1861 Confederate embargo on cotton exports, intended to persuade Europeans to recognize the Confederacy.
If Europeans had remained slow to respond then, yes, trade "just disappeared into thin air."

Also, except for cotton, almost everything classified as "Southern products" was also produced outside the Confederacy and so would have no particular reason to be "steered" south.