It is dishonest to pretend they represented what would have happened absent the conflict. "
What's totally dishonest is to pretend that even one dollar of 1860 exports somehow "belonged" to the 1861 Confederacy.
It didn't, first because from 1/3 to 1/2 of Southerners were Border State & Upper South Unionists, and second because there's no credible evidence saying all products shipped from, say, New Orleans were even produced in "the South".
DiogenesLamp: "Those producers who would benefit from direct Trade with Europe would have eventually done what was in their economic best interest, so even if his 'Southern origin' included the slave states that remained in the Union, once they saw others reaping far greater profits than they, they would have been of a mind to join that other coalition."
But producers exporting out of, say, New Orleans already had "direct Trade with Europe", so a Confederacy would have no effect on their prosperity.
Just the opposite, since according to this source Confederates intended to tax their exports while the Union never did.
That means exporters in the South would be far better off shipping products out of Union ports.
Indeed, here is a March 4, 1861 report from the Savanah Republican which sheds great light on this debate:
- "Leaving direct taxation out of view, as the last resort of dire necessity, it is proposed to levy an export duty....
If a tax be levied on exports, nearly all the money it raises will come out of the cotton planter, for, except sugar, which mounts up to a respectable figure, the Confederate States export nothing but cotton, worth speaking of.
The little rice, tobacco, naval stores and lumber we export amount to a very small sum.
Half a cent a pound on cotton, as proposed, will bring in eight or ten millions -- all of which the cotton planter must pay, leaving other industries comparatively untaxed.
But even the import and export duties together will not probably produce the amount desired..."
The Savanah Republican did not consider exports other than Cotton & Sugar to be "worth speaking of".
Could it be because all those other items were in fact Union exports?
Bottom line: the Confederate export tax would drive Southern producers to ship from Union ports and DiogonesLamp's entire sand-castle-in-the-sky comes crashing down to Earth, destroyed by the winds of reality.
Why am I not surprised?
DiogenesLamp: "The threat to New York's money stream was the same, the only question was one of timing.
It may have happened sooner, or it may have taken a little longer, but New York's (and Washington's) money stream was going to get interrupted absent a war to stop it."
Sorry, now you have to cancel your Confederate victory party because they were going to add an export tax which would cancel out all the alleged benefits of "direct trade with Europe".
DiogenesLamp: "With Federal gunboats steering trade back to New York, and prohibiting Southern trade that would otherwise have occurred, it became a "captured market" in a very different meaning from the usual economic term. "
No, you have that backwards.
The northernmost Confederate fortress on the Mississippi River was in Columbus, Kentucky.
- "A chain was suspended from Columbus to the Missouri shore to stop Northern boats from moving down river."
Another Confederate fortress was Vicksburg, Mississippi, and it was they, not Union forces, which prevented commerce.
- "From 1861 to 1863, the Confederates controlled the Mississippi River.
Their northernmost fortress at Columbus closed the upper river to Union gunboats.
Vicksburg, the largest and most formidable river fortress, stopped any Union force invading from the south.
Both forts held the title "Gibraltar of the West" - meaning impregnable, natural strongholds."
