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?
"Could" is irrelevant. "Is" was what was relevant on the cusp of this financial crises for the North.
But does it not occur to you that Union states produced not only about half of US total exports
27%, and that's being generous.
but also $200 million they "exported" to the South and several times that they consumed themselves?
As a consequence of protectionist pricing. With European trade directly to the South, much of those exports would have suffered as well. Northern Newspapers of the time say so themselves.
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?
Forget? No! The problem then is the same problem we face now! F***ing New York controls the "News", controls much of entertainment, and constantly promotes nationally policies which help keep the Federal spending party going.
Back in 1995, when Republicans had finally taken over control of congress, I noticed every talking head on the "News" Programs were ridiculing the idea of balancing the Federal budget by reducing spending. Every F***ing bastard one of them were mocking the idea that the budget could or should be balanced, and this always bothered me.
Why? Why would any sane citizen of the USA be against balancing the budget? What sort of lunatic would think this ridiculous spending party could just continue unabated? Then it dawned on me. Those people who profit from excessive government spending would be against balancing the budget, especially by reducing borrowing and spending. So then the realization started to form that these media people were merely agents of the people who profit from government excess spending.
And now it makes sense.
But you want it to be about "slavery" instead of about power, influence and money, because you think the Civil War was about some moral question. It's not. We still face the same enemy that the South faced 150 years ago, and it's still about money and power controlling Washington DC against the interests of the people of America.
But you'll use any modern data that supports your own case, right?
The question isn't regarding whether information is modern or old, it's whether it is relevant. Post 1861 financial events were the consequences of an artificial restraint on trade that would not have occurred without a war. You can't use them to predict what would be the likely financial conditions absent that war.
You have to use projections from before the War, and work with those, because the war fundamentally altered the reality of what would have happened. It skewed all the numbers.