Rather than put forth reasonable or valid points, you tend to prefer histrionics."
Some of what you post is at least arguable, but much is just flat-out lies.
If your point can be argued, I argue it, but if it's just cockamamie nonsense, I call it what it is.
DiogenesLamp: "The South was producing the money.
The North was reaping a large benefit from this money."
No, slavery, supported by Federal laws and financed by Northern banks, produced 75% of the world's export cotton, earning about $200 million in 1860, half of US 1860 total exports and 5% of the US $4.4 billion GDP.
Otherwise, according to the March 4, 1861 Savanah Republican:
- "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."
Cotton in 1860 paid the planter about $.10/pound FOB New Orleans and paid the shipper $.135/pound FIS Liverpool, LeHavre or Boston.
The difference of $.035/pound paid for shipping, warehousing, finance, tariffs, insurance and any other such costs.
It also helped maintain a fleet of several hundred ocean-transport ships plus hundreds more coastal & river transports.
$.035/pound totaled about $70 million in 1860 or 1.5% of US GDP.
There were never legal restrictions on who could build, own or operate any of the transportation & warehousing.
DiogenesLamp: "The South was going to take away that money, and make it even harder for the the North to earn money on it's own."
Maybe, but absent war economic realities in 1861 would suggest the same cotton ships transporting to the same European importers and returning with import goods to the same US ports.
Might some Confederates decide to enter the risky ocean-freight business?
Sure, but ships were not cheap to build & operate and cotton required hundreds of them.
Bottom line: if the Confederacy wished to continue its booming economic times in 1861 it would have to continue using most of the infrastructure then in place, which would then have years to adjust to whatever the new regime wanted.
DiogenesLamp: "The North was not going to tolerate this.
The North invaded the South to prevent this.
All else is just made up crap to justify what they did."
Rubbish, a Big Lie that even 1860s Confederates were too ashamed to pretend.
I've said before, it would make Goebbels blush, but Stalin's boys would nod knowingly.
The simple fact is nobody would start or maintain a major war based on just who, exactly, was going to own the ships used to transport cotton, so it's an absurd suggestion.
