Still, it's important because you've argued repeatedly that slavery was dependent on large cotton plantations and without them, slavery could not expand.
And of course, that's nonsense because in fact slavery did not depend on cotton plantations and millions of US slaves lived in regions where no cotton was grown.
Indeed, you should take a minute to consider this question: if, as you say, slavery needed cotton plantations and no cotton could grow in the US Far West, therefore US slavers did not really want to expand into Western Territories, if that's true, then why did Confederates claim & send armies into such non-cotton regions as as New Mexico, Arizona, Oklahoma, Missouri & Kentucky?
DiogenesLamp: "I want to show where the 70-80% of US exports came from."
I've seen no such map, but you can get to $70-80% if you assume that all exports listed as "Southern Products" were produced exclusively in the South and if you discount the value of gold & silver exports.
Then 1860 "Southern Products" total $229 million or 72% of $316 million total US exports.
1860 Northern & Western exports totaled $88 million, or 28%.
But as I have often pointed out:
- Specie exports also paid for imports and those added $66 million making total exports $400 million.
- Of that only cotton was exclusively Deep South exports and that accounted for 50% or about $200 million.
- Everything else classified as "Southern Products" was actually produced in Union states as demonstrated in 1861 when Confederate exports were 100% deleted from US totals.
So, botton line: at 50% of total exports cotton was hugely important, but just not as important as Deep South Fire Eaters imagined.
DiogenesLamp: "I want to show which ports were creating the money, and which ports were receiving the money."
We don't have numbers on exports per US port, but port city populations should serve as rough proxies.
Using those we see that New Orleans and Baltimore were the biggest Southern ports by far, accounting for 72% of Southern port city populations.
Charleston, Mobile, Richmond, Savanah & Wilmington combined added 28% of which Charleston was 8%.
And if we look at the map of cotton production, it's clear South Carolina was nowhere near the top of that list, with at most 15% of total cotton exported.
