**BDParrish comments in italics
I hesitate calling on DiogenesLamp, but it's his arguments I'm attempting to rehearse.
The explanation is: $200 million in 1860 represented roughly the value on Deep South cotton exports, earnings from which paid for imports on which Federal tariff revenues depended.
But Lost Causers claim that much or most of the $200 million was being siphoned off by "New York power brokers" who used it to buy influence in the Washington D.C. Deep State, influence inimical to Southern interests.
That's what forced secession in late 1860 and it's also why the big devil Lincoln invaded the South, killed 700,000 soldiers plus millions of civilians, destroying $billions in Southern property assets, all to protect the $200 million "money flow from Europe."
It's the reason Lincoln was not just our worst Democrat president, he was also one of the worst human beings ever, equivalent to some of our 20th century monsters.
Do you suppose I mistakenly called Lincoln a "Democrat" president?
No, no mistake by me -- that is imho the focus and key point in all Lost Causer propaganda -- to turn 1860 Northern Republicans into today's Liberal Progressive Democrats and make 1861 secessionists into conservative Republicans.
What do you think, DiogenesLamp, did I state your views accurately?
BDParrish: "I never thought that it mattered who fired the first shot or even where or when the shooting started.
"Well, HE started it!" is playground talk, and does not bear on either side's moral argument."
Oh but it's critical to assigning blame to Lincoln for millions of deaths and $billions in treasure lost due to the Civil War.
I mean, if Lincoln was not to blame, then who was, Grant, no must be that little demon Sherman, it's all his fault, right?
No blame must ever besmirch such noble conservative Republicans as, say Jefferson Davis or Alexander Stephens or William Lowndes Yancey, for examples.
Out of time for now, must run, back later...
You have oversimplified and left out significant portions of it. It was not just about the European trade, it was about the capitalization of Southern Industry and the creation of direct competition with Northern industry through cheaper European goods flooding the American market then being served by Northern manufacturers.
It was also about the economic interests of the Territories and the wavering border states aligning with the South, eventually causing a cascade secession of those states and territories to the Confederacy.
In other words, it was about who was going to control the financial destiny of the larger portion of the North American continent.
The topic is complex and extensive, and you give my argument short shrift, I think partially because you don't understand it, and partially because you really really really don't want it to be correct.