It is puzzling why they keep pushing this narrative. I have not read a single book, paper, or periodical that mentions raw cotton as an import.
Another point that is continually promoted are the percentages of tariffs that are collected at this or that port, as if that means anything. For example, in #588, DoodleDawg wrote:
"Upwards on 95% of all tariff income was collected in Northern ports. Losing far less than 10% would hardly have cause crony capitalism to crash and burn, assuming it existed as you describe to begin with."
What does it have to do with anything, other than add carrying charges to the imported goods that are received in the North, and then transported to the South? [Carrying charges include the costs of storage (say, in warehouses,) and the conveying of those goods from storage to the destination.]
One of the biggest fears mentioned in Republican newspapers in those days was that shipping would go South, where there would be a smaller tariff.
"The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually."
[Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860, in Howard Ceil Perkins, "Northern Editorials on Secession." American Historical Association, 1942, P.573]
Once the South seceded, the income from that "95% Northern port tariff collection" shrunk considerably, not to mention the carrying charges. To protect his precious revenue (much of it directed to line the pockets of the cronies who supported "republican" campaigns,) Lincoln really had no choice but to blockade the Southern ports, as promoted by this "republican" newspaper:
"One of the most important benefits which the Federal Government has conferred upon the nation is unrestricted trade between many prosperous States with divers productions and industrial pursuits. But now, since the Montgomery [Confederate] Congress has passed a new tariff, and duties are exacted upon Northern goods sent to ports in the Cotton States, the traffic between the two sections will be materially decreased.... Another, and a more serious difficulty arises out of our foreign commerce, and the different rates of duty established by the two tariffs which will soon be in force..."
"The General Government,... to prevent the serious diminution of its revenues, will be compelled to blockade the Southern ports... and prevent the importation of foreign goods into them, or to put another expensive guard upon the frontiers to prevent smuggling into the Union States. Even if the independence of the seceding Commonwealths should be recognized, and two distinct nations thus established, we should still experience all the vexations, and be subjected to all the expenses and annoyances which the people of Europe have long suffered, on account of their numerous Governments, and many inland lines of custom-houses. Thus, trade of all kinds, which has already been seriously crippled would be permanently embarrassed..."
"It is easy for men to deride and underestimate the value of the Union, but its destruction would speedily be followed by fearful proofs of its importance to the whole American people."
[Philadelphia Press, March 18, 1861, in Stampp, Kenneth M., "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69]
This Southern newspaper also mentions the high profits in the carrying trade, which also go to the North:
"By mere supineness, the people of the South have permitted the Yankees to monopolize the carrying trade, with its immense profits. We have yielded to them the manufacturing business, in all its departments, without an effort, until recently, to become manufacturers ourselves. We have acquiesced in the claims of the North to do all the importing, and most of the exporting business, for the whole Union. Thus, the North has been aggrandised, in a most astonishing degree, at the expense of the South."
[Vicksburg Daily Whig, January 18, 1860, in Dwight Lowell Dummond, "Southern Editorials on Secession." The Century Co., 1931, pp. 13-14, 15]
So, the South received a "double-whammy," in a manner of speaking; first from the tariff, and and second from the middle-men. You can think of the North as the "merchants of the earth" in those days:
""thy merchants were the great men of the earth; for by thy sorceries were all nations deceived." -- Rev 18:23 KJV
LOL!
Mr. Kalamata
What does it have to do with anything, other than add carrying charges to the imported goods that are received in the North, and then transported to the South? [Carrying charges include the costs of storage (say, in warehouses,) and the conveying of those goods from storage to the destination.]
It begs the question that if all those goods were destined for Southern consumers then why were they shipped to New York, landed, taxed, reloaded, and shipped to the South? Why did they not go to the port nearest to the final consumer?
One of the biggest fears mentioned in Republican newspapers in those days was that shipping would go South, where there would be a smaller tariff.
Two questions. Why didn't it go there before the South seceded? And then the reverse: had the South been an independent country why would goods destined for Northern consumers go to Southern ports?
By mere supineness, the people of the South have permitted the Yankees to monopolize the carrying trade, with its immense profits. We have yielded to them the manufacturing business, in all its departments, without an effort, until recently, to become manufacturers ourselves. We have acquiesced in the claims of the North to do all the importing, and most of the exporting business, for the whole Union. Thus, the North has been aggrandised, in a most astonishing degree, at the expense of the South."
'Supineness' is a synonym for 'lazy' or 'indolent'. So if the South was too lazy, indolent, or just plain incompetent to take on their own transportation, their own insurance, their own banking, and the own brokering then how is that the North's fault that they stepped in and filled the breach?