DiogenesLamp post #629:
"Once the New York based coalition couldn't control the economics of trade with Europe, first the border states would move to the stronger economic horse, and then the midwest would move there too.
With a successful independence, the South would have found numerous other states coming into their sphere of influence due to the economic advantages of doing so.
The only people who would have been hurt were the wealthy Northern manufacturers, shippers and so forth.
The very people backing Lincoln and his efforts to stop direct Southern trade with Europe.
If left alone, the Nation would have come to look like this relatively quickly." Much of what DiogenesLamp posts on these threads is pure fantasy of his own concocting, but in this case at least, his fantasies do reflect an underlying reality: Confederate extreme economic and political aggressiveness.
In DiogenesLamp's fantasies, "the South" doesn't just want to be "left alone", but instead was aggressively out working to destroy the Union, and therefore represented, legitimately, an existential threat to it.
Economic threat? Yes, according to DiogenesLamp.
Political threat? Absolutely, some Lost Causers tell us the act of secession alone destroyed the Constitution, and therefore the Union, so only a "tyrant" could hold it together.
What about military threat? Here posters like central_va tell us that, yes, Confederates did want to hurt damn-yankees in a passive-aggressive sort of way, but they were never a serious military threat to the Union itself.
But if we see with DiogenesLamp the Confederacy aggressing the Union economically & politically, then eventually "minor incursions" like Gettysburg in 1863 become long-term occupation and territorial aggrandizement.
In short, Confederates represented an existential economic, political and military threat to the United States, so that when Confederates formally declared war, on May 6, 1861, the Union had no real choice except to destroy the Confederate military and also the economic system (slavery) on which it was based.
DiogenesLamp: "New York is still feeding streams of lies into our national consciousness.
They are fighting back against their eventual loss of power to the normal people of America."
And here DiogenesLamp returns to his usual la-la fantasyland.
In fact, the New York metropolitan area, at 20 million people, is only 6% of US population, producing about 8% of US GDP.
Even the entire Northeast Acela corridor, at 52 million, is only 17% of US population producing 20% of US GDP and is exceeded in size and population by the Great Lakes megalopolis (Upstate NY to Wisconsin), with 56 million people and 20% of US GDP.
US Megalopolis regions, #1 Great Lakes, #2 Northeast Acela, #3 Southern California, #4 Piedmont Atlantic, #5 Texas Triangle, #6 Florida, #7 Northern California, #8 Gulf Coast...:
In short, Confederates represented an existential economic, political and military threat to the United States, Not a military threat, but definitely an economic and political threat. They would have eventually taken away New York's wealth and power, and the Empire City of the Empire state was never going to allow that to happen.
That is why the Empire City of the Empire state is still running Washington DC to this very day.
>>DiogenesLamp wrote: "Once the New York based coalition couldn't control the economics of trade with Europe, first the border states would move to the stronger economic horse, and then the midwest would move there too. With a successful independence, the South would have found numerous other states coming into their sphere of influence due to the economic advantages of doing so. The only people who would have been hurt were the wealthy Northern manufacturers, shippers and so forth. The very people backing Lincoln and his efforts to stop direct Southern trade with Europe. If left alone, the Nation would have come to look like this relatively quickly."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Much of what DiogenesLamp posts on these threads is pure fantasy of his own concocting, but in this case at least, his fantasies do reflect an underlying reality: Confederate extreme economic and political aggressiveness."
Everything Joey posts is deceptive. Where are your sources, Joey? More left-wing Wikipedia? Leftist "historians"? LOL!
The truth is, the crony-capitalist Northern merchants had been AGGRESSIVELY plotting against and financially plundering the South since 1824, perhaps even before. Once the tables were about to be turned, and the government-supported (Southern-tribute-supported) financial House of Cards was about to crumble, the Northern merchants and their media propagandists panicked:
"It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding states to the Union which they have abandoned. Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton states; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging on free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby."
"The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederate States that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interests of the country will suffer from the increased importation resulting from low duties.... The [government] would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against."
[Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861, in Kenneth M. Stampp, "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.69]
They were warned about their greed:
"You are not content with the vast millions of tribute we pay you annually under the operation of our revenue law, our navigation laws, your fishing bounties, and by making your people our manufacturers, our merchants, our shippers. You are not satisfied with the vast tribute we pay you to build up your great cities, your railroads, your canals. You are not satisfied with the millions of tribute we have been paying you on account of the balance of exchange which you hold against us. You are not satisfied that we of the South are almost reduced to the condition of overseers for northern capitalists. You are not satisfied with all this; but you must wage a relentless crusade against our rights and institutions.... We do not intend that you shall reduce us to such a condition. But I can tell you what your folly and injustice will compel us to do. It will compel us to be free from your domination, and more self-reliant than we have been. It will compel us to manufacture for ourselves, to build up our own commerce, our own great cities, our own railroads and canals; and to use the tribute money we now pay you for these things for the support of a government which will be friendly to all our interests, hostile to none of them."
[Speech of Representative John H. Reagan of Texas, January 15, 1861, Congressional Globe, 36 Congress, 2 Session, I, p. 391, in Kenneth M. Stampp, "The Causes of the Civil War." 1986, p.66]
The greed of the Northern antebellum merchant class and their government cronies, correlates well with that of the modern Chamber of Commerce and their government cronies.
Mr. Kalamata