Replies

DiogenesLamp: "Been over this with you before. *SPECIE* is not trade.
No nation willingly continues to use specie to purchase imports because it drains their wealth over the long term."

Of course specie (gold & silver) are counted as exports or imports just like any other raw material -- be it iron ore, copper, oil, coal, etc.
In those days the US exported California gold and Nevada silver because we had large surpluses which helped pay for our trade imbalances.
We also imported smaller but still significant amounts of gold & silver specie as payment for some exports.

DiogenesLamp: "Specie is a separate category and it is not the equivalent of trade."

So declares sovereign King DiogenesLamp on his own authority and nobody else's.
The real truth here is that gold & silver are nothing more than raw materials which could be, and were, used to balance up our trade account books.

DiogenesLamp: "I have got you to admit it was as much as 60%, but it would be difficult to show you your post where you admitted this without days of tedious searching through your commentary and mine."

1860 Cotton exports (~$200 million) were 50% of total exports, including specie exports, and I've never said anything different.

Of course, any dishonest person can play with the numbers -- remove specie and count everything exported from New Orleans as "Southern Products" and you can make the % number as high as you wish.

But the fact remains that Confederate states in 1860 accounted for roughly 15% of the US GDP (then ~$4.5 billion), and 15% (not 60% or 72%!!) was the 1861 loss in Federal tariff revenues as a result of secession.

DiogenesLamp: "But this is just splitting hairs.
Even at your unreasonably low value of 50% of the trade, you have 1/4th of the Citizens producing 50% of the total revenue for the nation, while the other 3/4ths are shirking their duty to pay their fair share of the taxes."

First of all: in 1860 Confederate state citizens were not 25% of the population, they were about 17% and they themselves produced very little -- their non-voting, non-citizen (see Dred Scott) slaves produced most of it, according the the Mississippi "Reasons for Secession" document:

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery -- the greatest material interest of the world.
Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth.
These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun."

So right off the bat, your claims of "72%+" are bogus to the max.
Those lazy SOBs produced nothing except constant complaints!

Second, Southern exports were never taxed, only imports, and Confederate states citizens imported only a tiny fraction of the ~$400 million total in 1860.
What Southerners did "import" was about $200 million in manufactured products from the North.
These were mainly things like woolen & cotton clothing, shoes, cast iron stoves, railroad iron, soap, candles & farm implements. Tariffs on raw materials for these Northern manufactured goods were not significantly higher under the 1861 Morrill Tariff than they had been previously:

TABLE COMPARING TARIFFS OF 1846, 1857 & MORRILL:

Commodity	1846 Tariff	1857 Tariff	Morrill
Woolens	30%	24%	37%
Brown Sugar	30%	24%	26%
Cotton	25	19	25
Iron mfg	30	24	29
Tobacco	40	30	25
Wines	40	30	40
Average tariffs:	33%	25%	30%

DiogenesLamp: "Well that does not make any sense, because 15 does not equal 50, so now that you make this claim, you need to explain how you can believe it was 50% of the total, and suddenly it was only 15% of the total?"

I have now explained this to you many times, but of course you can never be bothered to learn, much less remember, anything contrary to your own pro-Confederate propaganda.

Let’s continue to examine the Neo-Confederate contention that the states of the Confederacy had been economically enslaved to the North before the Civil War. Is there any truth to the idea that Northern interests, particularly New York bankers, took 60% of the profits of Southern agricultural production? Did nefarious Yankees really demanded an unfair “vigorish” from the genteel people of the South?

In order to reach a logical conclusion on these matters one must cut through many misconceptions and distortions of history. I for one shall follow the advice of one well known poster on this topic with whom I do not always see eye to eye. I do my own research, and think for myself. I will not be brainwashed by a small cabal of those with hidden interests and ulterior motives.

We must first consider the entire distribution chain of Southern products. We will look at the grower, those who purchased the crops from the grower, those to whom the middleman sold that crop, how it was transported, and who bought the crop from the middleman. After that it was simply a matter of distribution of finished goods as the crop was converted into useful products to eventually reach the hands of individual consumers.

So today let’s examine how the Southern planter sold his crops, who bought those crops, and how those products moved through the chain of distribution. In this post we will look at cotton, since cotton was king in the antebellum South. I purchased the 1966 book King Cotton and His Retainers by Harold D. Woodman, and draw information from its pages. He was one of the first to research this topic in depth, pouring through old letters and invoices found in dusty archives.

Almost all cotton farmers, both large and small, sold their crops through a middleman called a factor. Who were these factors that were so critical to the success of plantation owners? Were they all Northerners? Was the cotton trade, as has been alleged here, controlled by New York?

On the contrary. Major factor houses existed all across the South. For example, a major New Orleans factor house was the firm of Buckner and Stanton. The Buckner mansion still stands today and is an historical tourist attraction in the Crescent City area.

Some factors had offices both in New York and one or more southern cities. Savannah native Robert Habersham ran the house in that city while I. Rae Habersham headed the New York arm of his family firm.

English factor houses also had agents or arrangements with houses in many parts of the American South. Baring Brothers and Company arranged to receive cotton direct from factors in Southern cities. Brown, Shipley and Company was a London firm also dealing directly with Southern factors.

Why would a cotton grower sell to a factor instead of directly to agents overseas? For two reasons. First, and probably the most important reason, was the fact that a factor house could sell to any buyer offering the highest price. When selling direct the planter was subject to whatever price was prevalent in that one market at that one time.

The second reason was that the relationship between grower and factor was a symbiotic one. The factor would loan money to the grower, advise on the best time to sell for the greatest profit, and offer a host of other services that benefited both parties. In many ways the factor acted as a banker and advisor in addition to sales agent.

So what percentage was the factor charging? The usual fee was 2.5% of the gross proceeds from the sale of the crop. In addition, the same fee was added when the factory made purchases on the behalf of the planter. Money was usually loaned to the planter at a rate of between 5 and 8%. In Louisiana it had been as high as 10% until 1844 when it was lowered to a maximum of 8%.

So as we can see, at least in regards to the cotton factorage system, there was no “vigorish” at play. Whatever profits the factor houses earned largely remained in the hands of Southern financial interests, not Northern ones. At the very least no one can honestly say that New York had any sort of stranglehold on the selling of Southern cotton.

The workers of the factor house, the warehousemen who handled the cotton bales, the steamboat owners who shipped the cotton downriver to ocean ports and their captains and deck hands were all Southerners. The dock workers were sons of Dixie too.

Only when the cotton was loaded onto ocean going vessels did money begin to flow into hands outside the region, be they Northern or European. Of course the shipping fees were paid by the buyer, not the seller so it added no cost to planters or brokers.

As we have seen, the Navigation Act of 1817 established no prohibition on Southerners owning ships. They were free to build their own fleets. There were shipbuilders in at least two Southern ports, but they chose to build riverboats, not deep water ships. Even if Northern shipbuilders were clannish, there was no reason European shipwrights could not have been lured to bring their expertise to Dixie. Of course the slaves utilized in Southern shipyards depressed wages, but that was a self inflicted wound. No, one cannot honestly say that Southerners were forced to use Northern ships.

As we have seen, the Lost Cause mythology crumbles under impartial scrutiny. The illusion of unfair tariffs is revealed as the falsehood that it is and always was. One third of the population could not have bought three-quarters of the imported goods.

This leaves the fear of the abolition of slavery as the ONLY POSSIBLE motive for secession.