Replies

Some years ago I had a good series of message exchanges with a man who's family was involved in the Cotton trade and Shipping industry of New York. He confirmed that the whole enterprise was set up to transfer as much money from the South as possible.

If I could remember his name, I could probably go back and find those messages where he explained how the whole system worked. Rustbucket, was it you? If not, do you remember who it was?

No, it was not I, and I don't remember seeing a post of someone whose family was involved in the cotton trade and shipping. There are a number of old posts that deal with how much was being transferred from the South to the North before the war. Here are some examples:

From PeaRidge, who might be the person you are remembering: A breakdown of Northern profits that were about to be lost due to the secession of the South

A 2002 post by 4ConservativeJustices, who later posted as 4CJ

The immediate effect of the Morrill Tariff on Northern ports

Effect of the Morrill Tariff on the value of imports to the North from 1860 to 1865 expressed in 1860 dollars by taking inflation into account

How the war was really brought about by the potential loss of revenue by the North

No, it was not I, and I don't remember seeing a post of someone whose family was involved in the cotton trade and shipping.

Thank you for your detailed response with the supporting information you provided. Some of that is quite good.

I now realize it wasn't you, but you were involved in the thread where this information was discussed. I actually found the thread by doing a google site search for free republic using "navigation act of 1817" as the search term. It pulled up the correct thread in some of it's listings.

The guy who made the comments I remembered is "WarIsHellAintItYall" and he does not appear to have any further commentary since 2016. But here is one of his comments.

For many weeks I have seen interesting comments here that are truly misleading. My direct and indirect family ties date to the mid 1700s. They were engaged in ship building and finance. Some here would recognize names.
For decades following the use of the gin, the planters controlled their own cotton industry. Southern cotton was shipped directly from southern ports by its owners or brokers to the textile mills of England or Lowell. During the three decade period before 1860, with our politicians action, our shippers forced the cotton trade to into our ships. First, the Navigation Acts authored by Congress at the turn of the century had established protectionist laws favoring our shipping over foreign interests.
Southrons were required by law to either use our ships for their shipping, or pay to the Treasury compensation for their use of foreign ships. Foreign ships were prohibited by law from engaging in coastal trade between US harbors. Federal law cut them out.
The laws highly discouraged southern boat builders from becoming involved in the shipping business by prohibiting their purchase of finished ships from overseas. To our benefit and profit and with the aid of Federal laws, we came to dominate the carrying trade of the South. As our trade in cotton increased, our financial people saw opportunity and began sending agents south to purchase all the cotton they could, and ship it on our packet ships to England and Europe. Direct purchase of cotton by the “factors” enabled the Southern growers to quickly turn a profit instead of waiting months for the cotton to be sold, and the money to return to them. But this benefit also cut their profits.
Business was business and our men in Washington ensured that we would have most of it.

https://freerepublic.com/focus/news/3443027/posts?page=948#948