With New Orleans already the gateway to the Midwest, and with Charleston having a newly dredged harbor, Lincoln and his supporters realized that direct trade with Europe would now be possible for Southern business interests. This would supplant the shipping, banking, insurance, and freight companies that flourished with the movement of Southern goods through northern ports into the overseas trade. Northern ports, supplying the mid west would also be damaged by the trade that would move back through New Orleans, Galveston, and Mobile.
After the tariff rates were announced, newspapers, politicians, businessmen, and industrialists called on Lincoln to take action to obviate the Southern competition. Since essentially the Southern states were forming their own cotton, rice, and tobacco world exchange, he had to halt it.
His options were not plentiful. He could not sabotage the Confederate market without initiating a blockade, and because that would be an all out unilateral act of war that no one in his cabinet would support. He could use the United States Army and Navy to materially force the Confederacy back into the Union, however he knew that the citizens of the country and world opinion would be against him. He could not risk his new administration by being an obvious aggressor to the new Confederacy.
He could not underwrite a change in government, or ‘coup d’etat’ since the Confederate government had just been formed with essentially the same Constitution as that to which he had just pledged to support. Again, he would be seen as the aggressor against a country with the same laws to which he and his party swore loyalty.
He could not depend on any European countries to aid the government in the institution of trading sanctions because they wanted a less powerful United States.
However, since his ‘house divided’ speech, Lincoln had demonstrated an unassailable inclination towards confrontation with the Southern leadership. He, therefore, chose a course of action that was coercive but not obviously aggressive, and enabled plausible deniability over the actions that eventually led to the outright war that most of the era expected.
Without notifying Congress, Lincoln sent a fleet of Union warships under command of a retired junior Naval officer under orders to send supplies to a group of Union soldiers that were about to surrender and leave a fort with no function other than to force taxation of the local people. Their resistance became labeled rebellion, despite the absence of any other higher authority from which to rebel, except a sitting U.S. president who had vowed to protect the revenue stream from Southern production.
The new President would accept slavery but not the loss of revenue for the country. He essentially treated the Southern Confederacy as subject states of which he demanded that they remain under the taxing authority of the government.
It is interesting that an earlier poster postulated that states that ignored the ‘runaway slave’ act were noble in their effort to resist the government. It can equally be said that the Confederacy, and particularly the people of Charleston were noble in their efforts to resist the Union naval invasion of Charleston Harbor and Lincoln's openly stated and absolute objective of protecting the revenue flow to the Treasury. These people were resisting the efforts of Lincoln to reduce them to minor nation-states to be taxed as the Europeans had done in Africa and in the far East.
Direct trade was already possible with Europe for southern business interests. In the year prior to the rebellion 2.85 million bales of cotton were exported from southern ports and over $24 million worth of imports were landed.
This would supplant the shipping, banking, insurance, and freight companies that flourished with the movement of Southern goods through northern ports into the overseas trade.
If banking, insurance, and freight companies weren't established before the war then what would cause them to be established after it? Cotton exports wouldn't suddenly double. Imports would likely remain about the same. All things being equal who would invest the money to create the insurance and banking and freight companies?
And what "movement of Southern goods through northern ports" were they talking about? Cotton exports from New York, Boston, and Philadelphia totaled less than 300,000 bales - less than 10% of the total cotton exports for the year. It might cause a small dent in the traffic moving through those ports but certainly not any business disaster.
Northern ports, supplying the mid west would also be damaged by the trade that would move back through New Orleans, Galveston, and Mobile.
Again, it makes no sense. Send goods destined for northern consumers to Galveston or Mobile and how would they then get to their customers? Why drop them off then only to load them onto another ship to send them up north? Where they would have their tariffs applied once they landed?
Since essentially the Southern states were forming their own cotton, rice, and tobacco world exchange, he had to halt it.
Which differed from the ones pre-rebellion how?