Lower than the South? If slavery cost more than free market labor, I have no doubt that all the slave holders would have suddenly had moral epiphanys about abolition.
I am assured by my knowledge of historical human greed, that the economics worked out to the favor of the existing system at that time.
The New York metropolitan area had a large population and the city was connected to others by an extensive railroad network. No Southern city could compete with New York in terms of market size.
What good is a large market that has no money to purchase your items? The way New Yorkers were getting their foreign money is by taking 60% of the total value of production of Southern exports.
Cut off that exploitation and they wouldn't have the money to purchase imports, big market or no. They had to get their hands on the European money, and their export values only amounted to About 28% of the total exports from the US, and some of that was due to textile exports dependent upon Southern cotton.
I doubt they would prefer the living standard and life style of Egyptian or Indian or Chinese peasants. I don't know which system would produce cheaper cotton. I'm simply raising the question. Like slave owners, peasant families didn't have to pay wages. Unlike slave owners, they didn't need to buy workers. They also had a low standard of living and didn't need big profits. And I suppose the rupee and the Egyptian pound were cheaper currencies than the dollar, and thus it is at least possible that goods and materials produced in Egypt or India could be cheaper than those produced in the USA or CSA.
What good is a large market that has no money to purchase your items? The way New Yorkers were getting their foreign money is by taking 60% of the total value of production of Southern exports.
I doubt either of us understands the intricacies of currency markets, but the US didn't have much trouble buying imports and collecting tariffs during the Civil War, when Southern cotton wasn't in the mix. Money from grain and mining and manufacturing made up for it. Money is fungible and fluid. If one source dries up it doesn't mean other sources aren't available.
Yes, having a major regional power blockade your trade with warships and pummel you into submission has a tendency to interfere with future prosperity.
But what would have happened if people hadn't used war to stop their natural economic activity?
That is what you always do. Whenever anyone comes up with objections to your idea of the Confederacy as the coming economic superpower, you immediately get indignant and attack the Yankee. What other people are talking about is the obstacles -- apart from war and destruction -- to the independent South fulfilling your fantasy in the 19th century. Someone writes about the decline of Charleston shipbuilding before the Civil War and you blame that on the devastation brought by the Civil War. That's not very logical and does a lot to discredit your argument. They are talking about what was likely to happen if the Civil War hadn't, while you are just indulging your daydream.
In the days before air conditioning and modern medicine, New Orleans was regarded as too hot and too prone to epidemics. Immigrants didn't like to go there because the city was dominated by slave labor. Foreigners would prefer to invest elsewhere because of the fears of slave uprisings. In the 19th century countries with cool or temperate climates dominated. That's not a law of history, but it's something you never deal with.
I have long argued that those attempting to justify the war go to great efforts to cherry pick their "evidence."
And you don't? You don't ignore the decade long debate about slavery to focus on a few editorials by panicky business columnists? History is about sorting out the evidence in terms of significance and reliability. You just ignore most of it.
And you're doing it again. Written in 1894 after he had become a Republican?
Mosby was an honest man. Others in his generation had simply whitewashed the record and lied about their motives.
There is corroborating evidence for Lamon's claim. I read something the other day indicating there were three or four examples of corroboration for Lamon's claim.
Historians haven't found it. Lamon gave his name to a book written by his law partner Chauncey Black, son of Jeremiah Black who had been Buchanan's Attorney General. The younger Black, a Democrat like his father, went on to become Lieutenant Governor of Pennsylvania. The biography was regarded as unreliable. Lamon didn't mention the Taney incident in his own later book. A historian thought he found confirmation for story, but later had to admit that he had misread a footnote.
I keep pointing out we can't even control the Southern border we have now. Massive amounts of illegal goods flow across it, and we have better means of controlling it now than they would have then.
The government doesn't have the will to do so, but is it really easier to control smuggling today? There are thousands of border crossings everyday now, and we have means of transportation that weren't even dreamed of back then. It's probably easier to smuggle goods into the country now than it was then. Moreover, laws were probably more strictly enforced then than they are now. If you made smuggling your livelihood, sooner or later you'd get caught and put away for a long stretch.
Smuggling usually involves goods with a high value to weight or volume ratio: drugs or jewels or currency. Cigarettes and liquor have also been smuggled, though usually in large enough quantities to turn a profit. I can't see smuggling locomotives or rails across international boundaries in the 19th century -- or axes or shovels or even doorknobs in quantities large enough to make a difference. I don't see that anybody is dying to have just the right brand of shovel in the way that they might be dying for their favorite drug or scotch or cigarette.
Also, American manufacturers weren't obligated to sell at a higher price than foreign competitors. The tariff meant that they could charge more than a foreign competitor, but there would be competition between American manufacturers and in the unlikely event that smuggling axes or shovels became a widespread practice, a firm could lower their prices to meet the competition.
Several Northern newspapers had pointed out that it makes no sense to have a high tariff when this will simply cause traffic to go south. They articulated the position that if the South would allow low tariff goods, they must also do, and some communities even said that if the Southern tariffs were allowed to stand, they would refuse to collect any more at their own ports.
That doesn't make sense. You had more consumers in the North. It made sense to ship goods directly to them. Goods sent to the South to go North would have to pay two tariffs or else be broken into smaller quantities for the riskier business of smuggling Either way, it's not going to be a great boon to Northern consumers. Moreover, the transportation costs would be greater. I can't see either customs workers or a whole city deciding to just let foreign goods in untaxed because of what the rebels decided to do.
In your reply 510 is was 40%. Now it's 60%. If this thread goes on much longer it's going to be 80% or more.