Let’s say I am a wheat grower, and my world revolves around wheat. I cherish the money I get for my wheat and resent the money that goes into taking it to market and the money I have to pay for agricultural equipment and fuel and living expenses. So I might come to think of the people I buy things from as “parasites” on the wheat trade. They aren’t. They provide me with things I can’t or don’t or won’t produce at home. The world doesn’t revolve wholly around wheat or cotton anymore than it does around plows and hoes or insurance and wearhousing.
Cotton producers relied on brokers to sell their cotton — and to tide them through bad times and often to advance them money for seed. The planters weren’t likely to set up a cooperative and get lower prices in Manchester or Brussels. People on the spot at the cotton markets did a better job estimating and negotiating the prices. Until slavery had heated things up, cotton planters got along well enough with cotton brokers in Charleston or New Orleans or New York, London, and Liverpool.
The Navigation Acts had nothing to do with transatlantic commerce. They applied only to US coastal navigation from US port to US port. Southern slaveowning planters and merchants were able to charter European ships to send cotton directly to Europe.
Economics is about supply and demand. If the supply increases more than the demand does, prices go down and the boom is over. Prices were going to go down as new lands got into cotton manufacturing: India, China, Egypt, Brazil, etc. British merchants, already tired of dealing with slavery were already reaching out to bring new lands into cultivation.
Slaveowners wanted slavery in the territories, so people who pointed that out weren’t lying. Arizona’s and New Mexico’s resources weren’t yet exploited by American settlers. In time they would be. The Spanish had made use of Indian — and African — slaves in mining operations in various colonies. If it were necessary to establish slavery in the territories, slaves would be used in the mines.
The mines would be profitable enough to keep slavery going. Slavery continued in Virginia even after much of the state gave up on tobacco farming, which wasn’t anywhere near as profitable as cotton production. The political will was there to keep it going, so it kept going.
But of course, none of this is going to convince you, you’ve been brainwashed — or you’ve brainwashed yourself — enough that nothing gets through to you.
This is an inaccurate analogy. You need to add a competitive supplier willing to supply everything at much cheaper prices, but the wheat grower being forced by law to pay for the much higher priced "officially approved" supplier of equipment, because the law, passed over the objections of the wheat grower, forces him to pay the higher prices.
The South didn't need anything the North supplied, especially at the gouging prices they charged because they had a monopoly. The South could have carried all their trade through European companies, and it would have been far cheaper for them.
Cotton producers relied on brokers to sell their cotton — and to tide them through bad times and often to advance them money for seed. The planters weren’t likely to set up a cooperative and get lower prices in Manchester or Brussels.
Why would they not? Because it was illegal? Is that why? Well maybe if they seceded, that would cease being a problem?
The Navigation Acts had nothing to do with transatlantic commerce. They applied only to US coastal navigation from US port to US port.
A foreign ship could not take on a load in one port, and travel to another port to take on another load. Unless a ship could load up completely at a single port, (like New Orleans) this was not a workable system.
Economics is about supply and demand. If the supply increases more than the demand does, prices go down and the boom is over. Prices were going to go down as new lands got into cotton manufacturing: India, China, Egypt, Brazil, etc.
Would *NEVER* have developed without the Northern government using military force to cut off all the normal supplies of Southern cotton.
Don't put forth economic ideas that require military force to distort the market, and present them as a normal part of the economics of the period. Without the blockade, no other cotton industry develops in the rest of the world.
Paid labor cannot compete with free labor.
Europe owes a debt of gratitude to the US Navy for shutting down their competition long enough for them to get their own producers going. But don't pretend this is normal economics.
Slaveowners wanted slavery in the territories, so people who pointed that out weren’t lying.
They wanted the territories to recognize slavery as legal, but that isn't the same thing as putting actual slaves in the territories. I doubt anyone in that era was dumb enough to try it, and if they had done that, they would have lost their shirt on the venture.
Theoretical slavery is not actual slavery. Those who were clanging the warning bell of "slavery" in the territories were misrepresenting the reality of the situation, and they were doing it on purpose for their own political gain.
Arizona’s and New Mexico’s resources weren’t yet exploited by American settlers. In time they would be.
At the time, there was little if any knowledge about productive mines in the territories. Your speculation is theoretical and ignores a point I made in a comment earlier in the thread about white miners not tolerating slaves competing with them.
But of course, none of this is going to convince you, you’ve been brainwashed — or you’ve brainwashed yourself — enough that nothing gets through to you.
I feel as if i've been awakened to knowledge I did not previously have, and with it came the realization that the history I had been taught all my life is inaccurate, and intentionally so.
Am I brainwashed for noticing things that do not make sense in the context of what I had been taught all my life?
Well I don't think so, but I do entertain the notion from time to time. Am I missing something? The pattern I see is internally consistent, and explains all the odd bits and pieces that never made sense to me before.
Is it wrong? Is your view of this period of history correct?
I think about this from time to time.