I don’t know or even care where you studied economics, but your statement above is absolutely false. It’s nice to have them in balance, but it is not a requirement.
Now again I ask, how did the South pay 72% of taxes. How do you conger that number.
It may be a modern thing to have a massive trade deficit, but back in that era, nobody wanted IOUs for their goods. They wanted payment and quickly!
You are dancing around facts you don't like. The Europeans sent trade goods across the Atlantic to *PAY FOR* the stuff they bought from America, 72% of which came from the South.
And we actually have the records from this era. We know what the trade balance was back in 1860. I've seen the numbers, and they had small imbalances in them. There were not lingering massive trade imbalances. Everything was getting paid for by mutual exchange of trade goods.
You just don't like the fact that I am absolutely right, and the South was paying the *VAST MAJORITY OF TAXES* to this nation. You don't like it because it puts the South in the position of being the victim and the North in the position of being the bad guy for rigging the game the way they did.
Well guess what? That's exactly what happened. The South was getting continuously raped by the North financially, and the North had the power in Congress so that the South couldn't do anything about it.
Which is why the South seceded.
But I don't think you can grasp the truth, because you don't want that to be the truth. You would prefer to believe a comforting fiction than an ugly truth.
Most people do.