Are you slow? My point has nothing to do with Cotton. It has to do with wrecking New England trade.
I'm not sure how to get the point across to you. Eliminate Cotton and Slavery all together, and what remains is the fact that an Independent South was a grave threat to North Eastern financial interests.
Taking trade away from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and to a lesser extent Chicago, would have dealt a massive financial blow to the New England region.
Trade was New York's life blood.
What do you suppose would happen to the economy of New York if 80% of that New York pile was moved over to Charleston S.C. ?
DiogenesLamp:
"Are you slow?
My point has nothing to do with Cotton.
It has to do with wrecking New England trade." Are you slow?
Your point has everything to do with cotton, because without cotton, the South had no trade -- none, nada.
By 1860, without cotton the South was a backwater agrarian economy, self-sufficient enough to not need trade, as indeed it became during the Civil War.
In 1860, if you take away cotton, the South had nothing economically, was nothing and certainly no economic threat to the North.
Of course, if you wish to fantasize a tariff war between Confederacy & Union, with each side lowering their tariffs to beat out the other, fine.
But Northern trade was so much greater that Southern -- especially if you discount cotton -- that the Union could well generate higher revenues on lower tariff rates than the Confederacy.
As for the potential that Charleston might exceed New York in size, well, you need only consider the two cities today.
Today, Charleston's metropolitan area is ranked 76th in the nation, at 712,000 people, while the New York metropolitan area is first, at 23 million.
Conclusion: given free and fair competition, New York still does well economically.
Bottom line: your argument assumes that cotton was the only thing the United States had to sell abroad in 1860.
The reality is that while at 53% cotton was certainly important economically, it was far from the only product exported.
And indeed, during the Civil War, when cotton was virtually eliminated from the Union economy, Northern states and the Federal government quickly adjusted to find other means of livelihood.
DiogenesLamp: "Taking trade away from New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and to a lesser extent Chicago, would have dealt a massive financial blow to the New England region."
But that's exactly what did happen during the Civil War, as a result of which Northern states made necessary adjustments, emphasizing manufacturing, and came out of the war more prosperous and dominant than ever.