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.
With Southern ports charging far less in tariffs for imports, All the traffic from Europe would have gone South to avoid the Northern city tariffs.
The US Would have been supplied with European goods going through the Southern ports instead of New York, Boston and Philadelphia.
Cotton would be the trigger that started the trade, but eventually the trade would have built to the point that it eclipsed the cotton trade.
Bottom line, an Independent South was a financial disaster for the Monied people in New England. Utter disaster. So of course they directed their obligated President to do something about it. They left the politics and image shaping to him, and he was a master at it.
DL "Holier than thou" is emblematic of the mindset of the North Eastern puritans who first burned "witches", and then turned their attentions to other social causes of the day.
And then, while I was looking up something else, I came across this:
Abraham Lincoln's Lyceum Address (1838) During the speech, Lincoln referenced two murders committed by pro-slavery mobs. The first was the burning of Francis McIntosh, a freedman who killed a constable, and was subsequently lynched by a mob in St. Louis in 1836. Lincoln also referenced the death of Elijah Parish Lovejoy, a newspaper editor and abolitionist, who was murdered three months earlier by a pro-slavery mob in nearby Alton, Illinois.
Do yourself a favor and search "the burning of Francis McIntosh". Seems y'all had some mighty peculiar mindset of your own. Makes me really proud that Abe kicked the living s**t out of y'all, from north to south, from east to west, over hills and mountains and lakes....