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Just you not understanding economics.

You have it wrong. I understand them perfectly well, as do you, except when you look at the economics of the Civil War. It's not that you can't see them, it's that you absolutely refuse to see them.

Were the emotional component removed from your analysis, you would see that if 3/4ths of all the trade production comes from one area, and only 1/4 comes from the other, you would correctly conclude that 3/4ths of the imports were created by those exports when a normal balance of trade is maintained.

This is stark. It's not "grey" at the margins. If the trade production was closer to 50-50, you might be able to hide the economic reality by asserting all the intricacies of domestic distribution and other economic activity, but this is ridiculously lopsided in favor of the South, and the whole thing pokes out of the statistical noise to such a degree that no reasonable person can deny what was going on here.

Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe. I've already covered how they did it, but you won't even recognize that they did it, so the how isn't really important.

So far as I've been able to find out, there would have been a tie in the Senate between the two parties if the Southern senators hadn't withdrawn. Democrats lost the House in 1854, 1858, and (I assume) 1860, but they had plenty of power still. Lincoln wasn't going to be president forever.

I'm pretty sure they could see the pattern. Reagan was elected in 1980, and he slowed down Liberal advancement a bit. Then Bush allowed it to move forward slowly, then Clinton advanced it greatly. Bush II slowed it down, but it kept advancing, and of course Barack Obama accelerated it massively. Trump has now stopped and in some cases even reversed it, but what do you suppose will happen when next Democrats win the Presidency or the Senate?

Can you not see the trend? Is public law and policy more liberal or more conservative than it was in the 1960s? It is clearly more liberal, and despite our efforts to slow or reverse it, it keeps growing and advancing.

And you don't think the Southerners could see the same thing happening to them since about the 1820s? The trend was unmistakable, and Lincoln simply represented the final straw that broke the camel's back. They realized they could never improve their situation as long as they remained the Milk Cow and whipping boy of the North.

If you aren't importing as much as other people, you don't pay as much in import taxes as they do.

And here you once again advance the idea that one can be an importer of 75% of all goods, while only balancing it with 25% of all exports. Somehow you just think the people creating the production will just walk away from that other 50% of the total value, with no questions asked.

Yes, you try to hide this stark contrast by asserting the idea that there are all sorts of these little trades between one group and the other that has the South losing that 50% to the North, and cumulatively they all result in transfer of ownership of that 50% of all goods from the South to the North. You also argue it was all free market voluntary and without coercion causing it.

I've pointed to the "navigation act of 1817" to explain how a great deal of that money got transferred from the South to the North, but you dismiss that without any reasonable consideration.

You simply ignore the great gobs of money involved in the relations between North and South, and would prefer to think the Southerners simply wanted to protect an institution already protected by American law, and under no real threat from any person or institution, while simultaneously dismissing the idea that they may have been very interested in the money they saw as being siphoned off from their income due to laws designed to help Northern industries, mostly at their expense.

You don't want to believe that at the bottom of this whole affair, the motivation for both sides was simply money.

And the slaveowners were out there in the fields every day breaking their humps to earn and honest living.

Nobody said that. Of course they weren't earning a moral living, but morality is not always the same thing as legal rights. They had a legal right at the time to force other people to work for them. They did not have a moral right to do so, but the whole system ran on legal rights, not on what was moral.

They were legally entitled to that money under the laws of the United States at the time, and though we may huff and fume about how immoral it was, the fact remains that this was what all the states agreed to when they ratified the US Constitution.

I'm pretty sure they could see the pattern. Reagan was elected in 1980, and he slowed down Liberal advancement a bit. Then Bush allowed it to move forward slowly, then Clinton advanced it greatly. Bush II slowed it down, but it kept advancing, and of course Barack Obama accelerated it massively.

That is a nutcase response. Are you seriously equating present day politics in the North and the South with the 19th century politics of the free and the slave states? That is exactly how liberals were talking after your beloved 2004 election. The problem is that the issues are different. I didn't vote Republican because I was fighting the same fight as the plantation owners a century and a half before and it's insulting to make such allegations.

Can you not see the trend? Is public law and policy more liberal or more conservative than it was in the 1960s? It is clearly more liberal, and despite our efforts to slow or reverse it, it keeps growing and advancing.

Liberals or progressives devote themselves to change and increased power for the government. They are betting and abetting the natural tendency of government to expand, but in the last quarter of the 20th century, conservatives did very well for themselves.

This has little to do with North-South relations. Southerners did supremely well for themselves in the mid-20th century when Democrats ruled and government expanded. They did well for themselves in the last third of the century when Republicans were dominant, and those in Congress were at least talking against "big government." Politics is a merry-go-round or a a roller coaster or a roulette game: stay at it long enough and be smart enough and it comes back to where you started and you are on top again.

Slavery was threatened. But taxes and apportionments come and go. There was no reason to feel threatened because your share of the pie is smaller in one year than in earlier or later years.

Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe.

Not really. There was direct trade between Charleston and New Orleans and British and French ports. It was a global trade. I've mentioned Trenholm and Company (or Fraser, Trenholm). They had offices in Charleston, New York, Liverpool and London, but they were very much a South Carolina company and the owners went with the Confederacy in 1861. If they chose to route some of their trade through New York, it was because it was to their advantage.

You simply ignore the great gobs of money involved in the relations between North and South, and would prefer to think the Southerners simply wanted to protect an institution already protected by American law, and under no real threat from any person or institution, while simultaneously dismissing the idea that they may have been very interested in the money they saw as being siphoned off from their income due to laws designed to help Northern industries, mostly at their expense.

No real threat? John Brown? And what does "real threat" mean? Slaveowners felt passionately that slavery was threatened, and said so. For them the threat was real. The idea that the government or the Yankees were stealing their money was much more of an illusion than the idea that slavery was threatened.

You don't want to believe that at the bottom of this whole affair, the motivation for both sides was simply money.

Slavery was money. Are you so naive or foolish that you don't realize that?

They were legally entitled to that money under the laws of the United States at the time, and though we may huff and fume about how immoral it was, the fact remains that this was what all the states agreed to when they ratified the US Constitution.

They had money. They spent it or invested it, and the people who sold things to them could buy things of their own, as could the people to whom the money was invested with or loaned out to. There was no "moral right" to money you have already spent. Once you use it to buy something, other people have the money.

DiogenesLamp: "Were the emotional component removed from your analysis, you would see that if 3/4ths of all the trade production comes from one area, and only 1/4 comes from the other, you would correctly conclude that 3/4ths of the imports were created by those exports when a normal balance of trade is maintained.
This is stark.
It's not "grey" at the margins.
If the trade production was closer to 50-50, you might be able to hide the economic reality by asserting all the intricacies of domestic distribution and other economic activity, but this is ridiculously lopsided in favor of the South, and the whole thing pokes out of the statistical noise to such a degree that no reasonable person can deny what was going on here."

In fact, it was 50%-50% because half, not 3/4 of US exports came from the secession cotton-South, the rest came from Union states, some of them slave-states.
Further, for every dollar "the South" exported, they "imported" a dollar's worth of goods from the North.

And the South's political clout in Washington steadily reduced Federal tariffs until by 1860 they were as low as ever.
So Democrats defeated the proposed Morrill tariff increases in 1860 and could have at least compromised them in 1861, had that been their goal.

But tariffs were not their big concern, slavery was, so they said.

DiogenesLamp: "Somehow New York had obtained control of virtually every aspect of trade with Europe.
I've already covered how they did it, but you won't even recognize that they did it, so the how isn't really important."

In fact, half of US cotton exported directly not from New York, but from New Orleans.
Other Gulf ports (i.e., Mobile, Galveston) shipped smaller percentages, leaving maybe 20% -- East Coast cotton -- to be picked up by New York packet ships for consolidation & shipment from New York to European customers.

So the real complaint here is not that all cotton shipped through New York, but rather that imports on their return from Europe did mostly stop in New York where they were off-loaded, warehoused and eventually sold to customers throughout the USA.

That's the "problem" which seems to have DiogenesLamp so exercised he just can't stop lying about it.

{sign}

DiogenesLamp: "And here you once again advance the idea that one can be an importer of 75% of all goods, while only balancing it with 25% of all exports.
Somehow you just think the people creating the production will just walk away from that other 50% of the total value, with no questions asked."

75% of imports through New York seems about right, where goods were off-loaded, warehoused, then eventually sold & shipped (via railroad & steamship) throughout the USA -- North, South, East & West.
So where did all those other regions outside the South earn money to pay for imports?
Well... about half of it came from their own exports to foreign countries, the other half came from their "exports" to the South.

So suggestions something about all this was grossly unfair are, so far as I can tell, simply DiogenesLamp's unresolved emotional conflicts with... who knows who... maybe some relative?

DiogenesLamp: "I've pointed to the "navigation act of 1817" to explain how a great deal of that money got transferred from the South to the North, but you dismiss that without any reasonable consideration. "

We've been over this many times, and the 1817 Navigation Act didn't do what you claim it did.
First, remember that from the election of 1800 until secession in 1861, Southern Democrats ruled Washington DC almost continuously.
Any new law required their approval and nothing they opposed stood very long.
In 1817 Southern Democrats ruled both houses of congress, the Presidency and Supreme Court.
So anything inherently unfair about the 1817 Navigation Act would never have passed Southern scrutiny.

Nor did any document in 1860 ever complain about that act or some alleged unfairness of existing trade routes.