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That fact was that the Confederacy would now be free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing.

If the confederacy was free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing after the rebellion then why didn't they trade with the world without using Northeastern shipping and warehousing before the rebellion?

But much more importantly, it meant that the very low tariff system compared to that of the North that was being put in place in the South would now draw shipping out of the ports of Boston, Phila. and New York to Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New Orleans.

And? The goods bound for northern consumers would still go to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Only that small percentage bound for southern consumers would have headed south.

Lincoln then devised a naval mission to be sent to Ft. Sumter, while dis-regarding six or seven attempts by the South to keep the peace.

He ignored six or seven demands from the leaders of the rebellion to recognize the legitimacy of their acts.

If the confederacy was free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing after the rebellion then why didn't they trade with the world without using Northeastern shipping and warehousing before the rebellion?

That would ean using free labor and the powers that be in the South were against free labor.

Walt

"If the confederacy was free to trade with the world without having to use Northeastern shipping and warehousing after the rebellion then why didn't they trade with the world without using Northeastern shipping and warehousing before the rebellion?"

The wording of your question begs a simple answer. But it was not a simple matter.

Federal regulations, enacted over decades, enabled Northern ports, shipping companies, and businesses to dominate trade.
Being out of the Union would allow for free trade with Europe.

Here is how it came about to be in 1860.

The success of the shipping trade of New England in the early 19th century was a deliberate effort of mercantilism, in which the South at first willingly participated.

The federal government set out at first to deliberately encourage the commercial trades there, especially ship-building and shipping. The raw material for Northern factories, and the cargoes of Northern merchantmen, would come from the South.

The July 4, 1789, tariff was the first substantive legislation passed by the new American government. But in addition to the new duties, it reduced by 10 percent or more the tariff paid for goods arriving in American craft.

It also required domestic construction for American ship registry. Navigation acts in the same decade stipulated that foreign-built and foreign-owned vessels were taxed 50 cents per ton when entering U.S. ports, while U.S.-built and -owned ones paid only six cents per ton. Furthermore, the U.S. ones paid annually, while foreign ones paid upon every entry.

This effectively blocked off U.S. coastal trade to all but vessels built and owned in the United States, and specifically the Northeast.

The navigation act of 1817 had made it official, providing "that no goods, wares, or merchandise shall be imported under penalty of forfeiture thereof, from one port in the United States to another port in the United States, in a vessel belonging wholly or in part to a subject of any foreign power."

The point of all this was to protect and grow the shipping industry of New England, and it worked. By 1795, the combination of foreign complication and American protection put 92 percent of all imports and 86 percent of all exports in American-flag vessels. American ship owners' annual earnings shot up between 1790 and 1807, from $5.9 million to $42.1 million.

New England shipping took a severe hit during the War of 1812 and the embargo. After the war ended, the British flooded America with manufactured goods to try to drive out the nascent American industries. They chose the port of New York for their dumping ground, in part because the British had been feeding cargoes to Boston all through the war to encourage anti-war sentiment in New England. New York was the more starved, therefore it became the port of choice.

The dumping bankrupted many towns, but it assured New York of its sea-trading supremacy. In the decades to come. New Yorkers made the most of the situation.

Four Northern and Mid-Atlantic ports still had the lion's share of the shipping. But Boston and Baltimore mainly served regional markets. Philadelphia's shipping interest had built up trade with the major seaports on the Atlantic and Gulf coasts, especially as Pennsylvania's coal regions opened up in the 1820s. But New York was king. Its merchants had the ready money, it had a superior harbor, it kept freight rates down, and by 1825 some 4,000 coastal trade vessels per year arrived there. In 1828 it was estimated that the clearances from New York to ports on the Delaware Bay alone were 16,508 tons, and to the Chesapeake Bay 51,000 tons.

Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on "packet lines" -- groups of vessels offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became the way to do business across the Atlantic.

The reason for success was to have a good cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the eastbound cotton cargoes from the U.S. The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.

So American vessels, owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.

Since this "triangle trade" involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one. Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition.

By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it.

This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way.

To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.

Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.

The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. This was a triangle trade. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.

As for the cotton ports themselves, sufficient demand began to justify packet lines in 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.

Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.

U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.

This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.

New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, was able to control the movement of Southern goods.

"And? The goods bound for northern consumers would still go to New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. Only that small percentage bound for southern consumers would have headed south."

Let's do the math.

You constantly claim, without the data, that the amount of goods consumed in the South was small.

According to US Treasury data, in 1860, the South imported $346 million dollars worth of products. The entire imports of all the United States was $10 million less than the imports of the South.

Of this list of goods, $240 million came from the Northern manufacturers and suppliers, and imported goods bought by the South was $106 million.

With direct trade, the $240 million from the North would now have to compete with overseas goods. They had been protected industries since the beginning of the tariff laws.

That is why the Mayor of the City of New York proposed secession from the Union in 1861.

Mayor Fernando Wood made a formal demand in a speech to the Common Council that since disunion was a “fixed fact”, that New York should herself secede and become a free city with but a nominal duty upon imports. He said,

“With our aggrieved brethren of the Slave States, we have friendly relations and a common sympathy. We have not participated in the warfare upon their constitutional rights, or their domestic institutions.

“It would seem that a dissolution of the federal Union is inevitable . . . It cannot be preserved by coercion or held together by force. A resort of this last dreadful alternative would of itself destroy not only the government but the lives and property of the people....

“Why should not New York City, instead of supporting by her contributions in revenue two- thirds of the expenses of the United States, become also equally independent? . . . If the confederacy is broken up . . . it behooves every distinct community, as well as every individual, to take care of themselves.

“Being the child of the Union . . . when deprived of her maternal advantages, we must rely upon our own resources and assume a position predicated upon the new phase which public affairs will present, and upon the inherent strength which our geographical, commercial, political, and financial preeminence imparts to us.

“The legislature has become an instrument by which we are plundered to enrich their speculators, lobby agents, and Abolition politicians. Thus the political connection between the people of the city and the State has been used by the latter to our injury.

“It is, however, folly to disguise the fact that, judging from the past, New York may have more cause of apprehension from the aggressive legislation of our own State than from external dangers. For the past five years, our interests and corporate rights have been repeatedly trampled upon.

“Why may not New York disrupt the bands which bind her to a venal and
corrupt master?

“It is certain that a dissolution cannot be peacefully accomplished except by the consent of the legislature itself [which] is, in my judgment, doubtful....

“But I am not prepared to recommend the violence implicit in these views. In stating this argument in favor of freedom, ‘peacefully I we can, forcibly if we must,’ let me not be misunderstood.

“We must provide for the new relations which will necessarily grow out of the new conditions of public affairs."

The Mayor proposed that New York secede and form a separate free city composed of the three islands, Long, Staten, and Manhattan. Wood envisioned New York City as a capitalist oasis, a free port trading with both Northern and Southern states.

Other serious secession movements occurred in the Middle-Atlantic states, particularly in Maryland and New Jersey. The common element in these movements was to avoid Union with the New England states, and a strong central government.

"He ignored six or seven demands from the leaders of the rebellion to recognize the legitimacy of their acts."

Misrepresentation again Non. He disregarded efforts of his own party as well as Unionists in Virginia as well as multiple offers from the South.

In fact, he began his efforts at sabotaging peace even before he took office.