You said "In 1786 Charleston alone shipped 1.5 million lbs. of cotton overseas."
Your next sentence began with "those who claim the South didn't have an established shipping business".
Again, you quoted a statement that alone sounds impressive, and would lead to all sorts of conclusions, including the wrong ones.
You are still quoting a volume shipped, but offer no evidence on what it was shipped. Therefore that quote only has relevance on some amount of cotton shipped, and not the shipping business, which not only was export/import, but also ownership of the vessels, which we have been duscussing.
Your original contention was that the South owned a large shipping industry, including ship ownership, and you offered this data to prove it.
Sorry, it offers no proof. It is merely data on port clearance.
Try again sometime.
Nonsense. My original contention was there was nothing prohibiting the South from competing with the North for shipping, including geography or having an "established shipping industry" at the time the Navigation laws were enacted. Something you claimed they didn't have.
Using your own sources, I've shown that Charleston was one of the top four seaports in the United States when Congress enacted the navigation laws and tariffs on imports. I've also shown through public records the volume and variety of both products shipped, and international destinations for those products, about the time South Carolina ratified the US Constitution. From the Charleston example alone, a reasonable person would conclude that the South had an "established shipping industry" that could compete with the North at that time.
The fact that the South didn't "own a large shipping industry" had nothing to do with Federal law, warehouses, or their competitors, and everything to do with the planter mentality that infected the decision making of their effete elected officials. Apparently I am not alone in drawing this conclusion either. This is from Debow's Review On Direct Foreign Trade of the South in 1852
"It was in 1837-8, along there-when the British government was about writing Q. E. D. to the practical demonstration which the "Sirius," the "Liverpool," and the " Great Western," were just then giving to the great problem of Ocean Steam Navigation. France, the French, and the King of the French, were burning with the desire not to be outdone by England. They had the money ready, and were looking for a port on this side to which they might start an opposition line of steamers. It was then proposed that the South should offer to take part of the stock, provided the French would select Norfolk as the terminus for their line-and thus get the line into the hands of Americans; for we "felt it in our bones," that, even at that day, we could beat John Bull. We did succeed in impressing one gentleman, at least, with our notions. Him we knew well: he was an enterprising go-ahead fellow. Requiescat! Captivated with the idea of subsidizing the French in the noble enterprise, he petitioned the Virginia legislature to grant him the charter for an Atlantic Steam Navigation Company. He wanted no privileges, no favors, but simply the charter; for he was sure that with the charter and his energies, he could gain the French over as allies, and induce them to select Norfolk for the American terminus of their line. The legislature refused the charter. The French, meeting with no sympathy on this side, receiving no overtures fromn the South to send their boats to Norfolk, proceeded to build their vessels. They selected New-York for their American station..had the legislature of Virginia granted that Ocean Steam Navigation Charter, Norfolk would at this day have been the centre of steamship enterprise for the United States. The French steamers would have been built there; they would have been commanded and controlled by Americans who would never forget their sugar, nor make their passengers sour. This would have established foundries, machine shops, and ship yards at Norfolk, and have placed her ten or fifteen years ahead of New-York in the steamship business. Norfolk would then have been enabled to get the contracts from the Government for establishing those lines of splendid steamers that are now giving such a tremendous impetus to the business, the trade, travel and traffic of NewYork. The lines to the Isthmus would have belonged to Norfolk. Hers would probably have been the Havre and Bremen lines. And the Old Dominion might have claimed also what is now the " Collins' Line." Geographically speaking, Norfolk is in a position to have commanded the business of the Atlantic seaboard. It is midway the coast. It has a back country of surprising fertility-of great capacity and resources; and as far as the approaches from the sea are concerned, its facility of ingress and egress, at all times and in all weathers, there is from Maine to Georgia, from the St. Johns to the Rio Grande, nothing like Norfolk. The waters'which flow past Norfolk into the sea, divide the producing from the conisuming states of the Atlantic slope-the agricultural from the manufacturing-the ice ponds of the North from the cotton fields at the South-the potato patch from the rice plantation — the miner from the planter. And these same waters unite at this one place the natural channels that lead from the most famous regions in the country for corn, wheat and tobacco, to the great commercial marts.