There were plenty of American exports of the time besides cotton and tobacco. Whale oil out of Nantucket and metal from Northern mines, for example. Also, Great Britain, where the great textile mill industry was at the time, had an interest in fostering cotton imports from her own colonial areas, like Egypt and India. You could as well say the tariffs aided American industry at the expense of Great Britain's.
The real question is why the South never tried to develop their own domestic textile industry. Or any other significant manufacturing, for that matter. One of the main reasons the South lost was the inability to manufacture the goods needed in the face of the blockade.
"The real question is why the South never tried to develop their own domestic textile industry. Or any other significant manufacturing, for that matter. One of the main reasons the South lost was the inability to manufacture the goods needed in the face of the blockade."
Like weapons. I've wondered about the lack of factories, too. But the fact is that farms today are often even larger than plantations were. Where I live, the northside has higher taxes and more jobs because the southside has the better farmland. They complain that their side of town is underrated and gets less improvements.
Wouldn't cotton and tobacco be easier to load and haul via ship? Would they then be more frequent exports than whale oil and metal.
Would YOU want to be in a factory in Georgia in August without air conditioning?