[riverdawg]

If you are referring to the article by Doug Irwin and Peter Temin in the 2001 JEH, their argument is not relevant to my simple point. They argue that that the tariff on imported finished cotton goods was not needed to protect the Northern textile industry after about 1830 because, as you said, the cotton goods produced by Northern manufacturers were not very close substitutes for British-produced cotton goods. That’s a different argument than mine, which is simply that the tariff on British imports of finished cotton goods reduced the demand for Southern-produced raw cotton. The tariff raised the price of fine cotton goods consumed in the U.S. and that has to have reduced the demand for the specialized input used to produce it. It is merely the “law of demand,” once removed.

[LS]

Ok. Gotcha. Do you have any evidence whatsoever that demand for southern cotton slowed, let alone slowed significantly?

[LS]

A further question: if demand for southern cotton was DROPPING, why in the world did every single major Confederate politician argue that “Cotton is King”-—”no one dares make war on King Cotton”? Hardly sounds like people who were losing sales.

[smug]

A little evidence from Jefferson Davis to back up your statement

Nor was this the only injury to which the South was subjected. Under the power of Congress to levy duties on imports, tariff laws were enacted, not merely "to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States," as authorized by the Constitution, but, positively and primarily, for the protection against foreign competition of domestic manufactures. The effect of this was to impose the main burden of taxation upon the Southern people, who were consumers and not manufacturers, not only by the enhanced price of imports, but indirectly by the consequent depreciation in the value of exports, which were chiefly the products of Southern States. The imposition of this grievance was unaccompanied by the consolation of knowing that the tax thus borne was to be paid into the public Treasury, for the increase of price accrued mainly to the benefit of the manufacturer. Nor was this all: a reference to the annual appropriations will show that the disbursements made were as unequal as the burdens borne—the inequality in both operating in the same direction. These causes all combined to direct immigration to the Northern section; and with the increase of its preponderance appeared more and more distinctly a tendency in the Federal Government to pervert functions delegated to it, and to use them with sectional discrimination against the minority.