Data from the US Treasury and Census reports as compiled by Kettell:
1859 Value of Southern Produce sold to the North...$200,000,000.
1859 Value of produce and grains exported from the North to Europe...$40,047,700.
Quote: "The exports of bread stuffs and provisions are also due to the South, since but for the quantities of these which are sent North to feed the Eastern States, little or no Western produce could be spared for Europe, even at high prices. (pg. 72, Kettell).
Quote: "The barren hills of New England...they have hitherto had their food and materials brought to them." (pg. 72, Kettell).
Quote: (1859 food exports from the North)"...The quantity of these articles which went direct from the Northern States did not exceed the quantities which that section received from the South and from Canada." (pg. 73, Kettell).
This is presented not to pick a fight about what some might consider a minor point, but to illustrate the magnitude of the demand and therefore profitability of Southern agriculture.
While criticizing the South for not embracing industrialization according to your purview, it must be admitted that manufacturing was moving South but not at the same rate as in other parts of the country. That was a function of demand, technology gains, finance, and cultural adaptation.
While keeping this in mind, it is important to not minimize the severe impact on profit and land value of the impending Morrill Tariff, which was a well planned scheme of the Republican party.
The Northeast was producing food for home consumption, not for export, so how much grain they exported wasn't strictly relevant. The Old Northwest may not have been the great exporter today's Midwest is, but they were the country's great producer of corn, wheat and other foodstuffs.
I don't have time to research all of this, but I would not be surprised if the food that New England needed and didn't produce domestically, came from the Great Lakes states, rather than from the South (and when we talk about "the South" in this context we're mostly talking about Virginia, rather than Mississippi, South Carolina and the other Deep South states). And in 1860, New York and Pennsylvania were still major agricultural states.
While criticizing the South for not embracing industrialization according to your purview, it must be admitted that manufacturing was moving South but not at the same rate as in other parts of the country. That was a function of demand, technology gains, finance, and cultural adaptation.
"It must be admitted"? By whom? "Moving South"? What we would now call industry was new and growing in various parts of the country, but it wasn't "moving South" in the same way that it did in recent decades. And yes, back then slavery and the unwillingness to industrialize were major factors holding the Southern states back.
While keeping this in mind, it is important to not minimize the severe impact on profit and land value of the impending Morrill Tariff, which was a well planned scheme of the Republican party.
The "impending" tariff didn't have any effects since it hadn't happened yet. It wasn't even "impending." That is to say, nobody could foresee what would happen. There would probably have been a rise in tariffs, though nothing like what eventually happened. In any case, that wouldn't have made trends that had started decades before.
Hey, Pea. x thinks I’m you and vice versa. See posts 330-333. Now I can be in two states at the same time.