If New Yorkers made more money from shipping than cotton growers did, a reason might be that they were also shipping many other goods to and from Europe, not just cotton. Another reason why New York prospered might be that the cotton growers could never be sure they'd have money when they needed it, so they were a market for loans and credit from New York banks, the economy of the cotton states being so dependent on cotton that Southern banks may not have had the money when the planters needed it.
New York and the Northeast did fine economically after the slave states seceded. Among those who were most inclined to let the secessionists go in peace were those who did business with the South. They assumed that, given peace, business relations would go on much as they had. They appear to have been more worried about the Southern states renouncing their debts than about tariffs or the South yanking away their business, and they weren't at all keen on war. The mayor of New York even wanted the city to secede from the United States and keep up the cotton trade with the Confederacy. The attack on Fort Sumter changed that. Source
Yeah I was aware of the secession sentiment in New York. One item you forgot to mention the Northeast had was illicit slave trading. The estimate in Complicity (backed up by research) was that New York was turning out two slaves ships per month through the mid 19th century....yes Northeastern slave trading was still that prevalent.
Its true that the Northeast's shipping industry did OK through the war but that was on the back of a lot of government spending for warships and imported goods for their war effort all financed by taxes and debts. Remember that they levied the first income tax (unconstitutionally) in American history during the war.
Anyway here are some interesting and cringeworthy editorials from Northern newspapers....before the business interests explained to everybody in the North just how much money they stood to lose if the Southern States left as well as their views on slavery:
"Evil and nothing but evil has ever followed in the track of this hideous monster, abolition. Let the slave alone and send him back to his master where he belongs." The Daily Chicago Times Dec 7 1860
....opposed abolition of slavery….. proposed slaves should be allowed to marry and taught to read and invest their money in savings accounts...which would "ameliorate rather than to abolish the slavery of the Southern States."...and would thus permit slavery to be "a very tolerable system." New York Times Jan 22 1861
Detroit Free Press (Feb. 19, 1861): “An attempt to subjugate the seceded States, even if successful could produce nothing but evil — evil unmitigated in character and appalling in content.”
We have no more right to meddle with slavery in Georgia, than we have to meddle with monarchy in Europe. Providence Daily Post Feb 2 1861
"the immense increase in the numbers of slaves within so short a time speaks for the good treatment and happy, contented lot of the slaves. They are comfortably fed, housed and clothed, and seldom or never overworked." New York Herald (the largest newspaper in the country at the time) March 7, 1861
"If [the Declaration of Independence] justifies the secession from the British empire of 3,000,000 of colonists in 1776, we do not see why it would not justify the secession of 5,000,000 of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." – New York Tribune, December 17, 1860
Bangor Daily Union wrote on November 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone."
A state coerced into the Union is "a subject province" and may never be "a co-equal member of the American Union." The New York Journal of Commerce editorialized on January 12
The New York Journal of Commerce editorialized on January 12, 1861, that opposing secession changes the nature of government "from a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves" to the federal government.
this was the view of the majority of Northern newspapers at the time according to Howard Cecil Perkins, editor of the two-volume book, Northern Editorials on Secession.
There was also a vigorous secession movement in the "middle states" — Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New York — in the late 1850s, as described by William C. Wright in The Secession Movement in the Middle Atlantic States
Look at those dates. November through mostly February with one even in March. Now look below. You can see exactly when the business interests put their foot down and started clamoring for war:
The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched." New York Times March 30, 1861.......note the Old Gray Lady's change in tone from January to the end of March
"The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go." The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861.......isn't it funny how these northern newspapers are saying the exact opposite of our resident PC Revisionists?
On the very eve of war, March 18, 1861, the Boston Transcript wrote: If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon the imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby. The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties….The…[government] would be false to all its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.
[demanding a blockade of Southern ports, because, if not] "a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under-price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries and make British mills prosper. Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers, will be subject to Southern tolls." The Philadelphia Press 18 March 1861
Similarly, the economic editor of the NY Times, who had maintained for months that secession would not injure Northern commerce or prosperity, changed his mind on 22 March 1861: "At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States."
On 18 March 1861, the Boston Transcript noted that while the Southern states had claimed to secede over the slavery issue, now "the mask has been thrown off and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports....by a revenue system verging on free trade...."
gosh, I don't hear any soaring rhetoric about dying to make men free......
“New York and the Northeast did fine economically after the slave states seceded.”
Of course not all the slave states seceded. Union slave states kept their property until the bitter end.
In fact, until after the Fort Sumter incident the union had more slave states than the Confederacy.