If the Northerners sell something to the South, they get some of that money.
They cannot get any more of that money than 15-27% of it directly from their own exports.
All the rest has to be a consequence of Southern exports."
This is still complete nonsense which has been exposed here as such many times.
Confederate state exports were not your 73-85%, they were 50%, one crop: cotton.
All the rest of US exports came from Union states, territories or regions, especially including such items as specie (gold & silver) and tobacco.
And cotton was important, but when deleted in 1861 it reduced total Union exports by only 35%.
My point is: our Lost Causers' "economics uber alles" is simply projecting their own Marxist training onto historical figures who never themselves expressed such motives.
Bull Snipe: "The United States economy generated wealth outside of cotton.
DiogenesLamp: "Not for European goods it didn't."
In 1860, US citizen assets totaled around $20 billion, our GDP was around $4.4 billion, total exports $400 million and Deep South cotton exports $200 million.
When cotton was deleted in 1861, US exports fell, net-net, $140 million (35%) to around $260 million, while GDP rose to $4.6 billion.
Bottom line: sure, in 1860 cotton was important, but its absence in 1861 did not destroy the Union's total exports, much less it's now $4.6 billion GDP.
DiogenesLamp: "...you are ignoring the fact that the reason the protectionist laws existed was to drive up the costs of domestic goods so they could make more profit.
These artificially increased prices were passed onto anyone buying Northern produced goods, and most especially the people of the South."
It's absolutely true that since Day One our Founders like James Madison & Alexander Hamilton used protective tariffs to put Americans first and make America great by encouraging US domestic manufacturing.
These tariffs were not intended to help any specific region, and manufacturing also developed in the South, though not to the degree as western, northern & eastern regions which did not benefit from slave-grown cotton.
Bull Snipe: "You've been shown that specie traveled both ways in large amounts but it doesn't see to register with you."
DiogenesLamp: "Specie isn't trade.
It should be looked at as a completely separate category, which I do recall doing a year or so ago, and even using the information that BroJoeK provided."
Well, first, nothing outside the scope of his own Lost Cause propaganda ever registers on DiogenesLamp -- he is single minded in that respect.
Second, specie absolutely was trade, then more than today, because it was used to balance the books on exports & imports.
If imports exceeded exports, which they often did, specie made up the difference -- gold from Union California and silver from Union Nevada made its way to Union New York to pay for imports from Europe, China & the Caribbean.
Deep South slaveholders had nothing to do -- zero, zip, nada to do -- with US specie exports or imports.