[PeaRidge]

Thought you would like the data from this source. Parens are mine.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/21537/21537-h/21537-h.htm#CHAPTER_X

Expansion and Conflict by William E. Dodd

Her (the port of New York) tonnage had increased from a little more than 500,000 in 1830 to nearly 5,000,000 in 1860. The freight and passenger ships, built of iron, and encouraged by liberal subsidies from the Federal Government (Federal Postal and military contracts), employed 12,000 sailors and paid their owners $70,000,000 a year.

They carried the manufactures of the East to the Southern plantations, to South America, to Europe, and to the Far East.

This great fleet of commercial vessels was owned almost exclusively in Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania, and its owners were at the end of the decade about to wrest from Great Britain (and the South) her monopoly of the carrying trade of the world.

The merchants of that city imported three fourths of the European goods consumed in the country, and they in turn exported nearly all of the great crops with which the balance of trade was maintained.

New York was also a distributing center for the manufactures of the East which were sent to the South, the West, or the outside world.

The planters, on the other hand, had spread their system over the lower South in a remarkable manner since 1830. From eastern Virginia their patriarchal[Pg 194] establishments had been pushed westward and southwestward until in 1860 the black belt reached to the Rio Grande.

Tobacco, cotton, and sugar were still their great staples, and the annual returns from these were not less than $300,000,000; while the growth of their output between 1850 and 1860 was more than one hundred per cent. The number of slaves who worked the plantations had increased between 1830 and 1860 from 2,000,000 to nearly 4,000,000 souls, thus suggesting the comparison with the workers in the mills of the East.

The exports of the black belt composed more than two thirds of the total exports of the country; but they were largely billed through Eastern ports, and most of the imports of the South came through New York, where a second toll was taken from the products of the plantation.

[PeaRidge]

Here is the source of a previous post:

“Yankee merchants had come to dominate the cotton trade. In the early days after the invention of the cotton gin, the American South had dominated the cotton industry and southern cotton was shipped directly from southern ports to the textile mills of England.

“Shrewd New York Yankee traders soon saw their opportunity and began sending agents south to purchase all the cotton they could and ship it by packet ships to England and Europe. The plantation owners found themselves in a bind. If they wanted to ship their own cotton to market, the packet ship owner would charge them very high rates.

“Sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi had presented merchants with a problem that their shipbuilders solved with a unique vessel of shallow draft that had an almost perfectly flat bottom, which made it possible to clear the sandbars without getting stuck. An added benefit was that now bales of cotton could fit more easily in the flat-floored hold and carrying capacity was greatly increased. At first, the sailing qualities of such a vessel was doubted, but soon, to the relief of their owners, these flat-bottomed ships proved to have fine sailing qualities. They were in sharp contrast to the V-bottomed hulls of the day.

“With the cotton market now firmly in their control, some of the more savvy New Yorkers by the 1830s began to alter the triangular cotton trade by shipping the cotton first to New York by fast coastal vessels. And then transferring their cotton cargoes at New York to the Atlantic packets for the final leg of the journey to Liverpool. All along the way, the middlemen took their cut and New York Yankee merchants prospered. Coastal packet shipping became a very lucrative trade. Stevedores now had lots of work. Wharf owners stayed busy and Atlantic packets now sailed eastward on the “Downhill Passage” with full cargoes and stayed very busy for years.

“Eventually, southern planters began to complain that New York merchants were making 40 cents on every dollar, but being constantly in debt to the New Yorkers, they were hardly in a position to change this state of affairs. The Yankees were in full control of the market. This would eventually turn out to be one of the causes that led to the Civil War.

You can read more here: http://www.eraoftheclipperships.com/page7web.html

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks for that. I will read through it, but it is confirming what I am learning and have learned from other sources. New York/New England runs things in this country.

I feel as if I have been awoken. Now that I know what i'm looking for, I see the pervasive influence of this power structure elite in much of history and likewise in current events.

I used to think naively that things were just what they seemed to be, but now I know that powerful people work at keeping things (media and public policy) advocating positions which benefit them.

We cannot balance the budget because these power barons want the spending. It enriches them and their allies. Indeed, it is way beyond a "military industrial complex" it is Henry Clay's old "Mercantilism" made manifest. It is that same old collusion between government and industry to increase the power of both at the expense of freedom and individuality. As David Rockefeller said:

"WHEN YOU'RE THE 'STATE', IT'S A PRETTY GOOD DEAL!"

The people who influenced the government to start the civil war are still with us. The problems of then are still the problems of today. We have an elite class that presumes to govern us to their benefit and not our own.

Same now as then.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "The merchants of that city imported three fourths of the European goods consumed in the country, and they in turn exported nearly all of the great crops with which the balance of trade was maintained."

Once again, this report is from New Orleans, 1857:

"Of cotton the total receipts at New Orleans for the year were one and a half million of bales, the average price being 124 cents per pound.
Of this. there were
1. shipped to Great Britain 749,485 bales;
2. to France. 258,103;
3. to other parts of Europe, 186,069; and,
4. to United States ports, 223,204 [=15%].

The entire crop of the South is estimated to have been a little short of three millions of bales."

So New Orleans claims to ship half of all cotton, 85% of it directly to Europe, and again, this map demonstrates that upwards of 80% of all cotton must ship through Gulf Coast ports:

Therefore, it appears that claims all cotton exports went through New York are highly exaggerated.

Imports are a different matter:

Here we see in 1859 that 75% of import revenues did come through New York, and over 90% through the four largest eastern cities.

The obvious conclusion is that ships exporting cotton directly from Gulf Coast ports to Europe returned with imports to New York, where they paid Federal duties on those imports.
But in order to ship millions of bales overseas, those ships numbered many hundreds, meaning dozens in any given Southern port, some owned by New Yorkers, others owned elsewhere (but none foreign).
So cotton producers had choices on which shipper to patronize with their business.
Nothing prevented them from choosing Southern shippers.