And I submit that what you are overlooking as well is the fact that that cotton still had to get to market somehow. There was no domestic Confederate shipping industry to take up the slack so why is there any reason to believe that Northern shippers would not continue to provide transportation? And continue to charge freight, taxes, cartage, and insurance fees? After all what other alternative was there? Do you think that the European countries had the excess capacity to replace the U.S.?
Our merchants have capital enough to justify them in making their purchases in Europe, and shipping to New Orleans, and in that city, because of the difference in the tariff, goods can be bought cheaper than in New York.
The problem being that once those goods crossed the border into the U.S. from the Confederacy then they would by subject to U.S. tariffs as well, so the would be double taxed. And just because there was no custom house in St. Louis in April of 1861 that doesn't mean that one would not have been established if the South was independent. Like all the other doom-and-gloom predictions that an independent Confederacy would suck the vast majority of trade from Northern ports, it doesn't stand up when looked at it logically.
You can see very clearly how vulnerable the entire shipping empire of the North was upon secession, and the fear these people would have.
But if you look at it dispassionately you can see those fears were badly overblown.
You said: “And I submit that...”
Why speculate when the truth is staring you in the face. The transatlantic trade capacity of British vessels was already in direct competition with Union ships.
Didn’t you know that Northern and British shippers had been fighting over the Southern trade market for decades? Why do you think the Federal government had been used to hurt the British?
At the time of the articles, British shipping was already replacing them. That is written all over the editorials I gave....didn’t read them or ignoring them?
Double tax....how?
You can see that traders were already shipping North...the editorial was complaining about the low tariffs on these goods in early 1861. If you read you will learn. That is if you want to.
The government could not build enough barriers to stop the trade. Even if they did, Kansas and Missouri were about to become wealthy trade centers. Boston and New York would not have that.
Why not pay attention to what they were saying instead of what you would like to think they should have said?
Are you that biased?
You aren't keeping up with the information being provided in this thread. The only reason domestic shipping was competitive at all was because of the Navigation act of 1817 which put heavy penalties on the use of Foreign ships or crew. With independence, that statute disappears and instantly makes foreign ships and crew a relative bargain.
The Domestic shipping market had priced it's services at rates just below what it would cost to hire a foreign ship and crew with the penalties. The South was saving a little bit of money by using US Shipping, but they would save far more by using foreign ships at non protectionist rates.
This would of course, instantly screw the us Shipping industry which had grown accustomed to all those gouged prices since 1817.
With the South as part of the Union, the Shipping industry had jobs. With the South independent, all those jobs evaporated. Might as well join the army and go kill Southerners.