3/22/1861 The economic editor of the New York Times said,
“At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.”
This was another editor reversing his position of earlier in March when he declared that secession would not injure Northern commerce and prosperity.
He had earlier stated that the economies of the two sections were tied together and would stay together.
That was before the Confederate Tariff rates became known in the financial and governmental groups.
Cleveland’s Daily National Democrat November 20, 1860.
“The entire amount, in dollars and cents, of produce and of manufactured articles exported to foreign countries from the United States for the year ending June, 1858, was $293,758,279, of which amount the raw cotton exported alone amounted to $131,386,661. . . taking the estimate of the cotton used [in the] North . . . and adding it to the worth of the cotton sent abroad, and we have over one hundred and fifty-eight million dollars[’] worth of cotton as the amount furnished by the South.Deduct from the exports the silver and gold and the foreign goods exported, and the cotton crop of the South alone exported exceeds the other entire export of the United States, and when to this we add the hemp and Naval stores, sugar, rice, and tobacco, produced alone in the Southern States, we have near two-thirds of the value entire of exports from the South.
Let the States of the South separate, and the cotton, the rice, hemp, sugar and tobacco, now consumed in the Northern States must be purchased [from the] South, subject to a Tariff duty, greatly enhancing their cost. The cotton factories of New England now, by getting their raw cotton duty free, are enabled to contend with the English in the markets of their own Provinces, and in other parts of the world. A separation would take from us this advantage, and it would take from the vessels owned by the North the carrying tradeof the South, now mostly monopolised by them.”
In other words, *we* are correct, and BroJoeK is absolutely wrong. This statement was contemporary and from OHIO, a Northern state.
It also points out that the North had monopolized the shipping trade, just as we've been saying.
“With her immense staples, [the South] has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two per cent. Of the whole . . . It is almost impossible to estimate the amount of money realized yearly out of the South by the North.It, beyond all question, amounts to hundreds of millions. By the present arrangement, also, we have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor,of millions annually. The result would follow any tariff, for revenue or otherwise.”
"This was another editor reversing his position of earlier in March when he declared that secession would not injure Northern commerce and prosperity..."
If we knew the full context of this quote, we might well lean it was preceded by some such statement as: "If the Confederacy continues to prepare for, provoke & start war against the Union then here are our options."
By March 22, 1861 the Confederacy had already seized dozens of major federal properties (forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), threatened Union officials and fired on Union ships while sending agents into Union states to foment rebellion there.
So there were plenty of reasons for Northerners to change their opinions from "neutral" or "friendly" towards secessionists to angry & hostile.