Bottom line, BroCanard, you do not know the owner(s) of specie, reason for export, or numerical portion of the trade if any at all.
You are just tossing that amount in to try to prove another point that is not anywhere near being true.
Bottom line, PeaBrain is that you have no clue what you're talking about.
The fact is that specie is money, and is listed along side other exports because it effects the balance of trade.
Specie helps explain how the U.S. continuously ran large trade deficits, year after year -- specie balanced the books.
And it matters not who owned the specie, just as it matters not who owned cotton or any other export.
For purposes of **THIS** discussion, it only matters that specie helped pay for those tariffed imports which provided Federal revenues.
Otherwise, we wouldn't care.
PeaBrain: "You are just tossing that amount in to try to prove another point that is not anywhere near being true."
No, my point is not only 100% true, it's also important to this thread: that Deep South cotton exports did pay for roughly 50% of US imports, but not the 75% or 87% sometimes claimed.
And the reason that's important is because it helps explain why & how Union states were able to so quickly adjust, adapt & prosper in 1861 even with zero, zip, nada cotton.
Cotton was just not as important as Fire Eaters then and pro-Confederates today believed.