Some supported secession only until the news of the Southern tariff rates hit the newspapers. Then the long knives came out.
But you also employ misdirection.
You said: “So Deep South cotton proved not as important to North easterners as secessionists of the time and pro-Confederates of our time imagine.”
But it certainly did to northeastern businesses.
But more importantly was direct trade with Europe which cut out the US Treasury, as Lincoln so famously noted in his inaugural. So, yeah, lost cotton trade goods tariff revenue was what he was talking about a few days before he ordered Fox south.
No, no, no... good FRiend, I didn't say that, you posted it and I merely quoted your own words back to you, emphasizing their importance, since your own words here support my arguments.
As I have now repeated endlessly: Northern Democrat businessmen were friends & allies of Southern secessionists.
As you posted, they didn't oppose secession, instead they wanted to join in secession.
Failing that, they wanted every concession possible to mollify Deep South secessionists.
They absolutely did not want war.
And once war came anyway, many copperheads continued to support their Southern brethren.
Others supported the war effort only half-heartedly.
I've mentioned Union General McClellan before -- your typical Democrat Union general, of whom there were many others.
What they wanted was not victory but some negotiated accommodations with the Confederacy.
"Peace without victory" is the way Southern President Woodrow Wilson put it some 55 years later.
PeaRidge: "But more importantly was direct trade with Europe which cut out the US Treasury, as Lincoln so famously noted in his inaugural.
So, yeah, lost cotton trade goods tariff revenue was what he was talking about a few days before he ordered Fox south."
But Lincoln said nothing about "direct trade with Europe" in his inaugural address, or anywhere else.
That is a figment of your overworked imagination.
Further, your own facts (see Debow) show that Southern ports already shipped directly to overseas customers, not to New York.
What went to New York were the return runs with imports and immigrants, and imports paid duties to the Federal treasury.
Of course, without cotton exports there would be 50% fewer imports and that did happen.
But it was far from the apocalyptic event you here claim.