Without the “currency” of Southern produced goods, Northern businessmen would not have enough specie on deposit to buy more than half the goods they had been purchasing.
And a great deal of those goods were being sold South, and with direct trade with Europe now a reality, their market was drying up.
Here are a few quotes about the pending loss of business:
3/28/1861 The New York Herald, as quoted in the March 28, 1861, Memphis Daily Appeal
“The last Congress, in a spirit of mingled vengeance and fanaticism, enacted a tariff doubling the duties on many articles of foreign manufacture, and advancing them to a prohibitory point on others; and this was done to protect the manufacturing interests of the Northern States at the expense of the South.
It is doubtful, however, if this blundering instrument can ever be intelligibly interpreted by any collector of custom, or enforced at all in its present shape.
But at the same time the Congress of the Southern Confederacy has adopted a tariff reducing the duties on imports, the consequence of which will be that the importations will abandon the ports of the North and enter those of the South, and will then find their way to the interior by the Mississippi river and the railroads of the border States.
The result of this proceeding will be of course to destroy the trade of the North; and the very first portions of it to suffer will be New York, New Jersey, and New England. The imports here will be cut down to an insignificant figure; and the manufactures in the New England States will be seriously damaged; both business houses and factories will be transferred to the South; and, in fact, the northern tariff adopted to protect the manufacturing interests of the North will have no interests left to protect. The actual effect of the tariff, then, will be to reduce the revenues of the Government at Washington and increase the revenues of the Southern Government.
The Congress at Washington may attempt to avert this course of affairs, even to the extent of inaugurating a blockade of all the southern ports; vessels of war have been ordered home from all the foreign stations to enable the Administration to be prepared for this policy; but to such an event France and England would act as they did with regard to Texas; they would acknowledge the independence of the Southern Confederacy, and send their fleets across the Atlantic to open every port in the South.
Thus we find the country involved in a fearful commercial revolution through the policy of a fanatical party, which, for thirty years, has been endeavoring to overthrow all the best interests of the Republic for the sake of an abstraction. We see the whole current of commercial prosperity turned out of its channel, the wealth and importance of the northern cities struck down at a blow. We have experienced many commercial revulsions before now from time to time — in 1817, 1825, 1837 and 1857 — but these were the results of overtrading, of excessive speculation, and other financial causes which may produce like consequences in any country. The present revulsion, on the contrary, arises from purely political causes, and will be as disastrous in its effects as it is novel in its origin.”
And that right there is the cause of the war in a nutshell. A free South would be a grave financial threat to the financial interests of the monied men of New England.
It wasn't the loss of Tariff income to the Federal Government. Although that was very significant, it wasn't enough by itself to launch a war. It is the loss of 200-400 million or more to the Northern Economy *and* the potential to have Competitors in the South that would cost them even more business, that made the problem serious enough to initiate a war to stop it.
Giving credit where it's due: I think that is exactly correct.
Cotton exports alone accounted for more than half of total US exports in 1860 -- that is neither exaggerating nor minimizing.
But other exports, including "specie" (gold & silver) from new mines out west, were not insignificant, and were growing.
PeaRidge quoting New York Herald 3/28/1861: "... imports here will be cut down to an insignificant figure; and the manufactures in the New England States will be seriously damaged; both business houses and factories will be transferred to the South; and, in fact, the northern tariff adopted to protect the manufacturing interests of the North will have no interests left to protect.
The actual effect of the tariff, then, will be to reduce the revenues of the Government at Washington and increase the revenues of the Southern Government..."
This assumes that, in a normal course of events, Congress would do nothing to improve competitiveness of Northern ports.
Matching Confederate rates would be a simple step.
still quoting New York Herald: "...Thus we find the country involved in a fearful commercial revolution through the policy of a fanatical party, which, for thirty years, has been endeavoring to overthrow all the best interests of the Republic for the sake of an abstraction."
So, what does that mean?
Well, in 1861 the New York Herald was New York's most popular newspaper -- pro-Democrat.
That means they were very friendly to their Southern Democrat allies and staunchly opposed to Republicans.
In that effort, we might expect the Herald to exaggerate Republican dangers and minimize Southern Democrat threats.
So in this case the "fanatical party" they refer to is not Fire Eating Southern Democrat secessionists, but rather Northern Republicans, which the Herald claims has been "...for thirty years... endeavoring to overthrow all the best interests of the Republic for the sake of an abstraction."
In 1860 the Republican Party was about seven years old, had only run in two presidential elections.
So who was that party "for thirty years"?
Pre-Republican Whigs were not anti-slavery, far from it.
Both elected Whig presidents (Harrison & Taylor) were Southern slave-holders.
And Republicans were not opposed to "an abstraction", far from it.
In 1860, Republicans were opposed to expanding slavery into those territories which didn't want it.
That's hardly an "abstraction".