As I have told you on this and other posts, the specie is not included in any of the export data from the US Statistical Reports from the Dept. of Commerce historical records.
Why....because it was external in origin and not intended to
be part of the trade purchases. In other words, it was not a part of US export trade. So, to include it is in error.
And it is spelled specie.
You said: “If, for example, a New York merchant buys up a ship-load of, say, coffee from Columbia, brings it to New York where he offloads half for US customers, refills that half-ship with cotton he purchased from the South and then sends the ship on to customers in Manchester, England, England, across the Atlantic... see, I believe one commodity is just as much a export as the other, at least in terms of profits received by that New York merchant.”
That is not a reexport. Now you are just making things up and thinking if you make the explanation long enough, it will be believed. WRONG
YOU AGAIN “So it is far from safe to assume that all non-cotton agricultural exports in 1861 came from future Confederate states.”
Your own data tables did not even include all the other southern exports.
YOU “Again, I'm saying they overstate the value of future-Confederate state exports while understating the value of total 1860 US exports.”
Your they is Kettel, DeBow, United States Treasury, Dept. of Commerce, Statistical History of the US and the US Census.
Are you saying all of them are making a mistake and you are not? Really? No kidding??
You: But “foreign countries” did not transship through US ports.
Wrong again. Western hemisphere shippers and destinations had their cargoes transported in a variety of ways. European shippers sometimes visited Canada first for offloading, and then on to New York to offload and pick up other goods. The offloads if destined other non domestic ports would be inventoried and temporally stored.
But the value of those products would not be entered into the US Treasury records as being part of US commerce.
YOU again: “In the process, the US merchants charged a profit, which was then used to help pay for imports from foreign countries, including tariffs for the US treasury.”
Absolutely and unequivocally wrong.
You end up with this conclusion based on your comedy of errors above: “But in reality, there was a much bigger picture here in 1860, of which future Confederate state exports were indeed important, perhaps 50+%, but were by no means the only games in town as represented by your 75% to 87% figures.”
Those figures are accurate. They originate with data from the US government.
And the percentages are accurate.
And Northern merchants knew it.
But "specie" is included in this 1960 National Bureau of Economic Research "Trends in the American Economy in the Nineteenth Century" page 605, from the Conference on Research in Income and Wealth.
And there is no doubt that "specie" exports grew hugely from 1849, when gold was discovered in California through 1860.
And far from being economically insignificant, as you suggest, "specie" obviously had a huge effect on US balance of trade, and helped to pay for imports which our pro-Confederates always insist could only be bought from the earnings on Southern cotton, tobacco, hemp, sugar, etc.
Proof that pro-Confederate claims are not true came with the Civil War, which ended all Confederate states exports, but failed to end US foreign trade.
Doubtless "specie" exports are one reason why.
PeaRidge: "And it is spelled specie."
I note that you enjoy nit-picking, so I'll be sure to leave plenty of nits around for you to pick. ;-)
It might amuse you to learn the spell-checker only helps me to correct about 90% of my mistakes, so think how many nits you'd find if I turned it off!
PeaRidge: "Your they is Kettel, DeBow, United States Treasury, Dept. of Commerce, Statistical History of the US and the US Census.
Are you saying all of them are making a mistake and you are not? Really? No kidding??"
Doubtless they did careful work, but, for example, cotton today is grown in such non-former-Confederate states as Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, New Mexico and Arizona.
Tobacco is grown in Northern states like Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Ohio and Indiana.
Yes, sugarcane was/is only grown in the Deep South, but has never been exported, due to foreign competition.
And everything else you listed as "Southern Exports" was more likely to have been produced outside the Deep or Upper South.
PeaRidge: "The offloads if destined other non domestic ports would be inventoried and temporally stored.
But the value of those products would not be entered into the US Treasury records as being part of US commerce."
But your argument here is that I must be including such transactions, because my numbers are higher than yours.
I'm saying, based on what seem to me entirely legitimate numbers, if we don't look at "specie", then there is no way to understand what was really going on.
Just to pick on 1860, as an example:
Bottom line: you cannot discount "specie" as an important trade factor in 1860.
PeaRidge: "Those figures are accurate.
They originate with data from the US government.
And the percentages are accurate."
No, those figures, as you interpret them, are inaccurate and incomplete, as I've demonstrated.