[DiogenesLamp]

BroJoeK, I stopped reading your stuff about 30 messages ago. I've got too much stuff going on in the real world to wade through your spiel. Maybe when I can catch a break, i'll get back to looking at what you say again, but the ad nauseum arguing technique isn't really accomplishing anything.

For the rest of us, I am wanting to dissect the US GDP for the 1860-ish period. As near as I can tell, total GDP for 1860 was around 4.5 billion dollars. What I want to figure out, is how much money was the North making off of the South.

It appears the value of direct Southern exports was around 200 million, and the indirect value (Products supplied to Northern Manufacturers, etc.) was substantial too.

I don't see how California and the Western states really had much to do with Southern exports and European shipping, so I think their contributions to the GDP should be deducted from the number at which I am trying to arrive.

Gold and Silver production, Cattle and Timber, and whatever other produce of value the western states created, ought not figure in to how valuable was the South to the North.

Only those things traceable to value lost from an Independent South should be considered toward's the total value of what was at stake for the North if the South became independent.

I've got a source i'm going to look through for some numbers, but I thought if others of you had some sources, that would help flesh out exactly what was the cost to the North of the South leaving their Economic sphere of influence.

My bet is that it's plenty enough money for a nation to go to war over.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "It appears the value of direct Southern exports was around 200 million, and the indirect value (Products supplied to Northern Manufacturers, etc.) was substantial too."

Your figures for 1859 show total exports, including specie, of $336 million.
My numbers from this link, page 605, show those same numbers as $349 million, about 4% more.

My figure for 1860 rises to $392 million, or 17% more than your total number for 1859.
Of that $392 million, I see cotton at $192 million and tobacco at $16 million, together 53% of total exports.

So here are some problems with your numbers:

1. Cotton certainly is a "product of the South", and mostly the Deep South at that, certainly the Confederate States.
   But your article values raw cotton at 60% of manufactured cotton exports, which is probably high.
   Half that would be more realistic.

2. Tobacco is now, and was then, grown in several states outside the Confederate South.
   Even today, Northern tobacco farms account for around 20% of total tobacco farms.
   Further, Union Kentucky is a top tobacco producing state, so should not be included in "products of the South".
   So not all tobacco in 1860 can be credited to "the South".

3. Naval stores are the 4th listed item, but by 1860 some of those still came from northern forests.
   They were not 100% Southern products.

4. Molasses comes from sugar cane protected by tariffs in the South, but also from sugar beets grown in the North.
   So molasses would not necessarily be 100% Southern produced.

5. The huge category called "other from the South" was the second largest in 1857, third in 1859.
   Those numbers are way, way too big to be considered some sort of "miscellaneous" exports.
   So I suspect something fishy going on, which should discount those numbers.

6. Finally, "products of the South" would include regions of the Upper South and Border States which remained loyal to the Union.
   

Bottom line is just what your report says: "...more than one-half the whole is exclusively Southern origin..."
For 1860 especially, that figure of "one-half" is about exactly right.
Of 1860's $392 million total exports, 55% or so came from future Confederate states.

DiogenesLamp: "My bet is that it's plenty enough money for a nation to go to war over."

Possibly for hot-headed Southerners, but certainly not for cooler Northerners, absent some act of war and declaration of war against the Union, which those hot-heads soon provided.

But it's pure Marxism to reduce everything to economics, and human nature is far more complex than that.
We know this for certain because four of the original Deep South seceding states wrote official "Reasons for Secession" and their overwhelming concern was to protect slavery.
Of course, that is an "economic reason", but Southerners also looked on secession as a defense of their culture and way of life.
To them, slavery was much more than just "economics".