From now on, USA, it’s California first

You and I, the United States and California, used to be close – “indivisible” was your word and “inseparable” was mine. Sure, we had differences – I’ve always been a little out there – but California was proudly part of America, and you tolerated our excesses.

Everyone is entitled to a mid-life crisis. But you are having an especially nasty meltdown. You’ve turned against everything you used to love: immigrants, trade, international alliances, voting rights, women’s rights, science, national parks, and treating people with respect.

But today, I look at you and feel like I’m an entirely different place, with different values, even different realities. Who is responsible for our problems?

It’s really not me. It’s you. While I’m the almond-producing state, you’re the one that has gone nuts.

These days, you’re constantly freaking out. And the government you installed in Washington – a government my voters opposed by historic margins – is trying to take away people’s health care, make it harder to vote, roll back environmental regulations, restart the failed drug war, and pick fights with our friends, like Mexico, Canada, Germany, Sweden, and South Korea.

Now, I’m not going to march out the door and become my own country, like the #Calexit movement proposed. You are still my country, and I’m not surrendering you.

My people are just as American as yours. On July 4, I’ll still host barbecues and parades for tens of millions of your citizens. Back east of the Sierra, I hope your fireworks are bigger than ever, and that your people will stand extra close.

DiogenesLamp: "Okay, so you get the concept.
Now we just need to work on your understanding of who was going to lose economically with Southern Independence, and who was going to win economically with Southern Independence. "

Democrats for both: Northern Democrats and Southern Democrats.
It was all about the Democrats who ruled in Washington, DC, from around 1800 to 1861.
Northern Democrat merchants & financial types partnered with Southern Democrat slave-holders driving the US economy & profiting in the global cotton trade.

Nearly all that time the Federalists / Whigs / Republicans were the minority and Democrats ruled.
Rural Republicans -- farmers, manufacturers -- were mostly not directly connected to global trade & finance.
Instead their economic concerns were to protect US producers with tariffs and ideologically to defend the Union while preventing the spread of slavery.

Then Democrats split in 1860, North vs. South, declared secession & war, somewhat against each other for economic reasons, but primarily against the Union to protect their "peculiar institution" of slavery.

And you well know all that, but chose to perpetrate the Big Lie that Confederates were really Republicans and Lincoln was really a Democrat!
Shame on you for that, DiogenesLamp.

DiogenesLamp: "If you've mentioned this before, I must have missed it.
What debts were being renounced?
Which creditors got stiffed and for what? "

Of course you missed it, because you refuse to read my posts and so miss all the main points rendering yours nonsense.

In early 1861, along with declarations of secession and joining the new Confederacy, Confederate states began repudiating their debts to Northern creditors:

"On May 21, the Confederate Congress prohibited Southern debtors from paying off Northern creditors during the war, requiring payments be made to the Confederate Treasury instead."

"The [Confederate] Sequestration Act of 1861 provided for confiscation of all Union "lands, tenements, goods and chattels, right and credits" and the transfer of debt obligation on the part of Confederate citizens from Northern creditors directly to the Confederate government.
However, many Southerners proved unwilling to transfer their debt obligations."

But long before these Confederate Congress acts, Confederate states like Georgia ordered repudiation of all debts to Northerners.
And that is when Northern Democrats began switching allegiances from Southern Democrats to Republicans.

Republicans generally didn't care much about Southern debts as long as Northern manufacturing was protected by tariffs, but they did care about Union and preventing the spread of slavery.

By contrast, Northern Democrats cared a lot about those debts -- since they owned them -- and it drove them to ally temporarily with Republicans, until the war was over, then they soon rejoined their old alliance with Southern Democrats.

DiogenesLamp: "I am not anti-Republican, I am anti North Eastern Liberal elite who want to shove their latest version of morality down our throats.
It just so happens that in 1860, these people were Republicans."

No, they were never Republicans, always Northern Democrats, who allied temporarily with Republicans during the war, but soon after rejoined their original political soul-mates.
And Democrats were powerful enough politically to carry New York & New Jersey in 1868 against Grant, 1876 against Hayes, 1884 & 1892 electing Cleveland, and in 1912 electing Woodrow Wilson.

Yes, for many years Republicans did carry New York, electing such financial tycoons as Governor Nelson Rockefeller.
But Republican strength in New York (as everywhere else) was always rural upstate against big-city Democrats.
The "swing" voters were & are suburbanites, i.e., Long Island.

1868 Presidential election (Grant vs. Seymour) where Northern Democrats rejoined the South (note red Long Island):

Cotton wasn't going to remain king forever.

Maybe it wasn't, but moving 230 million dollars worth of import money from New York directly to the South would have capitalized other industries in the South.

Really, a mess was building in the South and it's hard to see why the Middle West would want to join up with that.

For the same reason why Americans are spending their money making China rich. Because they would be able to deliver lower cost products.

The country might have broken up further in the 1860s and it still might break up, but Ohio wasn't going to join South Carolina then any more than Idaho would stay in one country with Mississippi. They're just too different.

I wouldn't pick Ohio as one of the examples, but certainly Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Dakotas would likely have come into the Confederacy's economic orbit eventually. If the South could supply goods cheaper than the New York/Chicago axis, then they settlers in those states would have bought them.

You think that rich and powerful people are oppressing you ...

I think Rich and Powerful people have their meddling fingers in the Government, and it is the government who is oppressing us. I think the New York media is liberal precisely because it benefits the bottom line of the Rich-Powerful/Government axis. I am referring to this loose oligarchy which people are nowadays calling "the establishment."

... and they need to be overthrown and that those who overthrow them will become in turn rich and powerful and universally loved.

No, I think their media weapon needs to be taken away from them, and that we need to come up with a system to guarantee the Conservative side of the debate has at least equal access to the trillion dollar broadcasting infrastructure which the left has long used to exclusively communicate with the public.

I think that any concentration of power is prone to abuse and corruption, and as the founders realized, the only thing that can be done is to try and balance opposing forces in an effort to create an altruistic outcome.

Well, just overthrowing somebody else doesn't make people rich.

You must not have read up on any of the communist revolutions. Overthrowing the existing system *always* makes the new rulers wealthy.

And if you do succeed in replacing the others and becoming rich yourself, why wouldn't people like you hate the people you've become just as much as they hated the people you replaced?

Okay, you've gone off the rails here. I'm not motivated by envy, i'm actually doing quite well financially, and there's really nothing I want that I can't buy if I wished it. I simply recognize that there is a structure in Washington/New York that has resisted any effort to rein in excessive spending. For a long time I thought it was a quesiton of ignorance, but after all the media screeching in 1995 about efforts to balance the budget, I became convinced that the people these media represent really don't want spending in Washington under control.

So I eventually started asking myself "Why?"

The only answer that made sense to me was "Because their power and wealth are tied to excessive spending by Washington D.C."

The realization that this shadow government we now call "the establishment" was a consequence of the Civil War, only occurred to me within the last year and a half. Now the more I look at it, the more this idea seems to ring true. In other words, you dream of overthrowing New York and making New Orleans or Charleston the new New York and you actually think they won't be resented as much as you resent New York.

I'd rather not be ruled by any group of oligarchs. I'd rather they were made to keep their meddling little fingers out of the workings of government and leave it as the minimalist system which our founders designed it to be.

What I said earlier, and which you seem to be misunderstanding, is that had Charleston managed to become the Money Capital of the US, I would likely be bitching about how the Charleston "elite" were tampering with our government and our lives. My meaning here is that I don't want a group of "elite" telling me what to do, regardless of what city from which they might originate.

Really, it's all there -- economic determinism, resentment, exploitation, class struggle, revolution, utopia. Why do you get so bent out of shape when people point out how much of a Marxist you are, Diogenes?

Perhaps it is because they keep insisting they need to put a Marxist shoe on my capitalist foot? That actually gets old pretty fast.

I'm all for capitalism, so long as it is Adam Smith/Edmund Burke style capitalism. It is the corrupt, monopolistic, influential, coercive, crony sort, that i'm against.

I wouldn't pick Ohio as one of the examples, but certainly Kansas, Oklahoma, Nebraska and the Dakotas would likely have come into the Confederacy's economic orbit eventually.

In your crazy fantasy world where free trade makes the Confederacy some magical source of cheap British goods, maybe. In the real world that wouldn't happen and even if it did, the regions and their societies were too different.

Look, you really contradict yourself. If the South became a great economic powerhouse, the same people who resented the East would resent the South. You've even said you'd do the same. So, please, for once take a good look at the contradictions in your theory.

>>Well, just overthrowing somebody else doesn't make people rich.

> You must not have read up on any of the communist revolutions. Overthrowing the existing system *always* makes the new rulers wealthy.

I'm talking about countries and large populations. A country or a region or class doesn't automatically become rich by throwing off the people or the government it labels "exploiters." It has to have the know-how and ability and put in a real effort to become wealthy.

If I'm "misunderstanding" you it's because you get so enthusiastic about the idea of Charleston or some other Southern city displacing New York. Sometimes it seems like it's all you ever talk about.

Good luck getting rid of elites. Name a society that didn't have them. Or cronyism for that matter.

Unlike the US and China, who's societies are so eerily similar.

Money talks and bullsh*t walks. You show people they can make or save money by dealing with you, and you will get dealt with regardless of how dissimilar is your society and theirs. You simply keep ignoring the profit motive when it comes to understanding human behavior. And you call me a "Marxist." :)

Look, you really contradict yourself. If the South became a great economic powerhouse, the same people who resented the East would resent the South.

That doesn't even make sense. I'm sure the Southerners at the time were resenting North Eastern control of their shipping, their banking, their insurance and other matters, but there is no reason to believe these same people would resent more reasonable costing services originating in Southern cities.

Remember, the North East had the South as a "captive market." They had no where else to go before independence.

You've even said you'd do the same. So, please, for once take a good look at the contradictions in your theory.

Are we talking about the present, or are we talking about the 1860 era? You can't keep switching back and forth while keeping things in context. I said I would likely be resenting the Liberal Elite of Charleston lording it over everyone else in the country. I said this because they would have simply become the "new" New York, and because they would have been wielding outsized control and influence on the government, same as our current wealthy liberals do in New York nowadays.

I'm talking about countries and large populations. A country or a region or class doesn't automatically become rich by throwing off the people or the government it labels "exploiters."

No, if anything they become more impoverished. It is the leaders and party officers that gain in wealth when a revolution occurs. The ordinary people are generally worse off.

It has to have the know-how and ability and put in a real effort to become wealthy.

Many people have to put in no effort, or very little to become wealthy. They inherit wealth or are married into it. Monied people boost and protect their own. This is why I say that once a City like Charleston has acquired sufficient capital, (which it would have with 40% extra profits on it's exports) it will diversify into all sorts of industries. Money grows industries just by it's very existence. Again, why am I having to explain capitalist ideas to you? Are you some sort of Marxist or something? :)

If I'm "misunderstanding" you it's because you get so enthusiastic about the idea of Charleston or some other Southern city displacing New York. Sometimes it seems like it's all you ever talk about.

I'm not enthusiastic about it, I simply recognize that if the South was an independent country, some city would take over the financial business that New York used to perform. It might not have been Charleston, it might have been Norfolk. It might have been New Orleans. About the only thing I can say for sure is that it would have been a major port city.

Good luck getting rid of elites. Name a society that didn't have them. Or cronyism for that matter.

Where do you get this idea that i'm trying to get rid of "elites"? Everything I have written in this exchange should have made you realize that I consider the rise of the "elites" to be an unavoidable consequence. They will always emerge in any society sufficiently prosperous, and the best that can be done is to blunt their influence as much as possible regarding their efforts to tamper with the national government.

Getting rid of "elites" is like trying to remove the top or bottom step of a staircase. Once you've done it, all you have done is create a new top or bottom step.

You greatly misunderstand my thinking in numerous areas, and it's not for my lack of effort in trying to clarify what I think.

My first advice to you is get rid of some of your pejorative assumptions about me. I hate communism and socialism. On the opposite end of the scale, I consider "Crony Capitalism" to be a form of "Aristocracy", which is no less objectionable.

I believe in the system our founders created where we are free and equal (in the eyes of the law) individuals who may pursue our efforts at happiness with a minimum of intervention by the government or the masses.

Call it the "middle road" between the opposite extremes of Socialism and Aristocracy.

Unlike the US and China, who's societies are so eerily similar.

Minnesota was as unlikely to join in a political union with South Carolina in opposition to the United States as the US is to join with China. Let me remind you of what you wrote in an earlier post:

Without a war, the economics of the North were in serious trouble, not to mention the possibility of states in the Midwest eventually being brought into the economic orbit of the Confederacy instead of continuing on with the established trade through New York and Chicago.

This would eventually result in their being brought into the political orbit as well, and states which in our timeline became part of the Union would have ended up being part of the confederacy; A de facto loss of territory and ability for the Union to expand Westward.

That is the idea I was responding to. Now you're backtracking and denying with a snarky comment. Own up. Admit your original idea and try to defend it if you can. Otherwise, you're just blowing smoke and being dishonest.

Were they? Was the average Southerner really aware of the nuances of finance and international trade? Some planters and ideologues who were already worked up over slavery were, but the average Southerner in 1850? I really doubt it.

And again, you change the subject. We were talking about Midwesterners. The few who did have a grudge against New York would have a grudge against New Orleans or Charleston if it became the continent's major financial center. I don't think there were that many who hated New York in 1860, but saying that some Louisianian who hated New York or New England wouldn't hate New Orleans if it became the new financial capital is evading the issue, isn't it? We're talking about people who hate some far away rich people, and if the rich people are closer to hand, that's not the same thing.

This is why I say that once a City like Charleston has acquired sufficient capital, (which it would have with 40% extra profits on it's exports) it will diversify into all sorts of industries. Money grows industries just by it's very existence. Again, why am I having to explain capitalist ideas to you?

Then why don't resource rich provinces become great industrial powers when they become independent? Whether we're talking about Haiti or the Congo, countries that had great natural resources or cash crops don't always capitalize on their success. There's no magical process. In some of your paragraphs you admit that. In others you ignore or deny it. Sometimes, you say wealth is inevitable once you throw out the "exploiter" and sometimes you admit that it isn't. You've got to figure out who wins your argument with yourself before you can discuss this with other people.

Except you're squishy soft on slavery and more apt to get angry about slave owners losing money than about slavery itself.

Minnesota was as unlikely to join in a political union with South Carolina in opposition to the United States as the US is to join with China. Let me remind you of what you wrote in an earlier post:

Let me see if I can clear this up for you. Take a look at a relatively modern electoral map.

Notice the "Red" states? Those are the ones that would have likely fallen into the economic and eventual political orbit of the Confederacy.

You keep picking states like "Ohio", and "Minnesota" that are still today rather liberal. Whether they would have joined the Confederacy is not as likely, but Probably all the "Red" states shown on various electoral maps would have ended up being part of the Confederacy.

I used a snarky comment to punctuate the fact that Money will make strange bedfellows, and most people are motivated by what they see as being in their own best financial interests. Indeed, this is my entire argument for the cause of the Civil War.

Make it profitable for them to trade with the Confederacy, and over a long enough period of time, they would likely have joined it.

They didn't have to be aware of the nuances, what they were aware of is that the laws of the United States cost them money and favored the North East. The movers and shakers in the South fully realized this, and the common man was just tired of having to hear the snotty elite of the North Eastern Puritans constantly harangue him for his society.

And again, you change the subject. We were talking about Midwesterners.

The subject is multifaceted, and what may have been true of one group, is not necessarily true of the other groups. Midwesterners were probably unaware of the financial benefits that would have occurred if the South had become their supply chain for goods and services. The South never got a chance to fill that role, because those people who *were* the supply chain for the Midwest, made certain that the South was not going to become an economic power in competition with their existing industries.

They used the tool of war to keep it from happening.

The few who did have a grudge against New York would have a grudge against New Orleans or Charleston if it became the continent's major financial center.

Perhaps they (the Midwesterners) could have played both sides against each other and come away that much the better?

I don't think there were that many who hated New York in 1860, but saying that some Louisianian who hated New York or New England wouldn't hate New Orleans if it became the new financial capital is evading the issue, isn't it?

Okay, I think you are doing that anachronistic thing again where you conflate things said about the present with the assumption that they were the same in the past. That is not necessarily true. Merchants, planters, and other Southern businessmen who were affected by the European trade would have recognized what was happening, and they would have recognized the North East's role in the situation. Average Joes, and especially those outside of the economic influence of these monopolistic and protectionist laws, were unlikely to even be aware of it.

In other words, it is likely Midwestererners knew little and thought less about such issues.

Haiti or the Congo? They have no culture suffused in Western ideas and methods of Civilization. How about you take California for example of what happens when capital is abundant due to Natural resources? Industries of all sorts bloom.

There's no magical process. In some of your paragraphs you admit that. In others you ignore or deny it. Sometimes, you say wealth is inevitable once you throw out the "exploiter" and sometimes you admit that it isn't. You've got to figure out who wins your argument with yourself before you can discuss this with other people.

You keep arguing different cases, and then complain that they don't all follow the same pattern. So far as the process of economics is "magical", it is "magical" in the manner of Adam Smith's "invisible hand." It just looks like magic, but it really isn't. It's the norm for economic activity under the right conditions.

Nobody is going to keep piling cash into a safe. Eventually people are going to decide to invest it in something, and if they get enough cash, it will be something other than what they are currently doing.

Diversification is a concept sufficiently simple that even wealth plantation farmers would eventually grasp it.

You've got to figure out who wins your argument with yourself before you can discuss this with other people.

First you "straw man" me, and then throw on the snark? And you complain about snark?

Except you're squishy soft on slavery and more apt to get angry about slave owners losing money than about slavery itself.

And then you throw in another "straw man" Ad Hominem?

The slavery about which I am most concerned is that of myself and my children being enslaved to the Washington DC/New York establishment's mutual back scratching cartel.

This particular slavery has it's roots in the Civil War, so you must excuse me if I think it wasn't a good idea to throw the baby (Right to Independence) out with the Bath Water. (Slavery issue.)

I think of all the major events of my lifetime and I couldn't really have predicted them, so it fascinates me that you can foresee the whole historical development of your alternative time line.

I guess you have no familiarity with the development of the atomic bomb. Scientists at the time realized it was impossible to predict when a specific atom would undergo fission, but it was quite possible to predict what large collections of them would do with great accuracy.

You are attempting to redefine the premise of my argument by shifting focus away from the mass of humanity to individuals.

Of course, alternative time lines aren't reality, so you'll never know just how wrong your predictions are, nor can anybody disprove your theory about events that didn't happen.

They are the likely reality were it not for the intervention of a war to stop it. But let's set aside for the moment that this is what would have happened, and let us just suggest this is what I perceive would happen.

Is it such a far stretch to believe that if I can see this potential future, so too might those businessmen in the North who would have the most to lose if it should come to pass? If I can see it, so can they see it too. Indeed, there behavior is such that it virtually confirms that they could see this exact same future. Northern newspaper editorials rail about this exact thing happening, so I do in fact have proof that others in the North could see what I have described.

In fact, it is their complaining about it that set me on the path to considering it.

I guess the lesson is, if you have a theory, even the kookiest, and you never admit that you might be wrong, you too can hijack and monopolize threads.

You and others very much want it to be kooky. The alternative is that I am right and you are wrong, and that you have badly misunderstood the events of 1861.

Yes, when facing the prospect of my Civil War moral world view collapsing from assault by a gang of ruthless facts, I too would probably rather believe that someone is offering a kooky theory instead of am accurate description of the reality of the time.

My theory being correct means the North did something horrible and indefensible. It flips the narrative of who the bad guys were.

DiogenesLamp to x: "...moving 230 million dollars worth of import money from New York directly to the South would have capitalized other industries in the South. "

Just for sake of argument, let's accept the $230 million figure, and first note that even DiogenesLamp only claims 40% was spent on those wicked Northern "power brokers".
So 40% of $230 million is $92 million which in DiogenesLamp's fantasies gets transferred, in one great sum, not to Confederate States in general, but specifically to Charleston, SC.
And this $92 million pumped into Charleston will make it the New, New York of the South!

Well...
So how much was $92 million in 1860?
Was it a lot of money?
Yes, sure it was, in today's equivalents, about $360 billion, or 2% of the total US economic GDP.
So, 2% is a lot of money, but not really -- for example the U.S. stock market can go up or down that much in a typical month, and real estate prices in a few months.
In 1860, GDP itself typically grew 8% or 10% per year, so 2% represented economic growth in maybe three months.

In short, a 2% transfer of overall GDP from New York to Charleston would be a pretty big deal, but far from existential to even New York, much less to the overall US economy.

So, once again, DiogenesLamp's phantom ship of potential Confederate economic power founders on the rocks of reality: In the 1860 the $4.5 billion US GDP economy enjoyed the benefits of *maybe* $230 million in "Southern exports", but was far from dependent on them.

DiogenesLamp: "Notice the "Red" states? Those are the ones that would have likely fallen into the economic and eventual political orbit of the Confederacy.
You keep picking states like "Ohio", and "Minnesota" that are still today rather liberal.
Whether they would have joined the Confederacy is not as likely, but Probably all the "Red" states shown on various electoral maps would have ended up being part of the Confederacy."

Total fantasy only possible because Lost Causers like DiogenesLamp negate the importance of slavery & abolition to Northerners.
But 100% acceptance of slavery was a precondition for admission to the Confederacy, and Northerners were just not going to do that.
Consider, for example, Kansas -- a Southern state populated by Northern immigrants who would not accept slavery, so it became a free state.
Likewise older Southern states like Missouri and Maryland in the 1850s received many new anti-slavery immigrants and so refused to join the Confederacy in 1861.

Further, economic "necessity" was just not there, as demonstrated during the war when normal commerce through New Orleans stopped.
What happened? Did the Western economy collapse?
No, instead of shipping their produce to New Orleans for export, Westerners used that newfangled contraption called a "railroad" connected by the first Internet, telegraph, to export & import what Westerners needed through Union ports.
By 1860 railroad connected every major city and was growing over 2,000 miles per year.

Just for sake of argument, let's accept the $230 million figure, and first note that even DiogenesLamp only claims 40% was spent on those wicked Northern "power brokers".

I want to point out that adding 40% to the cost of anything damages sales. That without the additional 40% of added cost, sales would be much greater. Also, in addition to the 40% middleman costs from New York, there is the cost due to the tariff being applied by the Federal government.

So 40% of $230 million is $92 million which in DiogenesLamp's fantasies gets transferred, in one great sum, not to Confederate States in general, but specifically to Charleston, SC.

Charleston is an example. Much would have gone to New Orleans, and Norfolk. If you are going to get it right, stop trying to strawman me.

Yes, sure it was, in today's equivalents, about $360 billion, or 2% of the total US economic GDP.

But 75% of all of the Foreign trade. It wouldn't matter to people mining gold in California, but it was certainly important to Shippers, Bankers, Insurance people and manufactures of goods sold to the South. In other words, most of the Industries in the North East. Citing the GDP is just an attempt to mislead people about what the financial stakes were to Northern Industries. Most of the Shipping to foreign ports was employed carrying Southern Products to Europe.

Most of the funding for the Federal government came from this trade in Southern products.

Total fantasy only possible because Lost Causers like DiogenesLamp negate the importance of slavery & abolition to Northerners.

Slavery and Abolition wasn't important to Northerners, so long as slavery was far away in the South. They simply did not give a crap. The ones that did were kooks, not unlike the Nature Freaks or LGBT crowd nowadays. They were not a majority, they were a tiny vocal minority that most people ignored.

Northern opposition to slavery was mostly based on Labor and Wage concerns. It's not that they felt sorry for black people, it's that they didn't want free labor competing with them. They mostly hated black people and didn't want them near them.

Likewise older Southern states like Missouri and Maryland in the 1850s received many new anti-slavery immigrants and so refused to join the Confederacy in 1861.

Maryland was kept out of the Confederacy because Lincoln arrested all pro-confederate legislators. The Missouri countryside wanted to join the Confederacy, but the Big City Urban areas didn't. Their votes prevented it.

Further, economic "necessity" was just not there, as demonstrated during the war when normal commerce through New Orleans stopped. What happened? Did the Western economy collapse?

Nope. Lincoln shut off the Southern Commerce, and the Northern commerce through the Great Lakes and Chicago continued. That is entirely my point. By force you can stop other people from trading, and thereby create yourself a captured market.

That's what happened. It was one of the financial reasons Lincoln and his backers wanted and needed that war; To keep their businesses going as usual and to stop this upstart economic competitor that would have taken it away from them.

Further, economic "necessity" was just not there, as demonstrated during the war when normal commerce through New Orleans stopped. What happened? Did the Western economy collapse?

So you are saying that Southern Commerce up the Mississippi would have also taken away traffic from the railroad? So they were in effect economic competitors for the same market?

Wasn't Lincoln a corporate lawyer for the largest Railroad at the time?

Thanks for pointing that out.

Had the South Carolina nullification crisis of 1832 led to secession of the cotton states, it is likely that Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri would have sided with the secessionists. The first waves of settlers of all these states were largely from Virginia, Kentucky, and North Carolina. Ohio had a considerable settlement of Pennsylvanians and New Englanders in the northern counties, so the Buckeye State was different from their counterparts in the Old Northwest. Michigan's earliest settlers were mostly New Englanders and Canadians, and the trade routes funneled largely into Montreal or New York, However, most trade in the Midwest went via the Ohio into the Mississippi, and New Orleans, not New York, was their major trading partner. The completion of the Erie Canal and, more importantly, the rail system effectively tied the Midwest to the Eastern seaports, especially New York.

Northeastern settlers were slower to pioneer than their Southern counterparts, but they filled the northern halves of Illinois and Indians, branching into Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota in the 1830s through the 1850s. They were supplemented by large waves of German and Scandinavian immigrants, who had no use for slavery and states' rights. By 1860, the South had effectively lost its business and cultural ties with the Midwest. The exceptions were those counties along the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, where there were strong Copperhead sentiments.

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