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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.)
