[GOPcapitalist]

Please post a source for your stats and/or how you derived your figures. As for woven cotton imports, where do you think Britain or wherever else got the cotton to make them? That's right. The south. And what was the import tariff on that - 15% or something? Well, the 1857 tariff had a rate of 17% and was considered to be the most openly free-trade of any tariff the US had imposed in half a century. So I would venture to speculate that the 15% rate they used was considered friendly to free trade at the time.

[Ditto]

As for woven cotton imports, where do you think Britain or wherever else got the cotton to make them? That's right. The south. And what was the import tariff on that - 15% or something?

The British tariff on Southern Cotton was 15%? Are you sure? Did the Brits tax imported cotton at all?

Here's the link for the data. It's a .pdf so I can't cut and paste, but go to the table on the last page and read the figures on what the south actually imported and how the Confederates set their tariffs. They were every bit as protectionist as the US tariffs of 1857 were.