[DiogenesLamp]

The consumer demand just wasn't there to support much direct trade between Southern cities and Britain or France -- or rather, trade became more profitable when Northern cities were included in the loop.

Tell me how this works. Southerners make money from Europe. Northerners buy European products. How did the Northerners get the European money to pay for those products?

Your argument requires the Southerners to be content to ship products without getting anything in return, because apparently the money they earned gets used by Northerners to purchase European goods.

You have seemingly left out the part of the "consumer demand" loop in which those that have earned the money get compensated by spending their money. Call me silly, but my understanding of economics is that people shipping product are not going to be content to let someone else collect the goods and services in payment for the shipped product. Somehow the people shipping product have to get compensated, with European money, goods or services. This makes *THEM* the "consumer."

How does the North "buy" the bulk of European products when they only produced 25% of the overall export value?

The trade went through New York because Northern cities supplied by New York had a great desire for imported consumer goods.

I don't care how big their "desire" was, where did they get the money to *PAY* for European imported consumer goods? The South earned it. The North only earned 25% of the total, so how are they buying these goods without earning but 25% of the European coin?

I would look for rational reasons why New York predominated as a port, and one important reason was the South's lack of interest in seafaring.

The South had an interest in seafaring. Charleston had several ship building companies in 1800, but the North East simply undercut them, and so collapsed their industry. Government contracts for shipping and mail delivery created an artificial support structure for the North Eastern shipping, and so effectively subsidized them in a manner which the Southern industry could not compete.

Another reason was, as noted, the greater population density in the Northeast, and also the rail and canal connections between New York and other cities. Indeed, once you have many people in banking, finance, insurance, shipping and related fields in a city they attract business.

They effectively create a monopoly\cartel that minimizes the ability of outsiders to break into their industries.

[x]

Southerners make money from Europe. Northerners buy European products. How did the Northerners get the European money to pay for those products?

Money is fungible.

Look it up.

Hint: it doesn't mean it's a mushroom.

And there were other sources of income and wealth.

It's not like cotton was the root of all wealth.

Didn't the war prove that cotton wasn't really king?

Your argument requires the Southerners to be content to ship products without getting anything in return, because apparently the money they earned gets used by Northerners to purchase European goods.

Southerners bought products from the North. Moreover, that foreign money you're so obsessed about didn't end up in Southern pockets. What are you going to do with pounds and francs in the middle of Alabama or Mississippi?

Rather, foreign currency would have remained in accounts in New York and other cities. Maybe in Southern planter's accounts. Maybe in Northern manufacturer's accounts. Maybe on the books of banks and brokers.

Money is fungible. Money circulates. If you are a Southern slave owning cotton planter and you use money to buy things, you give up the money. You can't spend it and keep it. You can't use it and argue that morally it still belongs to you.

Call me silly ...

That would be letting you off way too easily.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Tell me how this works.
Southerners make money from Europe.
Northerners buy European products.
How did the Northerners get the European money to pay for those products? "

The first key fact which DiogenesLamp ignores is that those Southern Democrat Slave Power planters and Northern Democrat Big City merchants were in cahoots -- economically, politically & socially joined at the hip.
They were not two different species of creature, they were much the same.

The second is that so-called "products of the South" included exports from Union states like Kentucky and Maryland and mid-Western produce shipped down the Mississippi & out through New Orleans.
Yes, irreducible Deep South cotton was 50% of US total exports, but everything else could and did come from all over the US.

Third, the figure DiogenesLamp quotes so often -- 40% Northern value (or cost) added to Southern exports -- that includes what Southern exporters spent in those Northern cities for goods they did not themselves manufacture.
And nobody stopped them from making their own stuff, or shipping their own exports.
Those were strictly economic decisions they could & did change as conditions changed.

DiogenesLamp: "Your argument requires the Southerners to be content to ship products without getting anything in return, because apparently the money they earned gets used by Northerners to purchase European goods."

Except that by 1860, white Southerners especially in the Deep Cotton South, were on average the wealthiest people in the history of Earth at that time.
Yes, Tara from Gone With the Wind was an exaggeration, but not by much.

DiogenesLamp: "You have seemingly left out the part of the 'consumer demand' loop in which those that have earned the money get compensated by spending their money. Call me silly..."

Not just silly, mendacious.

DiogenesLamp: "How does the North 'buy' the bulk of European products when they only produced 25% of the overall export value?"

Because first, Union states and Union regions of Confederate states produced far more than 25%, approaching 50%.
Second, Southern exporters purchased goods manufactured in the North or imported by Northerners.
The result "spread the wealth" far beyond the slaveocratic South.

So there's no doubt that Northern Democrat merchants benefitted from Southern Democrat exports.
It's one reason such Northern Democrats were called "Doughfaced" for not wishing to p*ss-off their Slave Power partners.

DiogenesLamp: "I don't care how big their 'desire' was, where did they get the money to *PAY* for European imported consumer goods?
The South earned it.
The North only earned 25% of the total, so how are they buying these goods without earning but 25% of the European coin? "

But the answer is simple and only your deliberate blindness prevents you from seeing it.
Just to pick out one example: for more than 20 years before 1860 Southerners invested heavily in railroads & trains, all of which came from Northern manufacturers.
Some of that money went to pay for Northern imports.
So, there's neither mystery or scandal here despite DiogenesLamp's repeated claims.

DiogenesLamp: "The South had an interest in seafaring.
Charleston had several ship building companies in 1800, but the North East simply undercut them, and so collapsed their industry."

And yet, during the Civil War thousands of Southern ships were used as blockade runners.
So Southern shipping was not as dead as DiogenesLamp claims.

DiogenesLamp: "Government contracts for shipping and mail delivery created an artificial support structure for the North Eastern shipping, and so effectively subsidized them in a manner which the Southern industry could not compete."

Those government contracts went to a small handful of the latest, largest & fastest mail-carrier ships, not to the thousands of ships used in everyday commerce throughout the South, North & West.

So those few subsidized ships were not the South's problem.
The South's real problems included three basics:

1. From the 1830s on the newest ships required more & more manufactured components such as steam engines and iron hulls, manufacturing the North had in abundance but the South did not.

2. Compared to the highly profitable cotton production, shipping was very risky business which did not always return a reliable profit.

3. According to Texas Senator Wigfall at the time (thanks to Bubba Ho-Tep post #73 for this):
   "We are a peculiar people, sir!
   We are an agricultural people; we are a primitive but a civilized people.
   We have no cities – we don’t want them.
   We have no literature – we don’t need any yet …
   We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes …
   As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides."

DiogenesLamp speaking of "Northerners": "They effectively create a monopoly\cartel that minimizes the ability of outsiders to break into their industries."

No.