And the sky is blue. The fact that money is fungible does not explain how the Southern Produced Money did not get spent by the Southerners who produced it.
Again, the Southerners make the money, and someone else spends it for them? How does that work? Are the Southerners content to never receive a return in value for those valuable things that were shipped off to Europe?
I know what you are trying to say. You are trying to say the Southerners earned money from their sales in Europe, and the Northerners acquired this Southern earned money by selling the Southerners products manufactured by the North, and the Northerners kept the European money that the Southerners earned.
But you aren't grasping the bigger point with this scenario. The Southerners were the natural base for the European products, but they didn't get them directly because of the protectionist nature of the whole system. They didn't have to buy Northern produced products if they weren't forced to do so. They could have bought European produced products instead, but for the laws preventing or making it ruinously expensive to do so.
And there were other sources of income and wealth.
There were not other sources of European money. Are you going to argue that the North traded gold or silver for those European products? If they didn't use the money earned by Southerners, how else would they recompense the Europeans for their products except by gold or silver?
As it happens, specie is listed in one of the Charts from that book I post from time to time, and my recollection is that it didn't amount to much compared to the Southern export trade.
There are two sources for the North to buy European import goods. Northern trade exports, (25% of the total) and Specie. (Gold amd Silver)
All of it together was dwarfed by the Southern produced income. So again, I ask, who was the trade base for European Trade?
It was the South.
Southerners bought products from the North. Moreover, that foreign money you're so obsessed about didn't end up in Southern pockets.
Not 40% of it anyway. That portion ended up in the North East to pay all the middlemen involved in the protectionist transactions.
What are you going to do with pounds and francs in the middle of Alabama or Mississippi?
Buy European products without the interference of the North East. They could have bought ships and crews and ran their own trade without the need to use North Eastern shippers, or Bankers, or Insurance, or Warehousing.
The could have bought locomotives from England, or Rail Track, or Steam Engines, or finished Textiles, or paper, or any number of things, and at a far lower price which would make their money go even further.
Rather, foreign currency would have remained in accounts in New York and other cities.
Exactly the status quo which the War was started to maintain.
But you couldn't use it to pay your local taxes, or to buy land or stock or seed or feed or food or slaves locally. You'd have to get dollars. You'd have to give your pounds sterling or bank note in that currency to someone who'd give you dollars. They could then use those pounds to buy British goods.
It is true, that in the 19th century, you could use gold coins in exchange whatever country originally minted them. But the same principle applies. You have to give those coins to somebody else if you want to buy things locally. You can't give away the money, get what you want, and then claim the money is still yours.
You don't get to claim that you "earned" those pounds in a way that somebody else didn't and have a continuing "moral right" to ownership of money that you've already spent. That makes no sense, unless cotton growing is somehow legitimate in a way that all other commerce or exchange isn't. I can go to the bank next week and exchange dollars for pounds. That doesn't put me under any obligation to somebody who claims that his business originally brought those pounds sterling to America. It's also repugnant for you as a slave owner to claim that you have such a moral right, and even back in the mid-19th century, your fellow citizens were slowly coming to realize that.
So you, slave-owning cotton planter, use the pounds in your account to buy things in Britain and have them shipped to the US: chandeliers, broadcloth, andirons, chains, and shackles. Let's assume you get a good deal by purchasing directly from the producer. You'd still have to pay the shipping costs to get those goods over here. And you'd have to pay more per item in shipping costs than a merchant who imported in bulk. What you imported would end up costing you more than the goods that merchant imported or the domestically produced goods he is also selling. Even without the tariff entering into it, your buying directly from Britain could end up being very uneconomical.
Plus, there was no Internet in those days. Even catalog sales weren't a fully developed thing. Unless you were very familiar with British manufacturers and markets it would take a lot of time and energy for you to get a bargain. The people who have agents there, on the scene would be able to get a better deal. If you don't have eyes on the ground, you'd do better buying from a stateside merchant who does, rather than fumble around with foreign suppliers.
You have a primitive "cargo cult" understanding of the world. Cut out the middle man and all the cargo will belong to you. The problem is that people who are successful in business aren't always crooks and aren't magicians either. They have knowledge and skills and they keep costs down. If you can do that, fine. But making it work is harder than you think.
Look, with all the money coming in from the sugar trade, Haiti or St. Kitts could have had the most powerful economy in the world. But they didn't. They didn't have the other skills and the willpower to turn their agricultural wealth into industrial might. The American South was in a better position to do so than the Caribbean islands, but compared to people who had to work in industry in order to survive, Southerners who looked forward to the plantation lifestyle weren't likely be successful in industry. Nor did that many want to be. Read slaveowners' attacks on the Northern factory system.
One thing I remember from childhood trips to Mount Vernon and Williamsburg is that Virginia planters did a lot of business with Britain before the Revolution. They had all the same complaints that you make against New York City. The money the planters got was never enough. Indeed, it was worse for them because they were heavily in debt. The slave-owning planters assumed the system was rigged against them. They didn't understand the economics. They didn't understand that they had no right to be compensated at the rate they felt they deserved.
Direct trade with Britain was no panacea or cornucopia. You, slave-owning plantation owner, would have had the same complaints against Britain that you do against New York city. Colonialism or neocolonialism isn't the answer to your dream. Rather it's another set of problems.
But this is getting repetitive and boring. Find an economics professor. One who has an open-mind and isn't locked into some orthodoxy and run your ideas past him or her. I'd really be surprised if any economist who wasn't already committed to the neo-Confederate cause would agree with you. At the very least, they could make suggestions for how you could adapt your argument to the way the world really works.