Replies

x: "Speculation in commodities markets can be a risky business.
A lot of factors can affect the price and it's easy to go wrong..."

But it's hard to imagine anything more wrong than letting cotton sit rotting on docks while your customers find alternate supply sources.
What were they thinking?

It might help to remember that Jefferson Davis was the former US Secretary of War, and under him the Army's highest ranking general, Winfield Scott, inherited or developed what eventually became the Anaconda Plan to strangle the South, first economically, then militarily.

So Davis had to know what was coming, once war began.
So how smart did Davis have to be, to know that the best way to avoid strangulation was to, ahem, let sleeping snakes lie?

But it's hard to imagine anything more wrong than letting cotton sit rotting on docks while your customers find alternate supply sources. What were they thinking?

They were thinking that the European powers would be so desperate for their cotton that they'd rush to the south's aid. Another instance of the south's hubris.