Kettel goes to length in the book explaining the sources, the use of data, and the outcomes of his computations. His sources were Customs data by port, category of goods shipped, and export value. (There are several modern economists, Adams for one, that verify his data and conclusions).
His data was reviled and attacked by other economists and newspapers of the time.
Nothing changed his facts.....more than 75% of the export value was of Southern origin. Customs data from early 1861 verified that.
The real question was how the Federal government would operate when secession permitted direct trade with the South, thus denying Federal tariff revenue. There are many records and articles on how severely crippled the US Treasury was at the time Lincoln ordered warships and military to Charleston and Pensacola to stop direct trade.
I made the statement that in 1860, the South was paying 75% of all the taxes to run the Federal government, and Carl Vehse disputed this point. He offered as proof several links, but none of them quoted any real numbers on who was earning what money and who was getting taxed on it.
I thought at first that he would be interested to know, just as I only discovered a year ago, that the South was by far paying the bulk of the tax bill for the entire nation. I was shocked when I first learned this, because I had originally bought the premise of that map of tariff collections that I often post, as demonstrating that New York paid the vast majority of taxes.
I didn't understand the true picture until I looked at the real numbers regarding who was earning European money, and who was not.
The real question was how the Federal government would operate when secession permitted direct trade with the South, thus denying Federal tariff revenue. There are many records and articles on how severely crippled the US Treasury was at the time Lincoln ordered warships and military to Charleston and Pensacola to stop direct trade.
Well we now know the answer. They initiated a system of borrowing and spending, selling bonds, raising taxes, collecting deferment fees from rich people, and using the military blockade to freeze out their economic competitor in the South, thus forcing all European traffic to trade only with the North.