It is really hard. to grow cotton in Pennsylvania and Illinois
Well, yes and I was aware of that fact. But then cotton was not something that the north really lacked or had an overwhelming need for. I’m aware that there were textile mills in the north, but I’ve never heard of huge economic consequences in the north from the lack of southern cotton during ‘the late unpleasantness’.
As near as I can tell there wasn’t much coming from the south that north couldn’t get from somewhere else if they really had to have it. The opposite wasn’t true for the south. On top of that, the north had California gold and Nevada silver to help buy whatever they needed.
https://www.mshistorynow.mdah.ms.gov/issue/cotton-and-the-civil-war Well, yes. You CAN get by without cotton, and that is largely what the North did, even destroying a lot of cotton grown in the South as a war tactic. Obviously the North won, largely because her industrial and diverse economy outdid the South's agrarian one.
The cotton industry was one of the world’s largest industries, and most of the world supply of cotton came from the American South.
[ . . . ]To begin King Cotton diplomacy, some 2.5 million bales of cotton were burned in the South to create a cotton shortage. Indeed, the number of southern cotton bales exported to Europe dropped from 3 million bales in 1860 to mere thousands.
[. . .] But when the cotton famine did come, it quickly transformed the global economy. The price of cotton soared from 10 cents a pound in 1860 to $1.89 a pound in 1863-1864.