How does your small government CSA that really doesn't like tarrrifs cough up the money that it would need to have this navy your talking about?
So they nationalize cotton production? Well the CSA truly is an example of small government.
Actually, the Confederacy would have had plenty of money for a navy at least as large as that maintained by the antebellum United States. Confederate revenues from the 12.5 percent tariff which was proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Memminger in 1861 were estimated to be $25,000,000. And based on the proposed 10-12.5 percent export tax on the $237,000,000 of anticipated export revenue for 1861, the Confederate Treasury expected to realize another $25,000,000.
Source Those revenues weren't realized in OTL, of course, because the Union blockade almost immediately cut off the Confederacy's foreign trade. But it is reasonable to assume an independent, freely trading Confederacy could have realized that much, or more. And of course, that does not include other sources of revenue that existed in 1860 (for example, excise taxes on liquor, which brought in almost 10 million dollars a year for the federal government in 1860, and could be expected to bring in probably a third to a half that much for the Confederacy) and others (taxes generated by the rise of cigarette manufacturing, oil and petrochemical production, for example) which are virtually certain to arise in later years.
To give one an idea how much money we're talking about, one 1860 U.S. dollar was worth
(depending on the standard of measurement used) anywhere from $27.90 to $3470 in 2011 U.S. dollars. Which means the $50,000,000 Confederate estimated revenue would be equivalent in purchasing power to $1.4 billion in 2011 dollars, at the very LOW end of the scale, and over $173 billion at the high end. And by way of comparison, the anticipated Confederate revenue from the import tariff and the excise on exports alone was not much less than
the entire Federal revenue for 1860, roughly $64 million dollars.
Also, by means of comparison,
the entire federal military budget in 1860 was $29,000,000 (the entire federal budget was $78 million, with the rest spent as follows...Post Office, $15 million; Other General Spending, which meant things like subsidies for businesses such as railroads, spending on other internal improvements, salaries for government officials, etc., $30 million; and $3 million interest on the federal debt).
Since the Confederacy won't be spending a significant portion its national revenue on internal improvements in the North and business subsidies for Northern businesses, as the Federal Government was doing, it should be, even with less revenue available, able to maintain at least as large a navy as the antebellum U.S. did, and maybe larger.
Given that a dreadnought cost somewhere between $4 million and $8 million to build, and the type of ships the Confederacy would likely want to build in quantity (harbor and river defense ships, cruisers for protecting trade routes) would cost considerably less, the Confederacy would certainly have the money for a navy able to protect its perceived interests, with a small fleet of battleships besides to counter U.S. power especially in the Caribbean.
nationalize ? I never said that. Most counties had some tariffs. The tariffs would be lower than the one the union had.