Question

What did the Confederacy expect to gain by withholding cotton from the market?

Answer 1

Gaining support from countries that wanted cotton.

Explanation:

The south's largest crop at this time of course, cotton which is used world wide for a variety of goods, material and so on.

Withholding this export would mean other countries who have now been improving their economies alongside the United States would diminish. If they were to stop exporting cotton, other countries cannot manufacture goods.

They were hoping to get support from countries such as France and Britain, who were large importers of cotton.