I have enough evidence to consider it a credible plausibility. That the South was exporting Cotton is pretty much understood by everyone. What was New York importing? That alone is sufficient reason to suspect that the South was paying for most of the government.
That the South consumed vastly more than the 22% proportionate to their share of the population?
As I pointed out in my previous message, that European money has got to be spent somehow. It must be balanced by European goods somehow.
We know the South was getting a good chunk of it for Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar. What was the North selling to Europe?
Or that the eventual Union states consumed, and therefore paid the tariffs on, much less than the 78% proportionate to their population?
If the first bit be true, than this second bit would seemingly follow, or at least be not far off.
The lion's share of all foreign goods, if tariff collection figures are any judge. If the South was paying for most of them then why weren't they delivered to southern ports?
We know the South was getting a good chunk of it for Cotton, Tobacco and Sugar. What was the North selling to Europe?
Cotton, tobacco, and sugar mostly, with grains and other agricultural goods making up the balance. You think it was Southerners brokering the cotton and selling it to foreign buyers? Nonsense. Plantation owners sold the cotton to brokers, who sold it to buyers both in the U.S. and overseas, and who paid the plantation owners for their crop with currency. That cotton, tobacco, and sugar were then shipped from southern ports, ports that were not used to import much in the way of goods, to Europe and points north.
If the first bit be true, than this second bit would seemingly follow, or at least be not far off.
Not necessarily. All one has to do is look at tariff collections for FY1863. Tariff collections were over $102 million dollars, for a year without cotton exports and without Southerners consuming all those vast quantities of imported goods. How was that possible?