NO, it is a good indicator of the most profitable route for the shipper and what the law required of overseas shippers.
PLEASE READ THIS VERY CAREFULLY DoodleDawg....this will answer all of the questions you have posed on this and one other thread.
Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on “packet lines” — which were groups of vessels under one company banner offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became a common way to do business across the Atlantic.
The reason for success was to have a profitable cargo going each way. The New York packet lines succeeded because they took in all the European bound cotton cargoes from the South, and Mid-West food exports.
The northeast did not have enough volume of paying freight on its own.
So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores, food, or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.
Since this “triangle trade” involved a domestic leg, foreign vessels were excluded from it under the 1817 law, except a few English ones that could substitute a Canadian port for a Northern U.S. one.
Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition from any nascent Southern shippers.
By creating a three-cornered trade in the ‘cotton triangle,’ New York dragged the commerce between the Southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy handling fees upon it.
This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable.
Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe did not put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.
The record shows that ports with moderate quantities of outbound freight could not keep up with the New York competition. Boston started a packet line in 1833 that, to secure outbound cargo, detoured to Charleston for cotton. But about the only other local commodity it could find to move to Europe was Bostonians. Since most passengers en route to England did not want the time delays in a layover in South Carolina, the lines failed.
As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.
Yet New York by the mid-1850s could claim sixteen lines to Liverpool, three to London, three to Havre, two to Antwerp, and one each to Glasgow, Rotterdam, and Marseilles. This was subsidized by the federal post office patronage procedure.
U.S. foreign trade rose in value from $134 million in 1830 to $318 million in 1850. It tripled again in the 1850s. Between two-thirds and three-fourths of those imports entered through the port of New York.
This meant that any trading the South did, had to go through New York. Direct trade from Charleston and Savannah during this period was stagnant. The total shipping that entered from foreign countries in 1851 in the port of Charleston was 92,000 tons, in the port of New York, 1,448,000. Relatively little tariff money was collected in the port authority in Charleston.
According to a Treasury report, the net revenue of all the ports of South Carolina during 1859 was a mere $234,237; during 1860 it was $309,222.
New York shipping interests, using the Navigation Laws and in collaboration with the US Congress, effectively closed the market off from competitive shipping, and in spite of the inefficiencies, were able to control the movement of Southern goods.
Why would the consumers care what the most profitable route for the shipper was? Why would they willingly put up with the extra cost when they could just as easily found someone to bring the goods directly to them and cut out the additional time and expense?
Early and mid-19th century Atlantic trade was based on “packet lines” — which were groups of vessels under one company banner offering scheduled services. It was a coastal trade at first, but when the Black Ball Line started running between New York and Liverpool in 1817, it became a common way to do business across the Atlantic.
Again with the packet lines. What sense was there in establishing a packet line between England and New York except that there was enough cargo demand to justify regularly scheduled runs between the two destinations. So again, if all those goods were destined for Southern consumers then why did they not establish those packet lines between England and Charleston or England and New Orleans? The only logical reason is because there wasn't enough demand for cargo space to justify establishing the packet line. And why wasn't there enough demand for that cargo space? Because there wasn't enough demand for imports. That demand was up North so those lines ran into New York and Boston and Philadelphia. There was little or no demand down South so those lines did not run to Charleston, Mobile, or New Orleans.
So American vessels, usually owned in the Northeast, sailed off to a cotton port, carrying goods for the southern market. There they loaded cotton, or occasionally naval stores, food, or timber, for Europe. They steamed back from Europe loaded with manufactured goods, raw materials like hemp or coal, and occasionally immigrants.
I hate to sound like a broken record but if there wasn't any demand for imported goods in the North and little in the way of exports from the North then why did ships go there in the first place?
Since it was subsidized by the U.S. government, it was going to continue to be protectionist, and not subject to competition from any nascent Southern shippers.
Why not? What prevented Southern shippers from competing if they wanted to?
As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool.
Which is what I have been saying all along!!!!!! There was little demand for imports in the South. Therefore they did not generate the majority of tariff revenue, they generated a small percentage of it. Your own source supports what I've been saying all along and blows your argument out of the water.