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Robert Greenhalgh Albion, in his laudatory history of the Port of New York, openly boasts of this selfish monopoly. "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 toll 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, moreover, 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."[2]

So you would have us believe that U.S. ships from Europe, crammed to the gunwales with imported goods destined for Southern customers, would leave England, dock in New York, unload the goods, pay the tariffs, load the goods back onboard again, sail down to Charleston, unload the goods, load with cotton, and then sail back to England? Really?

More like they unloaded the European goods for New York, (and of course collected the tariff's there) then loaded the cheaper quality but inflated priced Northern manufactured goods, and then delivered those to the Southern ports.

Of course goods that were intended to go from Europe to the Southern ports might not have been unloaded at all. I would suppose the Federal agents in charge of Tariff collection would simply inspect the cargo and manifest and then assign the appropriate charges based on applying whatever tariff under which the goods happened to fall.

They could probably find out if any ships were cheating on their declarations by the records kept by other Federal personnel at the eventual port where the cargo was unloaded.

Why don't you research this point further yourself and get back to us?

Of course, since this line of questioning will lead away from your preferred narrative, I will be surprised if you bother to learn anything. It's far simpler to sit there and carp about information other people (in this case, BroJoeK) found.