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As I mentioned before trans-Atlantic ships may have carried goods bound for both North and South. Once goods bound for the South arrived at a Northern port, they could be offloaded and consolidated onto domestic ships headed for Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans. That way shippers could take advantage of the lower cost of shipping by sea versus shipping overland.

But if 80 to 90% of your cargo is headed to southern consumers, as is constantly claimed, then where does this make sense? Wouldn't it make more sense to go directly to the southern ports and tranship the tiny percentage of goods destined for the North from there? A lot of the ships are destined for there anyway to load cotton and such. Why drop off at New York and then head down the coast. Unless (gasp) there just wasn't that much demand for imported goods down south. You don't suppose that could be the reason, do you?

But if 80 to 90% of your cargo is headed to southern consumers, as is constantly claimed, then where does this make sense?

I've not made any estimates of the split of goods between North or South.

Wouldn't it make more sense to go directly to the southern ports and tranship the tiny percentage of goods destined for the North from there?

In other words, ship the Northern goods to the South, then turn around and ship them up the east coast part way back to Europe the way they came? It is a wonder you Yankees won the war.

Here are some interesting figures on what the South did with the money they earned from cotton. From: Cotton in 1860.

By 1860, cotton ruled the South, which annually exported two-thirds of the world supply of the "white gold." Cotton ruled the West and Midwest because each year these sections sold 30 million worth of food supplies to Southern cotton producers. Cotton ruled the Northeast because the domestic textile industry there produced $100 million worth of cloth each year. In addition, the North sold to the cotton-growing South more than $150 million worth of manufactured goods every year, and Northern ships transported cotton and cotton products worldwide.

So, if the price of Northern manufactured goods were increased by the Morrill tariff, the South would pay roughly 30 to 50 million dollars more for protected manufactured goods purchased from the North (assuming sales volume didn't go down because of increased cost and that all of the previous tariff went into the previous price of Northern manufactured goods). All this without an increase in the income the South was getting from cotton exports.

Northern people would pay more for their manufactured goods too, but that was money out of one Northern pocket and into the pocket of the Northern manufacturer. On balance, the North came out even, while the South paid.