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DiogenesLamp: "How do you interpret the South making 200 million dollars per year in export trade, and the North making 78 million dollars per year in export trade, and the vast bulk of all the money ending up in New York, any differently?"

DoodleDawg: "Lot of different ways."

Starting here: DiogenesLamp's numbers are false.
According to this source, page 605, total 1860 US exports were $400 million including specie (of $4.4 billion GDP).
Of that, Deep South cotton was about $200 million, specie was $67 million and all other exports $133 million.
How much of that $133 million was "Southern products"?
About $30 million so classified, of which nearly $20 million was tobacco.
But 1861 clearly proved that 80% of that $30 million was not "Confederate products", but rather was produced in Union states & regions.

The numbers show that Union state exports were about half of the total in 1860.
But that's just for starters.
The second key point is that Union states "exported" about $200 million per year to the South, see this source.
That's another great source for money to pay for imports through New York.

Finally, about half of Southern exports shipped from New Orleans, not New York, but imports came back through New York because no other city had transportation infrastructure and finances to handle such volumes.

But the key point here is DiogenesLamp's claim that this $200 million in Southern exports caused "Northeastern Power Brokers" to "pull Lincoln's strings" to "start Civil War" at Fort Sumter!
But there's no actual evidence of "string pulling" and the most we can say for these Southern export numbers is they help explain how Northeastern Democrats flipped from pro-Confederates to pro-Union (however reluctant) for the war's duration.
Otherwise, DiogenesLamp's "theory" is pure fantasy.