Let me show you this map again, and perhaps you can then see why it wasn't a major port for the South.
Yup. You are right. It wasn't all that major of a Port for the South. I wonder why that was? Could it be those laws that routed everything to New York? Could it be that if it could achieve about a 50% greater profit for European merchants that it might have become a more important port?
All the money numbers change with independence. Charleston was one of the closer ports in the South for European shipping, and it would have likely raked in massive amounts of trade as a result of that.
No, because those laws didn't exist.
Tariff collection in Southern ports was low because there was no demand for imports in the South. But I said imports and exports. In the same year where over $35 million in tariff was collected in New York - due, you claim, to those laws - over 248,000 bales of cotton were exported from New York. That same year 1.745 million bales were exported from New Orleans, over 456,400 bales were exported from Mobile, and over 302,000 bales were exported from Savannah. Charleston came behind New York with around 215,000 bales exported. Leaving aside for the moment the question of why that law you claim routed all imports through New York didn't route exports through New York as well, it shows that Charleston wasn't the most important port in the South, or the second most important, or the third. It was the fourth most important port, as Guantanamo is the fourth or fifth most important port in Cuba. So why was it worth it for Davis to start his war over?
But Charleston was far from closest to the South's largest export commodities, cotton, sugar, tobacco, etc.
So there's no natural reason why Charleston should ever be favored over Southern ports with much more to ship: New Orleans, Galveston, Mobile, Pensacola, Savanah, Wilmington, Norfolk, Baltimore.