I've already covered how they did it, but you won't even recognize that they did it, so the how isn't really important."
In fact, half of US cotton exported directly not from New York, but from New Orleans.
Other Gulf ports (i.e., Mobile, Galveston) shipped smaller percentages, leaving maybe 20% -- East Coast cotton -- to be picked up by New York packet ships for consolidation & shipment from New York to European customers.
So the real complaint here is not that all cotton shipped through New York, but rather that imports on their return from Europe did mostly stop in New York where they were off-loaded, warehoused and eventually sold to customers throughout the USA.
That's the "problem" which seems to have DiogenesLamp so exercised he just can't stop lying about it.
{sign}
DiogenesLamp: "And here you once again advance the idea that one can be an importer of 75% of all goods, while only balancing it with 25% of all exports.
Somehow you just think the people creating the production will just walk away from that other 50% of the total value, with no questions asked."
75% of imports through New York seems about right, where goods were off-loaded, warehoused, then eventually sold & shipped (via railroad & steamship) throughout the USA -- North, South, East & West.
So where did all those other regions outside the South earn money to pay for imports?
Well... about half of it came from their own exports to foreign countries, the other half came from their "exports" to the South.
So suggestions something about all this was grossly unfair are, so far as I can tell, simply DiogenesLamp's unresolved emotional conflicts with... who knows who... maybe some relative?
DiogenesLamp: "I've pointed to the "navigation act of 1817" to explain how a great deal of that money got transferred from the South to the North, but you dismiss that without any reasonable consideration. "
We've been over this many times, and the 1817 Navigation Act didn't do what you claim it did.
First, remember that from the election of 1800 until secession in 1861, Southern Democrats ruled Washington DC almost continuously.
Any new law required their approval and nothing they opposed stood very long.
In 1817 Southern Democrats ruled both houses of congress, the Presidency and Supreme Court.
So anything inherently unfair about the 1817 Navigation Act would never have passed Southern scrutiny.
Nor did any document in 1860 ever complain about that act or some alleged unfairness of existing trade routes.