You said, “Relatively sure the U.S. Government would make a strong attempt of collect tariffs where the Mississippi, Cumberland, Tennessee, and Arkansas rivers”
Wouldn’t happen if you went to Charleston, paid for your import, loaded it, and shipped North. No taxes due on private property. Don’t think that would happen? See this:
The same week, The New York Evening Post wrote,
“Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the Southern ports.”
The Philadelphia Press said,
“Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries, and make British mils prosper.
Finally, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls.”
“the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls.” As would good moving north on these water routes.
Charleston would have been in a foreign port, anything coming from Charleston would have been subject to the U.S. tariff. if moved out of Charleston by ship to a Northern Port.
Iron rail off loaded at Savannah and shipped North would have to be off loaded and reloaded several times before it got out of the South, since there was no standard gauge to the rail system. Why would rail be imported to New York, the North could produce all the iron rail to support its railway system. Now the South on the other hand had one mill in the entire Confederacy that could produce iron rail.
There would be on imports.