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Multiple examples are found, mostly from Charleston as newspapers there seem to list more detail, at least in the online archive I am searching, of foreign ships unloading their cargo, many again with specific cargo manifests and even names of those ordering the goods. As some of the stiffer provisions of earlier navigation acts had been repealed in 1830, I’m not sure why foreign ships would have to head west with empty cargo holds.

Nobody is saying that no imports were landed in southern ports. As you point out some where. But let's look at total value of imports and exports by port which would put it in perspective. All figures come from "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War" by Stephen Wise. He sources congressional documents for 1860.

We'll start with Charleston, where your information comes from. In the year prior to the rebellion the value of exports leaving Charleston was $21,179,350. Total value of all imports entering Charleston was $1,569,570. Total tariff receipts were $299,339.43. For Mobile the figures were $38,670,183 in exports, $782,061 in imports, tariff revenue of $118,027. For New Orleans the figures are $107,559,594 in exports, $20,636,316 in imports, $2,120,058 in tariffs. For Savannah it's $18,351,554 in exports, $782,061 in imports, $89,157 in tariff revenue. So it's clear that the volume of imports was a minute fraction of the volume of exports. Which must mean that the majority of ships arrived in southern ports for the sole purpose of loading up and leaving.

By comparison, the tariff figures for New York was $35,155,453, for Boston it was $5,133,415, and for Philadelphia it was $2,262,350. So if we agree that ships would not head west from Europe empty then the only explanation is that they sailed to a northern port to offload imports and then headed south to load up, thus minimizing the time spent sailing in ballast.

I don’t necessarily draw the same conclusions. First of all, and correct me if I’m wrong, but the balance of payments for merchandise (which must include crops because there’s no separate category) for the U.S. in 1860 was -34.2 million dollars, as shown in Table 3 on (labeled) page 581 here:

https://www.nber.org/system/files/chapters/c2491/c2491.pdf

This is confirmed here:

“From 1800-1870, the United States ran a trade deficit for all but three years and the trade balance averaged about –2.2 percent of GDP”

So there was more imports than exports, in terms of value.

You wrote:

“So if we agree that ships would not head west from Europe empty then the only explanation is that they sailed to a northern port to offload imports and then headed south to load up, thus minimizing the time spent sailing in ballast.”

That’s a possibility, but there are others. The total figures for trade says nothing about what nation’s ships are carrying the freight. You are assuming that, say, a British ship loads up with manufactured goods, sails to American shores, then takes cotton and other raw materials back to the UK. What if it’s the other way around? What if an American ship hauls a load of cotton east then heads back home with finished goods? American shipping, at least before the introduction of steam powered vessels, was more competitive because clipper ships were faster and had bigger holds than British ships, so they could carry more per trip. So if there were more US ships in the trade, there would be fewer foreign ones, but they could all be filled to the brim regardless.

Another possibility is that a European ship could bring passengers to the United States with minimal cargo and take mostly cargo with few passengers on the return trip. Technically, that might fit the definition of “an empty hold” but as you wrote, foreign ships could not afford to make half the trip completely empty.

Finally, due to the nature of the cargo, its conceivable that the value of exports in a hold might exceed that of imports because raw materials filled the hold more completely, where manufactured goods like furniture would not.

In any event, remind me again how all is supposed to support the idea that navigation laws forced Southern businesses into submission?

This map is simpler.

What does it prove? It proves that all that slave money was ending up in New York, Boston and Washington DC.

The people who launched a war to protect their money streams.