For the majority of that $500 million it was food from the Midwest and clothing and shoes from New England. Throw in some iron from Pennsylvania and furniture from other northern states. The south sold rice, tobacco and cotton to the North.
Now the vast majority of the $200 million in cotton sales to Europe you have already admitted were not made by “Southerners”. It was the Cotton Factors, most of them really Northern banks. So that money from those sales ended up in the North after the Factors bought the cotton from the planters.
Why did the tariff collection occurs mostly in the North? Because that's who had the money. Your insistence that the South paid 72% of the taxes is complete and total BS.
I make a point to parse my words carefully on this point. I say "the South *PRODUCED* 72% of the taxes for the Federal government.
Now if I have slipped somewhere and said "paid", then it was just a matter of extending the point that the value came from the South.
With secession, all that money would have dried up anyway, so it amounts to the same motive for the North wanting to force the South to remain in the Union.
Why did the tariff collection occurs mostly in the North? Because that's who had the money.
Because the vast majority of the transatlantic shipping used New York as the main port. The packet ships carried the cargoes to their eventual destinations.
But that would have changed with secession.
With an extra 30% profit to be made due to lower tariffs, European and American shipping would have started using Southern ports and this would have badly hurt the New York shipping and other industry.
This was an issue of great concern in the North, and their newspapers wrote of it. FLT-Bird may have the quotes I am referring to regarding this.