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So the south, with one quarter the population, consumed, per capita, 40 times more imports than did the north? What were they importing in such vast quantities?

I've tried to find someplace that supports your numbers, but am unable to do so. The closest thing I've found, the civilwarhome.com website, shows numbers that are almost the complete opposite of yours:

"As to imports, the total for the twenty-five states reporting $335,650,153. Eight Southern states could make up only $14,654,129 of the total. Again Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi are missing. Of the Southern total Louisiana had $11,960,869 of the imports, showing clearly the importance of New Orleans."

Please, a source for your numbers.

Don't forget that a thid of the southern population were slaves or the nearly-slave fee blacks, whose total imports amounted to zilch, so according to Pea Ridge imports by southern whites were at least 50 times per capita the imports of northerners in 1860.

Pea Ridge's fantasies all stem from his desire to fool us into believing that a need for southern tariff revenues was one of President Lincoln's reasons for opposing the Confederacy. As is obvious, southern tariff revenue was less than 10% of total tariff revenue. While the South did most of the exporting, it imported very little -- and on imports tariffs are assessed.

Thanks for asking.

I like the data from the US Treasury. Each year the President included the Treasurer's report in his Message to the Congress. Those figures may not be that accurate since the report was given to Congress before the calendar year end, and does not completely agree with the Department's annual year end data. Add to that the fact that each President wanted to make a positive report, so sometimes the data was massaged.

In the Statistical History of the United States, available in your library, the data is given back to that period and is accurate Jan to Dec. US Treasury figures.

The best method of tracking down what was imported to where is by studying both the Treasury data and comparing that with US Census data, but few are going to go back to the Globe records of the President's messages or to the library and do the calculations.

If you want an accurate understanding then the point of collection tariff data thrown around has to be put aside and seen for what it is.....point of collection information but not in any way indicative of point of consumption.

As for sources the original figures of imports into the South for 1860 that I gave came from the Encarta encyclopedia.

Encarta 1860 data does not appear to be wrong. Referring to Thomas Kettell's work, his research said that in 1859, according to the trade data and the manufacturing data, that $240 million in domestic goods were sent South for consumption. He also stated that based on shipping receipts that $106 million in imported goods went South, either directly from Europe or trans-shipped from Northern ports. ("Southern Wealth and Northern Profits", Thomas P. Kettell, 1860, New York)

That gives a figure of $346 million in imported goods at the South, which is about what Encarta said about the imports in 1860.