What took them?
Cotton can be sent from points south of Memphis to Liverpool, via New York, about as cheaply as via New Orleans.
Then why wasn't it? In the year prior to the rebellion, 274,400 bales of cotton were exported from Nortern ports of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. Over 10 times as much, 2,840,000 bales, were exported from southern ports. Of that 1,784,000 was exported from New Orleans alone.
But if Norfolk or Baltimore entered into the competition, they would enjoy advantages over New York...
Norfolk and Baltimore were in the competition. Only 810 bales of cotton were exported from Virginia ports, about 3,500 from Baltimore.
You are asking questions of an article that came from the period. They are also the same inane questions you have been asking for more than four years, despite massive information to your rebuttal.
I do not expect you to change...you persist quite irrationally in your myths.
But here is another article explaining how the coastal packet trade developed out of New York.
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:1HTF3maH7dUJ:post.economics.harvard.edu/hier/2005papers/HIER2073.pdf+1860+%22southern+imports%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
It is produce by Harvard University and answers your questions.