Oh bullshit. You have hemmed and hawed and trotted out the Warehousing Acts which have no bearing on the situation. You have done everything except explain how simple laws economics managed to bypass the south. If the south imported such massive quantities of goods then why weren't those goods delivered directly to them. It wasn't lack of ports. It wasn't lack of suppliers for imported goods. The only possible, reasonable, rational explanation why so little was imported into southern ports is that there was so little demand for imported goods in the southern market. That is what you haven't refuted, Pea. You keep spending your time denying that you said what you said, and accusing others of ignoring evidence which isn't even there. Coastal shipping out of New York to the south grew because it was the most cost effective way of getting the small quantity of imports demanded by southern consumers to them. If there was any great demand then the imports would have gone to them direct. Simple supply and demand dictated that.
And here: http://freerepublic.info/focus/f-news/852576/posts
But I will give you this one more time:
In the early days after the invention of the cotton gin, the American South had controlled its own cotton industry. Southern cotton was shipped directly from southern ports by its owners to the textile mills of England.
During the period before 1860, a combination of factors enabled the cotton trade to become dominated by the North. First, the navigation acts authored by Congress at the turn of the century had established protectionist laws favoring American shipping over foreign interests.
The exporting South was required by law to either use American owned, Northern ships, for their shipping, or pay to the Treasury compensation for their use of foreign ships. Foreign ships were prohibited by law from engaging in coastal trade between US harbors.
The laws also discouraged the Southern businessmen from becoming involved in the shipping business by prohibiting the purchasing of finished ships from overseas.
Therefore, Northern shipping companies, with the aid of Federal laws, came to dominate the carrying trade of the South.
As the trade in cotton increased, northern and particularly New York traders had seen their opportunity and begun sending agents south to purchase all the cotton they could, and ship it themselves by packet ships to England and Europe.
This direct purchase of cotton by the factors enabled the Southern growers to quickly turn a profit instead of waiting months for the cotton to be sold, and the money to return to them.
This benefit also cut their profits.
The plantation owners that could retain ownership and ship independently found themselves in a bind. If they wanted to ship their own cotton to market, the packet ship owner would charge them very high rates that were slightly under the rate of the foreign ship rate, plus the Federal shipping penalty that would be added.
The success of the shipping business produced larger and faster transoceanic freight ships. These larger ships required 18 to 22 feet of depth to operate.
Sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi, and particularly at the shallow Charleston harbor presented the merchants with a major obstacle to using the more efficient new shipping. Northern shipbuilders solved this problem with a unique vessel of shallow draft that had an almost perfectly flat bottom.
This made it possible to clear the sandbars without getting stuck. An added benefit was that now bales of cotton could fit more easily in the flat-floored hold and carrying capacity was greatly increased. At first, the sailing qualities of such a vessel was doubted, but soon, to the relief of their owners, these flat-bottomed ships proved to have fine sailing qualities. These were the ships used in the coastal trade.
With these technical advancements, cotton was loaded onto the coastal packets, shipped to New York via these fast boats, offloaded to warehousing, and shipped out on the large V-bottomed ships that sailed the high seas to Liverpool.
All along the way, the middlemen took their cut and New York merchants prospered.
Regularly scheduled coastal packet shipping became a very lucrative trade. Stevedores now had lots of work.. Insurance agents, bankers, accountants, livery agents, boat builders, riggers, and cargo shippers vastly benefited.
Wharf owners stayed busy and Atlantic packets sailed eastward on the "Downhill Passage" with full cargoes and stayed very busy for years.
With the control of the transportation trade business being dominated by Northern interests, and now being vastly aided by the Warehousing Act, southern planters began to complain.
Many estimated that New York merchants were making 40 cents on every dollar, but being constantly in debt to the New Yorkers, they were hardly in a position to change this state of affairs.
The Northerners were in full control of the market.
This would eventually turn out to be a major cause of the secession. Now, unless I hear from you, I will assume you did not read this either.
"If the south imported such massive quantities of goods then why weren't those goods delivered directly to them"
I have it on good authority that 100% of the imported goods to Memphis, Tennessee were delivered directly to them.