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I would advise you to think as well because you have missed the point entirely. The south in 1861 was, by choice mind you, an agricultural society. You produced raw cotton, raw tobacco, rice, naval stores and very little else. You exported your produce to Europe or sent it up north and you bought virtually all your manufactured goods from up north. Direct imports to the south were relatively small in total volume. So the North would no doubt continue to buy your cotton because, after all, it was vital to their textile industries. They would probably import it duty free, too, because they had no cotton farmers to protect. So in that life would no doubt continue as before. But when you talk of a free trade zone, importing European good duty free and sending them north then your scheme starts to make no sense. Why would the North slap a tariff on manufactured goods imported through Boston and then stand back and allow those same goods to be sent to New Orleans and floated up the Mississippi duty free? The answer is obvious. They would not. If the north had a 50% duty on imported steel then they would collect that no matter where it came in at. So your threat of a southern free trade zone is no threat at all. All you would be doing would be removing a source of revenue for funding your government and that's my question all along. Where would the south get their revenue for the government if they didn't impose tariffs?

You miss the point. The main advantage to the South from the trade free zone would be that they would be able to import goods for themselves from Europe, without paying the exorbitant tariff and those goods could be transported inland, via the Mississippi, to the rest of the southern trade free zone. They weren't previously in the business of transporting and selling European goods to the North, why would they start under the circumstances. What you don't seem to understand is the bind in which the North had the South. Unlike the North, the South needed the European market for their produce. Once their goods were sold, lacking today's facilities for exchange, they needed to purchase goods where they were paid. The tariff wasn't used against them protectively, it was simply a means for the North to exploit them financially. The tariff you suggest would have been paid by Northerners, and I don't think the South would have cared. Protection and raising revenue are conflicting purposes of a tariff; in the case of the South, the government was interested in the revenue raising feature, not the protective feature.