If 80% of the cost was born by the South then why was well over 90% of all tariff revenue collected in the North? In the year prior to the rebellion why did a single Northern port, New York City, collect 17 times as much in tariff revenue that did the busiest Southern port, New Orleans? It is quite possible that goods destined for the South were delivered by smaller coastal vessels after first clearing the custom house in NYC. This would be a decision of the ship owner and not necessarily the customer who's goods were subject to the tariff.
Do you have a breakdown of where the goods subject to the tariff ended up, or some other methodology?
Port of entry seems insufficient to determine who's ox was being gored by the tariff.
It is quite possible that goods destined for the South were delivered by smaller coastal vessels after first clearing the custom house in NYC. This would be a decision of the ship owner and not necessarily the customer who's goods were subject to the tariff. So if 80% of your goods are destined for Southern consumers then how much sense does it make to take those goods to a port hundreds of miles away, take them off the ship, tax them, put them on another ship, and send them to their ultimate consumers? Wouldn't it make more sense to take them directly to Southern ports if so much of it was going to wind up there anyway?
Do you have a breakdown of where the goods subject to the tariff ended up, or some other methodology?
Thomas Huertas did a 1979 study on how much money a confederate tariff would collect. In order to calculate that he examined Southern purchases of goods from overseas and from the North. The results are below:
The fact of the matter is that the South did pay a disproportionate percentage of the tariff. A disproportionately SMALL percentage.
