Only even potentially true if by "the North" you mean all non-cotton states, then sure.
But if you're dividing line is slave-states vs. free-states, then your argument is not true except in one limited sense.
According to this link, Federal spending from 1789 to 1860 totaled about $66 million on "disbursements" as Calhoun called them, including fortifications, internal improvements, light houses & hospitalization.
Of that money over 71 years, 52% = $34 million = $2 million more than free-states, went to slave-states, sounds pretty fair so far, right?
Where Calhoun in 1850 had a point was in the one category of "internal improvements" for the period 1838 to 1850 (the Whig years).
Over those 12 Whig years, "internal improvements" in free states exceeded slave states by $1.5 million, or about $100,000 per year, on average.
In the Democrat dominated years before, from 1834 to 1837 "internal improvements" favored the South and in the Democrat years after 1850 they were pretty much even, but there was a $1.5 million discrepancy in the Whigs' 1838-1850 which Calhoun could legitimately complain of.
On the other hand Federal spending for fortifications in the South exceeded the North by $10.5 million in Democrat years 1834 to 1837 and by smaller amounts in some years after.
Point is: there no legitimate way to exaggerate $1.5 million over 12 years in "excess" Northern disbursements into a generalized complaint against Federal spending.
It wasn't true.
x: "Measures that were generally accepted in the early days as strengthening the national economy came to be seen as assaults on the cotton states' cash cow."
FLT-bird: "EXACTLY!
Notice how similar that is to modern times...what starts out as reasonable and a special favor or temporary measure becomes permanent, the recipients come to see it as their entitlement and they clamor for ever more."
Except the facts show that's not at all what happened in the period 1789 to 1860.
Instead, Southern Democrats like Calhoun complained when Whigs didn't give them their "fair share" and that share was quickly restored when Democrats again came to majorities in the 1850s.
FLT-bird quoting Sherman: "Now if the South have free trade, how can you collect revenues in eastern cities?
Freight from New Orleans, to St. Louis, Chicago, Louisville, Cincinnati and even Pittsburgh, would be about the same as by rail from New York and imported at New Orleans having no duties to pay, would undersell the East if they had to pay duties."
A total hypothetical because, for one, Confederates never had "free trade" or anything close.
Instead they originally adopted the pre-Morrill US tariff rates.
Depending how you calculate, those were about 15% overall.
In May 1861 (two weeks after declaring war on the USA) Confederates set their own rates, from 30% on some items to 5% on others, those are said to have averaged just 10% but within just a short time the Union blockade took hold and Confederates collected virtually no tariffs from then on.
My point is: here Sherman and elsewhere others exaggerated economic dangers from Confederate "free trade" which was never proposed nor practiced there.
FLT-bird quoting Sherman: "Therefore if the South make good their confederation and their plan, The Northern Confederacy must do likewise or blockade.
Then comes the question of foreign nations.
So look on it in any view, I see no result but war and consequent change in the form of government."
-- William Tecumseh Sherman in a letter to his brother Senator John Sherman 1861."
So again, Sherman hypothesizes that war must inevitably result from tariffs & economics.
But in fact, neither of those were at stake at Fort Sumter in April 1861.
Instead the issues involved Confederate "integrity" if "assailed" and "aggression" or "rebellion" to start war.
Of course economics were involved, but not as the immediate issue at Fort Sumter.
FLT-bird seeming to quote: "South Carolina Congressman Robert Barnwell Rhett had estimated that of the $927,000,000 collected in duties between 1791 and 1845, the South had paid $711,200,000, and the North $216,000,000. "
I don't necessarily dispute total tariff revenues of $927 million over 54 years.
But the North-South splits are totally bogus except if by "the South" you mean every region outside New England.
Even then, "paid for" refers not to actual import tariffs, but to the value of exports, especially cotton.
This graph shows that cotton never rose above 50% of total US exports and for the decade of 1851-1860 averaged only 41%.
And there was no other export, or combination of exports, from "the South" which approached even a tiny fraction of cotton's value.
FLT-bird seeming to quote: "South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties.
In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000."
Again, only valid if by "the South paid" you mean exports from all regions outside New England, and if by "the South got" you mean Federal spending in only the cotton states.
Otherwise, it's pure nonsense.
FLT-bird: "in 1840, the South paid 84% of the tariffs, rising to 87% in 1860."
Utterly completely bogus fantasies unsupported by any honest data.
The only possible way to get there is to massage, gigger and manipulate the data beyond all recognition of truth.
It begins with flexible & dishonest definitions of "the South" and "the North" and proceeds from there.
FLT-bird: "They paid 83% of the $13 million federal fishing bounties paid to New England fishermen, and also paid $35 million to Northern shipping interests which had a monopoly on shipping from Southern ports.
The South, in effect, was paying tribute to the North."
Those numbers are totally bogus, but the sentiment might have some validity if you only look at Deep South cotton states, which did produce roughly 50% of US exports.
It might even help explain why Fire Eaters had better luck selling secession in cotton states than in the Upper South & Border States.
FLT-bird quoting: "The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country.
Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole...
We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe.
This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually."
-- Daily Chicago Times, December 10, 1860"
Those numbers are still bogus, regardless of how often repeated.
In 1860 cotton exports were about $200 million, roughly 50% of total exports.
But at the same time, the South imported $200 million from the North & West, which is how people in those regions earned foreign exchange money to pay tariffs on imports.
In fact, actual tariffs collected at Confederate state ports in 1860 totaled only 6% of total tariffs!
FLT-bird quoting: "What were the causes of the Southern independence movement in 1860? . . .
Northern commercial and manufacturing interests had forced through Congress taxes that oppressed Southern planters and made Northern manufacturers rich . . .
the South paid about three-quarters of all federal taxes, most of which were spent in the North."
- Charles Adams, "For Good and Evil. The impact of taxes on the course of civilization," 1993, Madison Books, Lanham, USA, pp. 325-327 "
Still, endlessly repeating lies in no way makes them true.
The sentiment is only potentially valid if by "the South" you mean only cotton states and if by "the North" you mean everywhere else.
But when those Deep South cotton states decided to declare secession, did they blame tariffs & spending?
Yes, a little, here & there.
But the larger focus in every document was on Northern opposition to slavery, so that is where we have to think their true hearts lay.
FLT-bird: "From 1789 to 1845, the North received five times the amount of money that was spent on southern projects.
More than twice as many lighthouses were built in the North as in the South, and northern states received twice the southern appropriations for coastal defense."
The data shows that's still total lies, except if you mean by "the South" just cotton states and by "the North" everywhere else.
FLT-bird: "False. See above"
Sorry, but your numbers began as fake news, Democrat propaganda, which you now hope to insert into your fake history, the Lost Cause Myths.