What portion of tariffs was paid by Southern states before American Civil War?

DeadConfederates.com suggests that Southern ports paid 75% of tariffs. Late to the game but interesting none the less. The Third Annual Report of the Chamber of Commerce of the State of New York may contain additional relevant information.

Your Question:

I am looking for records on value of imported goods unloaded at Northern ports (predominantly NY) and subsequently transported to South and sold to southern customers.

As far as I know, there's no comprehensive data that would show this, as interstate transportation of goods was not subject to taxation or regulation, and so didn't generate the sort of records that imports/exports did.

But generally speaking, in the South you had (very roughly) one-third of the national population, of which (very roughly) one-third was enslaved. So you're talking about the South representing (maybe) a quarter of the entire national population that's potentially consuming tariffed imports. The slaveholding South was, in addition, relatively cash-poor, with much of its capital and wealth tied up in the form of human chattel. There is simply no credible way to claim that southerners consumed the bulk of imported (and tariffed) goods and materials, much less the figures quoted (e.g., "in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs”) by Thomas DiLorenzo and Walter E. Williams. It's a ludicrous claim on its face.

The original question itself states,

"Proponents of tariffs as primary cause of the Civil war claim: "Since they were so dependent on trade, by 1860 the Southern states were paying in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs” The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War; by Thomas J. DiLorenzo, 2002, ISBN 0-7615-3641-8, page 135-126:

“During the 1850s, tariffs amounted to 90 percent of federal revenue. Southern ports paid 75 percent of tariffs in 1859” Was the Civil War about tariff revenue? By Walter Williams - Washington Examiner 2/19/13"

My answer to this is that paying tariffs does not only mean customs duties being paid at ports. You can even see this today with all the talk around US and Chinese tariffs. So it follows that wherever this figure originally came from, it may mean tariffs being paid by consumers.

Someone with the name Spencer replied before deletion that "Not only that, the claim about the tariff burden was based on exports (i.e. cotton). It is nonsensical to claim that the South was somehow importing more than the north."

I don't know how anyone would think that tariff burden falling on southerners means the south imported more than north. That is neither what I meant, nor what is required to pay 75-80% of the value of customs duties collected by the federal government.

The answer to this question I gave is relevant. The original poster said "proponents of tariffs as the primary cause claim", then cites two quotations that southern states paid 80% of tariffs and 75% of tariffs in the second. What are all the contexts of "pay"? If you prohibit imports and i have to buy a higher cost domestic good, I paid. As is the discourse today, they say "consumers pay tariffs". Northern industry was protected - the south did not have a manufacturing base like the north.

I showed where i got data to show that the amount of higher prices they were paying is equivalent to approximately 75% of tariff revenues. That reply was deleted. Here's how i came to that. (Copied text)

"I did find one book from 1860 that tries to calculate this, but the title makes me think it's going to clearly be biased: "Southern Wealth, Northern Profits". Chuckles aside, it uses figures from various govt records that it cites and comes up w a number of 146 million in manufactured exports to the south. I found elsewhere that US GDP is estimated for 1860 at just shy of 12 billion, with 17% of that being the manufacturing (by all means, please correct this if wrong). That number seems believeable if correct. It'd put manufacturing at about 2 billion and even then, 146 million seems small. And at 146 million, assuming that 20% was the true average tariff of the products they could have imported (and not just an across the board avg for all tariff lines on the tariff schedule), that would suggest the southern economy was paying a burden of 29.2 million, which would've been about 75% of federal revenues from tariffs (according to a link above showing total customs revenues by ports). Since as mentioned earlier over 90% of federal revenues came from tariffs, this may be where the number is coming from. D'Lorenzo may have pulled it from another early 20th century work or post civil war writing (I have no idea here, just guessing), but granted that that book I got those numbers from's main purpose seems to be in calculating these things with numbers, there's a good chance it's where it originally stemmed from"

All this being said, i am not arguing the causes of the civil war even though i do believe the south seceded primarily over slavery and not tariffs. So i agree w everyone above.

edit: this question originally asked if slavery was really the cause of the US civil war. I was able to reassure the OP on that point ;). The OP was not trying to claim tarrifs were the cause of the war, and refined the question to its current form. OP asked that this answer to the original question should stay, so here it is.

No, tariffs were not the reason. There are any number of sources from confederates explaining why they started the war (slavery) but perhaps the most obvious one is the confederate constitution:

4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed.

The Democratic and Whig parties had split over slaves. The south's 1860 presidential nominee was solely concerned with protecting the right to own slaves. The south's sympathisers in the union congress tried to stop Lincoln from emancipating slaves. Slaves, slaves, slaves.

The obfuscation that the war 'wasn't about slavery' is founded on a distortion of the situation before the war. Attempts to abolish slavery immediately were not on the table, because the votes in congress did not exist for it. It is partly correct to say that the war wasn't (at first) about abolition. Before the war, abolitionists were an extremist minority, which serves as a reminder that the 'moderates' or centrists are not always right.

Mainstream republicans like Lincoln also wanted to end slavery for moral reasons, but they had a longer-term plan which didn't include an immediate antislavery law. The antislavery strategy was to limit slavery to the states where it already existed, and build up enough free states so that one day they would have the votes to end it.

The south was wise to this strategy, and tried to establish its own state governments in the territories. That's what 'bleeding Kansas' was all about. They were bleeding over slavery, not tariffs. Eventually they concluded they couldn't stop antislavery this way, so they had to find another way.