Those who attempt to float the notion that seceding southerners “just wanted to be left alone” do so out of deceit, not ignorance. The confederacy didn’t wish to simply go their own way - they wished to set themselves up as direct competitors to the United States and dominate the North American continent.
In the same breath as their cowardly shouts of dissolution they began efforts to lay claim to everything that wasn’t bolted or locked down - and much that was. They had designs on all of the western territories and the states of California and Oregon and immediately set about seizing control of them.
At the center of it all was, of course, slavery. The confederates had doubled-down on the Particular Institution and intended to see it expanded everywhere.
It made precious little difference to northern states how they conducted their internal affairs as long as the threat of slavery was allowed to remain.
3/18/1861 The Boston Transcript wrote,
“It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.
“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.
“The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.
“If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby…
“The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“
“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”
The comments of people of the time have a way of removing modern assumptions and ignorance.
With dizzying speed the secession of Southern states had removed the issue of slavery from the Northern people, but immediately the North saw the upcoming financial competition. They would have had no problem if they had repealed the Morrill tariff, But greed and arrogance got in their way.
The New York Evening Post wrote,
“Allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railways would be supplied from the Southern ports.”
The Philadelphia Press said,
“Blockade Southern Ports. If not a series of customs houses will be required on the vast inland border from the Atlantic to West Texas. Worse still, with no protective tariff, European goods will under price Northern goods in Southern markets. Cotton for Northern mills will be charged an export tax. This will cripple the clothing industries, and make British mils prosper. Finally,, the great inland waterways, the Mississippi, the Missouri, and the Ohio Rivers will be subject to Southern tolls.”
All of that because they would not repeal the Morrill Tariff?
It is apparent that the issue of slavery was now moot, but the sectional arrogance and hostility would block reasoned politics or taxation policy.