The entire US budget for 1860 was $60M, which, if I remember correctly was something like 2% of the national economy.
Does that sound like overwhelming taxation that forced those crushed by the rates into opposition? For that matter, does it sound like an out of control massive federal government machine?
OTOH, tax rates in America prior to the Revolution were also very low, but in that case the Patriots were, or claimed they were, fighting for the principle of no taxation without representation.
But of course the South was represented, indeed had held representation and power since the Founding disproportionate to their population.
The article, like everything by Di Lorenzo, uses all kinds of verbal tricks, like claiming people have been taught that slavery was the one and only reason for secession and war.
Well, the actual fact is that I have never known anybody to make that claim. It’s a straw man argument. As with every war, there were many causes for the conflict. But every single one of them could have been compromised except slavery.
Southerners became more and more adamant that it be accepted and celebrated as a positive good (remind you of any modern day cause?), while northerners became increasingly unwilling to allow it to spread. IOW, the minimum the South would accept was far beyond anything the North would agree to, and vice versa. That’s the original recipe for war.
A few points:
The economy: an unfair portion of the debt from the Revolution had been put on the South. They were a little touchy on that score. I should also point out that to people who are one bad harvest away from starvation, any tax cuts.
Of the verbal tricks: people are taught that the war was based on slavery. That’s the general view and it has been reinforced in academia and in popular culture. Citing slavery as the primary cause tucks everything away in a tidy box with two morally separate compartments. It lets people believe they’d never do a thing like that. But the problem is that it dehumanizes one and lionizes the other.
It distorts the record and lets people believe they’d never do a thing like that. It’s not history, its ideology.
Finally, I agree that Southerners did become adamant as tensions escalated, but this is unremarkable given the circumstances. Southerners faced the loss of their property and livelihood. There was also Bleeding Kansas, Nat Turner and Harper’s Ferry and the fear that their slaves would eventually outnumber them, acquire knowledge and arms and do what humans do. Paradoxical that, but characteristically human. Then there was the deluge of defamation and exaggeration poured out of the Northern press. It continues today. I think the stubbornness you cite was more a product of the division than the cause of it.