If Southerners main concern was the new tariff they would have stayed in the union to keep tariff rates low.
And of course, most of the eventual rise in tariffs was accepted as a way of paying for the war.
But the point, I think, was more that if you were too poor to own slaves, you were too poor to have many foreign manufactured goods -- let alone luxury items -- and too poor for tariffs to make much of a difference to your way of life.
Backwoodsmen and poor whites and even ordinary farmers weren't that agitated about tariff rates.
It was people who were already relatively well to do who worried about tariffs and they worried far, far more about abolitionists and slave uprisings.
If you research the tariff wars, and in particular the Tariff of Abominations, you will appreciate that the sentiment against tariffs was a lot stronger than you are suggesting. With the tariff at 48%, of course it wasn’t a burden if you don’t buy the taxed items but are forced to buy substitutes manufactured in the north.
Northern newspapers were sympathetic about allowing the southern states to secede, even applauding the idea with a “good riddance” thrown in to boot. That was before South Carolina reduced its tariff to 10% and the newspapers realized that would apply not only to foreign goods but to northern goods as well now that they were “foreign”. The newspapers screamed for war when the tariffs were reduced.
The big ticket item was capital goods that southern manufacturers wanted in order to industrialize.
I could go on but the role of tariffs is so well documented that you must choose to ignore them to dismiss that as a major issue that led to war.
Everybody except you yank lovin` liberals knows that Kansas - Missouri border war was all about the tariff.
/sarc
One of the fascinating aspects to the Tariff of Abominations story is the critical role that John C. Calhoun played in it’s passage.
Now wait a second! one would say, Calhoun was a southern partisan - why would he help pass legislation that was perceived to be damaging to the south? Well, the answer is that he was too clever - by a half.
Calhoun’s plan was to weight down the proposed legislation with poison pills that would discourage northerners from voting favorably, and then encourage its passage employing some sort of “reverse psychology”. Unfortunately for him, the rest of the states recognized that Britain was dumping, a practice where they were selling goods for less than it cost to manufacture in order to skew the market. The rest of the states chose the tariffs to level the playing field.
Calhoun, horrified at the backfire blunder penned (anonymously of course) a pamphlet which urged South Carolinian’s to simply ignore the new tariff through the constitutionally dubious act of nullification. That didn’t work out the way he wanted either as he succeeded only in creating a crisis that almost resulted in the federal invasion of the state of South Carolina, but failed at enacting nullification.
It all must have been vexing for Calhoun, who was a protectionist who favored tariffs before he flip-flopped and became an anti-protectionist who was opposed to them.