What is Sen. Calhoun(or actually the guy who read Calhoun's speech that day cause Calhoun was under the weather. dying a few weeks later) talking about?
........
The next is the system of revenue and disbursements which has been adopted by the government. It is well known that the government has derived its revenue mainly from duties on imports. I shall not undertake to show that such duties must necessarily fall mainly on the exporting States, and that the South, as the great exporting portion of the Union, has in reality paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue; because I deem it unnecessary, as the subject has on so many occasions been fully discussed. Nor shall I, for the same reason, undertake to show that a far greater portion of the revenue has been disbursed in the North, than its due share; and that the joint effect of these causes has been to transfer a vast amount from South to North, which, under an equal system of revenue and disbursements, would not have been lost to her. If to this be added that many of the duties were imposed, not for revenue but for protection--that is, intended to put money, not in the Treasury, but directly into the pocket of the manufacturers--some conception may be formed of the immense amount which in the long course of sixty years has been transferred from South to North. There are no data by which it can be estimated with any certainty; but it is safe to say that it amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars. Under the most moderate estimate it would be sufficient to add greatly to the wealthy of the North, and thus greatly increase her population by attracting immigration from all quarters to that section.
http://www.nationalcenter.org/CalhounClayCompromise.html
Was this common and accepted fact in those days? If so, why is it so dismissively shrugged off today?
I think we're discussing the events that caused Southern secession in 1860, not Calhoun's complaints of ten years prior.
That certainly hadn't changed in the ten years after his speech.
Since the opposing parties didn't gainsay him, it appears to be so.
As for the outbreak of the Civil War - you must remember that the majority funding of the federal government was these tariffs, and the federal government did not foresee that other methods of funding Leviathan would arise as a result of that war.
Even today, we know how dangerous it is to get between the government and its money tit.
Tariffs, THE funding source for the federal government, were in danger. No wonder the government reacted like a rabid hyena.