” Southern states got money from exporting cotton and used it to buy things from Northerners. We know that cotton was the major part of America’s exports. But we don’t know that cotton growers were the major consumers of foreign goods. Big city factories and stores almost certainly bought more foreign goods — and hence paid more in tariffs — than plantation owners, who weren’t all that large a part of the population and could only consume so much. “
Southern states bought finished products from the north primarily - overwhelmingly. They paid excise taxes in buying back goods made with the raw materials they paid tariffs on in the first place - taxed twice.
The north had it good - they had unequal representation in the House, and back then Senators were elected by state legislatures. Tyranny of the majority was in full effect.
A tariff is a tax on imports. You don't pay taxes when you export things. If you pay a tariff on imported raw materials you don't also pay a tariff when you buy domestically produced finished goods. If you pay a tariff on imported foreign finished goods you haven't paid a tariff on the raw materials that foreigners used to produce them. It doesn't look to me like anybody was getting taxed twice.
Excise taxes applied only to a few items like whiskey, rum, tobacco, snuff and refined sugar. They weren't applied to most manufactured goods or to the raw materials that made them. I'm not aware of any agitation about excise taxes in the Civil War era.
The north had it good - they had unequal representation in the House, and back then Senators were elected by state legislatures. Tyranny of the majority was in full effect.
Well, there were more people in the North. But in fact Southerners benefited from being allocated seats in Congress to represent 3/5ths of the non-voting enslaved population. Southerners dominated in Congress in the early 19th century. Most of the Speakers of the House and Chief Justices of the Supreme Court and most of the Presidents were Southern or Southern-born in the years from 1830 to 1850 or so.