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You are wrong about just about everything. Like Roberts, you've made up your mind beforehand that it was all about "money" and couldn't be about slavery. I put "money" in quotes, because the slavery issue was very much about money and very much more important to slaveowners and secessionists than tariffs or protectionism.

Nor were the slave states "routinely outvoted." They'd been able to do very well in Congress. One election went against them and they panicked, rather than using the power they still had. Nor was free trade ever on the table. There were going to be tariffs and they were going to rise. The only question was how high. Southern states would have influence on that, if they were concerned enough about the issue to stay in Congress.

Slaveowners did live in a bubble, like everybody else, but they knew that slaveowning was not popular or approved of among those (overseas and here) whom they wished to win over to their cause. If they believed in slavery and worried about its survival they wouldn't have trouble expressing that belief, but if they really weren't worried, if it was really all about tariffs, they wouldn't have made such a big deal about slavery. They would have found ways to work an overwhelming concern about tariffs into their "broken contract" arguments (as some states did).

The secessionists wouldn't have leaned so heavily on slavery if it were not truly important to them. They knew how Europeans and Northerners felt about supporting a breakaway regime dedicated to the preservation of slavery, but they felt so strongly about establishing such a regime that they couldn't avoid saying so. And they were passionate men, not so legalistic and bloodless as you and Roberts claim. The spirit in Charleston in 1860 was revolutionary - anything but cynical or calculating or prudent.

The powerful will take the money despite any legal argument you make.

That is shameless and contemptible on your part. Tariffs were debated and passed in the same way any laws are. There was no question that they were legal and authorized by the the Constitution.

People get tired of your idiocy. Slaveowners were powerful men. So were the leaders of the secessionist movement (also slaveowners). They weren't victims or poor saps.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are wrong about just about everything. Like Roberts, you've made up your mind beforehand that it was all about "money" and couldn't be about slavery.

And you are wrong about this. For most of my life I believed the war was about slavery, and that it was a just war. What convinced me otherwise is learning more of the details.

I saw this map years ago, and it simply reinforced the claim that the war was not about tariffs because clearly New York city was paying the vast majority of the tariffs.

Cut and dried isn't it? New York was paying the bulk of the tariffs, so the South didn't have a real complaint about them being too high, did they?

Trouble is, I continued to learn, and what I learned paints a completely different picture of what happened.

Apparently the South produced 3/4ths of all the gross trade from the United States in 1860. Wait! What?

If the South was producing 3/4ths of all the trade, then how is New York paying almost all the tariffs? Something doesn't make sense here! What the H3ll is going on?

And then I learned the rest of the story because it was told in the economic data of the era, and so I changed my mind. This is called "objectivity."

I did have my mind made up. I just had it made up toward's your side. Facts persuaded me that this long held belief about the nature and cause of the war was simply wrong, and so I changed my position.

One election went against them and they panicked, rather than using the power they still had.

And this is nonsense. A whole series of elections had been going against them, and everyone could see what was happening. Lincoln's election was just the final straw in a long ongoing series of losses of political power in Washington DC.

You will remember they were wanting to leave back in John C Calhoun's day. Remember Andrew Jackson threatened to hang him?

Lincoln's election was simply proof to them that their situation was never going to improve so long as they remained in the Union.

That is shameless and contemptible on your part. Tariffs were debated and passed in the same way any laws are. There was no question that they were legal and authorized by the the Constitution.

If my money is being "voted" out of my hands because the other side has a majority, it may be Democratic, but that's not going to convince me it's fair.

There is an old adage: "Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner."

This nation has long been suffering from allowing non taxpayers to vote so that politicians could bribe them with the money of the taxpayers. This creates a democratic majority, but it is in fact a form of legalized theft.

The Southerners felt the same way when Northern majorities kept expanding the system that had them paying most of the taxes, and Washington DC spending the money on things mostly of interest to Washington DC, and not necessarily for the benefit of the people from whom the money came.