Thank you, your post shows how secession could not have been motivated by tariffs. The calculus was simple. Stay in the Union and cast your no votes and kill the bill, or leave and allow higher tariffs. And risk war, since Presidents had made it clear that disunion was not going to happen, back at least to Andrew Jackson. So we can dispense with that nonsense going forward. But what was the reason?
“The South was in turmoil after Lincoln’s election. Southern states started seceding in December 1860. Why? Some Northern states were nullifying the Constitution by flouting the Fugitive Slave Act. Plus, Lincoln was saying the US couldn’t permanently exist half slave and half free - it would have to be one or the other.”
I do declare, sir, you have acknowledged the corn at last! Praise be to the Almighty! You see that Dim, some Southrons CAN handle the truth!
There is no doubt that tariffs benefitted the North economically at the expense of the South. This was a significant irritant to the South. I am reminded of a statement I found in the New Orleans Picayune newspaper quoting the Daily Chicago Times newspaper on/of December 10, 1860 that admitted:
The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.
No doubt some Southern politicians realized that the two new tariffs (Morrill vs. Confederate) with their different tariff rates would result in some big future advantages to Southern ports and businesses. Northern newspapers in early 1861 recognized the harmful effect of the two tariffs on Northern ports and businesses.
As you said, tariffs weren’t the prime motivators of the secession of the South. However, the potential loss of revenue to the Northern government caused by the two different tariffs was, in my opinion, the main reason Lincoln provoked war with the South. Face it, he intentionally did just that and did not want compromise with the South. With war, Lincoln could blockade the Southern ports and starve the Southern government of import revenue and needed supplies.
The US government was virtually broke when Lincoln became president due to previous high government spending and current plans for even more spending, such as the Northern railroad route to the West coast. The US government very much needed more revenue. If memory serves, even Congress was not getting paid because the Treasury was nearly empty.