Replies

So, with tariffs reduced in 1846 and again in 1857, how can it credibly be claimed that tariffs were the reason for secession?

This may be new ground for you, but i've trodden it many times.

"Tariffs" is just one component of the overall sh*t sandwich the South had to eat. The "Navigation act of 1817" was another. It disallowed the South from using foreign shipping and left the North with a virtual monopoly on shipping with which they charged exorbitant rates. Additionally, the tariffs were protectionist in nature, thereby compelling Southerners to buy Northern products, which also built up the North's economy at the expense of their own. Then there were subsidies for Northern industry. Ditto was kind enough to point out that the Shipping company that built "The Baltic" got 10 million dollars over a 10 year period. That money went to the North.

I have read in some of the links BroJoeK previously provided that 60% of the total profit from slavery went to the North. The North was making more money from slavery than the South!

So it's not just "tariffs." It's the entire economic and legal posture of the North towards the South, and the fact the South couldn't do anything about it because of the North's larger population allowing them to outvote the much smaller Southern representation in Congress. (Which is the only thing the "expansion of slavery" scare tactic was ever about.)

And I do not doubt the constant and often obnoxious moral preaching from the North at the South also led them to wanting out.

Might the preservation of slavery be the reason, just as Southerners said at the time?

As has been pointed out several times, all they had to do to get that was to remain in the Union.

There is a fine museum in Savannah devoted to the history of their shipping lines, with many artifacts and models and paintings of local ships. In the age of sail, Charleston and Savannah had robust local shipyards and shipping lines, but they declined due to the Antebellum South's failure to develop the industrial base necessary for the age of iron and steam power.

Why didn't the South industrialize? Was it because of the Navigation Act or because the North was mean to them? No, slavery and plantation crops -- especially cotton -- were so lucrative that that they drew capital and entrepreneurial effort away from industrial development. The North did not oppress the South. The South preferred to develop their slavery dependent agrarian economy instead.

As for the S.S. Baltic, the point of the Congressional subsidy was to compete with the British Cunard line on the Atlantic run, not to compete with Southern shipping lines.