They wrote it into the prior contract which they all signed.
Which is why they didn't want a war. They didn't want to upset prevailing trade patterns.
This is correct, but this position was contingent on the trade patterns remaining the same. When it became clear that much of New York's import traffic would move to Charleston, to Mobile, to New Orleans, that put an entirely different face on the situation.
Everyone is in favor of a situation that profits them, and everyone is against someone taking away their situation which is profiting them.
If those patterns were disrupted what makes you think the new commercial middlemen would be more efficient and more beneficial to the slave owners than the old ones were?
Well first of all, prices would come down because the Government wasn't taking such a big bite out of everything. So on just that point alone, everyone would be making more money on the deal.
Secondly, the shipping costs which were controlled by the New York area shipping industries were set at just below what it would cost to ship using foreign ships or crew with payment of all the fines thus entailed. By eliminating the "Navigation act of 1817", Shipping costs would have been dramatically reduced, further putting more money into everyone's pockets except for the North Eastern industries.
To see what was going on, you have to look at the economics of the whole picture. I assure you Northern shipping executives were fully aware of the threat Southern independence would pose to their industry. Same with Bankers, same with Insurance agents, same with Warehousers, same with Manufacturers. They all had reason to fear and hate the South harming their business by lowering tariffs and eschewing their overpriced shipping.
And was Washington's cut really more than Richmond's would be?
It certainly would be starting out.
Say we were to open coastal shipping to foreign carriers today. What would happen? You’d have Chinese ships with Chinese owners and Chinese captains and Chinese crews sailing our coastal waters. Nothing against China, but those jobs and wages and profits would all be going to foreigners, rather than Americans. And the ships would be built in China (if they aren’t already). It would hurt the US economy. American seagoing technology and culture and way of life would decline. And foreigners might understand our coastal waters better than Americans did.
In the 19th century, it would have been the same thing. British or French or German or Spanish ships would have a large role and a large share of the wages and profits in our domestic commerce. And given how much more important water transport was in those days the effects could be worse than they would be today. The American merchant marine would decline. It wouldn’t be good for our economy and if war came it could be disastrous for our national security.
So let’s think about this for a minute. You are advocating for those who would let the rest of the country go to hell for a few more dollars in their own pocket, and you dare accuse others of self-interest. What planet are you living on?
The current neoconfederate wave started when libertarianism was riding high in American thinking. You could easily find idiots who thought Lincoln’s tariff was worse than slavery (though what kind of libertarianism was that?) But as the neoconfederate vogue grew, so did populism, so for a time you had idiots vilifying Lincoln for protectionism even as they advocated protectionism in our own day. Today, populism is in the ascendant, and - if we’re not blinded by regional hatred, as you are - we can see a connection between Lincoln’s desire to promote American industry and our desire to do so today. Maybe we aren’t as harsh on him or as inclined to tariffs as worse than slavery.
Talking about globalism in the 19th century politics is difficult. You apparently see Lincoln as a globalist because he wanted to go beyond local economies to something bigger - to a more widespread industrial network. Lincoln was a nationalist, rather than a globalist, but if you want to say that the new industrial America would be a global player and a global powerhouse and that building such an America added up to globalism, I won’t argue too strongly against that point of view.
But freetraders and agrarians who wanted the country (or their own region) to provide raw materials for European industry in exhange for finished goods were also globalists, and likely, more globalist than protectionists were. Cotton planters who wanted a close relationship with British industry were classic globalists, albeit globalists not in America’s economic interest, but in Britain’s (and in their own narrow group interest). Of course, truly self-sufficent subsistence farmers weren’t globalist, but that’s not what we’re talking about. We’re talking about people who wanted globalism but with America in a subordinate and peripheral position. That may have been a bad thing or a good thing, but it was definitely globalist, and arguably, more globalist than protectionists were.