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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.

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.

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?

Just you not understanding economics. No need for the rest of us to panic.

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.

Not so much. The Democrats, who were largely pro-Southern controlled the Senate up to 1861. So far as I've been able to find out, there would have been a tie in the Senate between the two parties if the Southern senators hadn't withdrawn. Democrats lost the House in 1854, 1858, and (I assume) 1860, but they had plenty of power still. Lincoln wasn't going to be president forever. The South would have "risen again" in Congress if they'd shown more patience.

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.

If you were a slaveowner, probably nothing would be fair enough or good enough for you. But anybody with any understanding of history or economics would tell you that it doesn't matter if you are a great exporter of some commodity. If you aren't importing as much as other people, you don't pay as much in import taxes as they do.

Money circulates. You use your money to buy goods and services from other people and they can use that money to buy imports, and they pay the import taxes in higher prices for those goods.

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.

So Northern manufacturers and the many many people who lived in the North were idle deadbeats? And the slaveowners were out there in the fields every day breaking their humps to earn and honest living. Where do you come up with this garbage?

DiogenesLamp: "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?

Sorry, but regardless of how often you repeat & repeat that lie, it'll never be true.
In 1860 the cotton South produced half of US exports, not 3/4.
The balance was produced in Union states, some of them slave states.
Further, for every dollar "the South" exported, it purchased a dollar's worth of "imports" from the North.
That's how Northerners earned the money to pay for all those New York import tariffs.

Naturally every exporter, including cotton exporters sought and received Federal protection in the form of tariffs on imports of competing products.
And, every exporter wanted higher tariffs on stuff they sold and lower tariffs on stuff they bought, so resolving such competing claims is what politics was all about.
In 1860 US overall tariffs were as low as they'd ever been.
A proposal for modest increases had been defeated in 1860 by Southern Democrats and could have, even in 1861, been politically compromised, as was normally done.

But secession wasn't about tariffs, none of the early secessionists said it was.
Indeed, when Congress was making its mad scrambles in early 1861 to "compromise" with secessionists, none of the compromise proposals included tariffs, nor did any secessionist ask for lower tariffs.

Instead they said it was all about something vastly more existential than routine changes in tariff rates, it was all about slavery.

DiogenesLamp: "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.' "

Complete nonsense because you've now ben told the truth of this matter, & others, repeatedly, and none of it phases you.
You've got your opinions, and the real facts be d*mned.

You realize the distance from London to New York is significantly shorter than ANY port in the south. In a year, the ships could probably make another round trip.

Once stuff started coming out of the center of the country, the price to transport to the East was more expensive than shipping it.

You take this stuff personal, but it was all about business.