Free trade versus protection was a great staple of 19th century political debate. While there's much to be said for free trade, I don't think an abstract mathematical answer can answer the question in all cases. Specifically, in 19th Century America there was the concern about escaping a colonial situation in which America provided raw goods to Britain and imported British finished products. There was a desire to escape the situation of subordinate, resource providing economies that the Caribbean islands had fallen into.
In time, it's likely that free trade might have made it possible to overcome the colonial situtation. But it wasn't clear that 19th century Americans would have that time, or that free trade was the wave of the future. For some countries, development would wait until protected "free trade zones" like the EU were created. For others, economic development never really took off. In any event, I don't think one can give one and only one answer for all times, peoples and situations. Even if one could, blaming people for not following as yet unproven theories that they didn't know and couldn't understand looks like a low way of proceeding, particularly if one excuses far worse moral failings.
A dynamic, free labor, free market economy contributed to ending slavery and segregation. The agrarian, colonial economy promoted by many Southern free traders would not have done so. Looking at the situation with the eyes of a mid-nineteenth century American, there was something to be said for protection, industrial development, federalism, and free labor, that couldn't be said of the free trade, agrarian, state's rights, slave side of the question. Today the situtation is different and the options are bundled differently, but at the time, protectionists had nothing to be ashamed of.
It's comical the way that libertarians and anarcho-capitalists look for forebears among those, like Taylor and Calhoun, who despised everything about their world view and way of life, and neglect those like Hamilton, Clay and Lincoln, who helped to create capitalist America.
The war makes it hard to judge that, but the authors of the journal article take a look at it in the form of the first two confederate tariff schedules. The first was the low rate pre-Morrill US schedule, and the second was a confederate modification. Both suggest themselves to be revenue tariffs.
While there's much to be said for free trade, I don't think an abstract mathematical answer can answer the question in all cases.
It cannot answer the professed reasons for any given tariff nor does it purport to, but for what that tariff will do and what the alternative is, the answer is pretty cut and dried.
Specifically, in 19th Century America there was the concern about escaping a colonial situation in which America provided raw goods to Britain and imported British finished products.
Yes. You've said that repeatedly. It is still no justification for tariffs though as the belief that tariffs are the way out of such a situation is debunked economic nonsense. Comparative advantage and free trade are the way to go because it lets the market decide, not some preset artificially imposed expectation.
In time, it's likely that free trade might have made it possible to overcome the colonial situtation.
It's certainly more likely a possibility than attempting to force it into a predecided system by tariffs and regulation.
But it wasn't clear that 19th century Americans would have that time, or that free trade was the wave of the future.
And that is the heart of the problem. Southerners had long argued that free trade was the way to go. The protectionists, who earned their livlihood on the artificial constructs of a government policy designed to benefit them to the cost of everyone else, thought otherwise. Even if one could, blaming people for not following as yet unproven theories that they didn't know and couldn't understand looks like a low way of proceeding, particularly if one excuses far worse moral failings.
David Ricardo understood it back in 1820 and provided theoretical proofs of his theory back in 1820. Why couldn't they have understood it in 1861? America had taken the free trade course from the late 1840's to 1860 with economic success. Why couldn't they have seen how it works in 1861? You are severely underestimating the intellectual abilities of the people at that time by suggesting some sort of ignorance of a taxation system that was arguably better known to them than it is to the overwhelming majority of us today. As for your moral objections over slavery compared to taxation, relativist comparisons will get you nowhere. Exploiting the American political system to build a petty industrial empire for onesself by raping the entirity of the rest of the nation of its core livlihood through means of government policy is no better than the wretched sin of slavery itself.