That's part of the problem with the Rockwell school. There's no allowance for the degree of knowledge people had at the time or the particular situation. There is the one mathematical answer that can be applied to all conditions. I am glad that you know the answer to 19th Century America's economic problems, but I suspect that applying it would also have created many difficulties and conflicts and I'm not sure the results would have been as successful.
The protectionist argument was that on the whole the development of industry through tariffs would benefit the country in the end. I don't think there's much use for tariffs today, but they did play some role in getting an industrial free labor economy started. Certainly Washington, Hamilton, Madison and Monroe thought so.
Condemn protectionism morally and one can't avoid condemning the greater offense of slavery. To do otherwise would truly be relativism. Given the options of the day, the free soil, protectionist, unionist package was far better than the expansion of slavery, free trade, secessionist bundle. Slavery, not protection was the poison pill.
So I'm not inclined to savage those who saw protection as a way of promoting national unity. To the degree that protection worked against national unity and concord, there is some room for condemnation, but I don't see tariffs as the central question of the era. Tariff discussions took place in the context of the conflict between two very different societies, economies and ways of life.
I am apparently not going to convince you and, given what you've already said, you are unlikely to say anything that will convince me. I have raised a number of points that you have not addressed -- Confederate support for sugar tariffs, the role of protectionists in promoting an industrial capitalist economy and the contempt of agrarian free marketeers for such a way of life, the protective effects of revenue tariffs in regions without much industry -- but given the impasse, I am willing to let the discussion lapse.
Sure there is. You simply do not wish to allow for the presence of that knowledge among participants in the politics of that time. Free trade was thought highly of among Southerners and its theory was developed in their political thinking. In addition the economic basis for free trade developed by Ricardo had been around for almost half a century and the practice of a free trade system had been policy for some time.
There is the one mathematical answer that can be applied to all conditions.
No, not really. There are basic rules of economic behavior out there though, and their validity may be shown graphically though. The Laffer curve, for example, is one of them. Another is a tariff's implications for an economy.
The protectionist argument was that on the whole the development of industry through tariffs would benefit the country in the end.
Yes. You've said that. It does not make it a valid argument though, and the laws of economics show that it is far from valid. Industry develops into areas of advantage and comparative advantage on its own under free trade conditions. Tariffs serve to impede that and artificially distort the economy into something that it is not and cannot sustain fully. Now, protection for INFANT industry is permissable and beneficial to a degree, but that is not what the protectionists of 1860 wanted. They wanted indefinate continued protection of their personal resources by eliminating the foreign competition with tariffs.
Condemn protectionism morally and one can't avoid condemning the greater offense of slavery.
Who ever said slavery was not condemnable? My point is that shouting "but...but...but...the south had slaves!" is simply not an answer or excuse to the intrinsically immoral act of using the government to make yourself fat to the detriment of everybody else. You have yet to address that issue and instead only respond with a tu quoque variation of shouting slavery. You are peddling a non-answer by attempting to excuse and obscure the protectionist's sins by addressing it only as a matter of relativity to the sin of slavery. That simply will not fly.
I have raised a number of points that you have not addressed -- Confederate support for sugar tariffs
You have obviously neglected to read my responses then as I addressed that point specifically. Condemnable as they may be, the small minority of southerners who benefited from the sugar tariff in no way makes the entire south into tariff lovers. One could just as easily say there were old whig southerners who favored tariffs, which is true in itself, but just as pertanent to that argument is the fact that they were a small minority of the southern population. Any population is bound to have minority political opinions within it. That does not mean that minority opinion is somehow on par with or overriding to the majority opinion.
the role of protectionists in promoting an industrial capitalist economy
The practice of business sleeping with government is not true capitalism.
In some senses, regional conflicts still do occur in the tariff debate.
I watched the Louisiana senate debate on Meet The Press last Sunday. Both candidates were strongly opposed to the recent steel tariffs because they hurt the Port of New Orleans where most of the South American steel enters the US, but they both also support Sugar tariffs because that helps Louisiana sugar farmers.
If the debate had been for the Pennsylvania senate seat, we would have seen both candidates take exactly opposite positions -- in favor of steel tariffs to keep the mills open and opposed to sugar tariffs which hurt Pennsylvania food processors.
Some things never change.