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to maintain the federal government's ability to extort taxes from the profits of Southern labour?

Tell us exactly how the Federal government was "extorting taxes" from the profits of southern labor? Was not southern "labor" devoted almost exclusively to the production and export of cash crops? There was no tax on exports, only imports.

See post #30. Even your Vice President admitted that while Southerners (slave states) made up 40% of the population, they only paid 25% of the taxes while consuming 50% of the federal budget! (And in 1860, the Federal budget was economically inconsequential --- less than 2% of GDP)

If you think any federal tax is extortion, it was the south extorting the north!

There is a very good reason you can't find any reference to tariffs being an issue in the 1860 debates. It's because the Democrat Party propaganda machine did not invent that myth until the 1890s!

The South of necessity sold produce overseas and of necessity purchased goods with the revenue therefrom; on the latter they had to pay tariff. Their situation was like that of western Pennsylvania farmers who of necessity sold their excess grain in the form of whiskey and were forced to pay excise tax on the receipts therefrom to support the evil schemes of A. Hamilton to enrich his associates who had bought up at a fraction of their value worthless paper issued by northern states to finance revolutionary war efforts; if you know your history you know that the citizens of the Southern states, who redeemed their paper, were also made to finance this evil scheme.

"Even your Vice President ...

As I said before, tricks like this are just stupid. Alexander Stephens was not my vice-President. Old as I may be, I wasn't around then, and I am not a Southerner. Such cheap shoddy tricks are the reason why you and your cronies have so little credibility on this forum.