Yes, Often conservative economists (like Walter Williams) have tried to make this point. You could make an economic argument for the Confederates case on tariffs and a minimalist Federal government. You would probably get at the root of the position of well educated southerners such as Calhoun or Jefferson Davis. However you would miss the long term causes of America's greatest war. Economists often do not look at the political and social issues that fuel wars, rebellions, and revolutions.
I could rightly point out that New England fishermen had it in their interest to rebel against Britain because they could ship their products to the West Indies and to the French and Dutch (which they were doing illegally already) without England's Navigation Acts on their backs. But please...the real underlying cause of the American Revolution was the fact that Americans by 1760 had identified themselves by language, custom, and culture as distinctly different than the parent country. They felt the parent country was interfering with American customs of local government (which were quite distinct locally from the British model), and felt slighted on diplomatic and cultural fronts.( i.e. Treatment during F&I War, taxes without representation, quartering of troops, crass royalist appointments. )These threatened America's manifest destiny to spread to the west. "if these people do no understand us, we must break away to secure our identity".
Likewise 80 years after the U.S. was born we find that the South is in much the same position. The South, which despite its low population, had previously held an enormous amount of clout in the Federal Govt. During the early 19th century Southerners had held 1/2 the Senate, most of the Supreme Court justices, and over half the presidents. By 1850 this power or equality of sectional power that had come out of the Constitutional process of 1787 (big states, small states, 3/5 slaves counted in representation, abolishment of slave trade) was continued in 1820 (Missouri) and 1850's (California, Wilmot proviso, etc.). It is at this point that a growing radical abolitionist movement in the Northeast begins questioning the South's "over representation". Southerners begin to feel threatened ideologically, and begin to identify themselves as distinct from their Northern brethren. A moderate Northern position (and some upper South Whigs) of popular sovereignty completely fails because the radical elements of both North and South squash it.
Politics becomes volatile at this point. Tariffs like any economic issues today rarely incite anger or violence. Allan Greenspan, Enron, and the deficit may decide elections among the informed electorate of both parties, but they do not cause people to fight in the streets. Today such hot button issues would include abortion, affirmative action, gun laws, immigration, and the death penalty. These are the issues that start internal violence. As excitable as these issues are, they do not cause civil war today because they do not divide Americans on regional lines. Believe me if the West Coast had abortion and East Coast did not, and one side or the other dominated the government, it could cause some real extreme violence.
Thus slavery is the only issue to so fundamentally divide 19th century Americans. It defined the political compromises of the 1787 Constitution, and the sectional balance of power juggling act, which Southerners by the 1850's keenly felt was threatened for the first time. Slavery also defined the entire social structure of the South. Most dangerously it led to the terrorism of 19th century bin Ladens such as John Brown and Nat Turner. It caused Southern defensiveness and radicalism to overcome moderate Southern Unionsim, and likewise Northern radicalism to counter it. It was the issue that caused the protestant churches to split by section, which caused charges of blasphemy. It caused books to be banned, and challenges of abuse of the First Amendment. In politics, slavery caused duels, pistol whippings in Congress, and ranting demogaugeric speeches. This is the cause of the Civil War.
But I implore Southerners and conservatives not to deny slavery as the big issue because it is so obviously morally wrong to us today. The South was constitutionally and morally justified to protect slavery if you understand the nature of 19th century life and government. Any Southerner who was alive at the time would willingly announce to you the connection of constitutional government and slavery. It seems harsh to us today but that was what the South thought it was getting in 1787. When slavery was threatened they developed an distinct Southern identity much the same as the Colonials of the 1760's. A rebellion is simply a failed revolution. The official name of the Civil War is still the War of the Rebellion. Calhoun himself said that slavery was justifiable in the American Republic because it allowed all white men to be equal. (Thus Jefferson in 1776 as a slave-owner is not being hypocritical) Even the great ancients such as Cicero and Cato whom the American republicans looked to were slave-owners themselves. As contradictory as slavery and the republic seem today, it was not an unnatural position for our forefathers to take.
Finally, it is historically naive to charge Lincoln with Clinton style liberalism. You really do not have that type of view of Government until FDR. Roosevelt (and to an extent Wilson) is the father of the modern Clinton big Government president. Lincoln certainly violated the Constitution but I would argue far less than what our "good" conservative modern presidents do today. Likewise, in American political history it is silly to paint Jefferson as a Reaganite and Hamilton as a Clintonite. The parties of 200 years ago were much different than today. Oddly then the big Government party was also anti-immigration and pro-Christian, while the small Government party was for more immigration and for deism.
Always be careful of "history" books not written by historians. In professional history you are cautioned about making these kinds of modern analogy leaps of faith. DiLorenzo may be a conservative but sadly he is our own version of Doris Kearns Goodwin or Ken Burns. Lincoln is by no means a saint, but if you attack him with books of this ilk you WILL BE CRUSHED in a debate with a Lincoln historian. For better ammunition read Emory Thomas' work of the Confederate Nation (1976).