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One thing that drove the protectionism of The Founding Fathers was the structural inability to collect the income tax. Our first few presidents couldn't accurately take a census or find where people lived with enough precision to know how much revenue an income tax would generate. They had to devise a tax structure they could reliably work under. Tariffs and sales taxes were that structure.

Structural inability? Direct taxes (without apportionment) were specifically banned in the constitution. The census existed to determine representation in the legislature, certainly this would have been good enough for collecting taxes had they actually been interested in doing so. It sounds like you are equating sales taxes with excise taxes. If I didn't know better, I would think you just made that all up, but perhaps you could post a link.

Also, lower income tax payers were disenfranchised until Andrew Jackson was President. This is important to point out because tariffs and sales taxes have the end result of raising prices on end items. This means these taxes are regressive, hitting the poor much harder than they hit the rich. That works a lot better for a political career if the poor can't vote to throw you out for doing that sort of thing.

I have paid plenty of sales taxes, but never once a tariff. I suppose you could also argue that credit card fees are regressive and raise prices, but not many people would take you seriously. In the post 9/11 world, everything coming across the border has to be inspected, and a small duty to pay for this is in no way unreasonable, yet free traders would have us believe that our freedom is being stolen from us while government makes up the difference by forcing us to share our banking records and pay taxes up to 4 times a year, while spending us further and further into debt. I look at the big picture and nothing I hear from the free traders makes any sense, even as they move the goal posts further and further back.