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You might want to take a look at their editorial of April 3, 1861, "Wanted--a Policy!" It gives a very clear and dramatic picture of what some Unionists believed and feared in the days before Sumter. There was a feeling that chaos was engulfing the nation and the Constitution and that firm action was needed. The editorial illustrates what I've been saying for a long time.

I managed to get back to the library yesterday for the first time in about six months. I found the editorial you mentioned. In it the Times did try to make a boogeyman out of the South. [caps below are theirs, paragraph break is mine]

… we cannot conceal the fact that the new Government of which JEFFERSON DAVIS is at the head, has evinced a marvelous degree of energy, and is rapidly assuming the proportions of a solid and formidable Power. Within less than six months they have adopted a Constitution, organized a Government, put all its machinery into working order, established a commercial system and put it in operation, laid the basis of a financial department, organized an army, secured enormous stores and munitions of war, and put themselves in a position to offer a very formidable resistance to any attempted coercion on the part of the United States.

… JEFFERSON DAVIS will soon have an organized army of 30,000 men at his command – suppose he decides to march into Mexico, or Virginia, or upon Washington, -- what organized means have we to resist his schemes? They have adopted a revenues system for the express purpose of depleting and damaging our commerce – what have we done to offset it? .

They seem to forget that the South raised that big an army in response to Lincoln's inaugural.

I though the main reasons for dropping the tariff was to reduce what the Southern people had to pay for goods and so make their life and the overall Southern economy better. They just removed the Northern leech from their back.

Continuing on from the Times editorial:

The people [of the US] look to their Government for guidance in every great emergency. They look to it for courage for vigor, for indomitable energy, for all the great qualities which give success to nations and glory to success. And when Government fails them, they are powerless. They have no other leadership – no other means of union – no possibility of making their wishes known or their will felt, but through the action of the Government to which they have intrusted [as spelled back then] their welfare and delegated their power.

People do look to the government for action, I'll admit. But people are not as helpless as this editorial makes them out to be.

In general, people aren't as helpless as the Times editorial makes them out to be. But conditions in 1861 were far from what they were in ordinary times. Government doesn't need to put it's nose into all of our affairs, but in times of crisis when its not on top of things, the results can be panic, and that was the case in 1861.

Why did the British care about US affairs? The tariff accounted for a large part of that interest. It's not surprising that British newspapers and observers emphasized tariffs in their coverage of American politics to a degree that few Americans would. It's also not surprising that financial papers, especially those with an interest in the cotton trade would focus on the issue of protectionism. But just as one might go wrong today by taking the views of French or German or Russian newspapers as authoritative about the motivations of the Bush administration, so too, foreign papers could be deceptive as regards what was on the minds of Americans in the 1860s.

Aren't we all agreed that Northerners didn't go to war in 1861 to free the slaves? Is that even worth discussing? Does it prove that they went to war for tariff revenue? It doesn't. The striking thing, though, is that three or four years into the war, a large number of Northerners were convinced that the war had to result in an end to slavery.