Does that not seem wrong in some way in your thinking?
The issue was the loss of value of the products being produced in the South due to the increased percentage cost of the tariff that deflated overseas demand and produced drastic inflation in the US market pricing.
Between 1816 and 1830 there had been four major successive tariff hikes (1816, 1819, 1824, 1828) plus several dozen minor ones. Only at the threat of secession did tariff advocates even attempt compromise in 1832-33, and then in ways that still retained heavily protectionist elements.
As a result America operated under a policy of constant heavy protectionism for over 30 years after the conclusion of the War of 1812.
The Walker Tariff in 1846 was the first and only tariff schedule even remotely favorable to free trade.
But that was to change drasticlly. The 1860-61 Morrill Tariff was about to double and triple the tariff rates.
You said: "Also, tariffs in 1860 were the lowest they’d been in 30 years. 15%, if I remember correctly.”
You are providing a very misleading conclusion by saying that since in May of 1860 and strictly on a sectional vote, the US House of Representatives passed their version of the Morrill Tariff. Congress' passage of the Morrill Tariff and the Senate doing the same in 1861 essentially meant tripling the rates in one broad sweep.
First of all, if you think the Morrill Tariff had anything to do with Deep South declarations of secession, then I'd challenge you to quote any of their Declarations of Reasons for Secession which say as much.
They don't.
Second, average tariffs were 15% in 1792 when Virginian George Washington was President.
Then rates when up and down, peaking at 35% in 1830, when Carolina-born Andrew Jackson was President and South Carolinian John C. Calhoun Vice-President.
The results were not pretty, as a result tariff rates fell to 13% in 1840, up to 23% in 1850 and back to 15% in 1860.
So in 1860 when the Deep South began to secede, tariffs were the lowest in 20 years and the same average rate as in 1792.
The 1860 Morrill Tariff increased tariffs back to levels of 1825 and 1845, but could not pass the Senate until seceeding states walked out in 1861.
Indeed, there were more than enough Southern votes in the House to defeat Morrill in 1860, if they had all stood in opposition to it.
But they weren't united and so the bill passed the House.
Morrill was not a reason for secession.
Well, no, it’s not in the least misleading. As you state yourself, throughout 1860 the tariff was indeed 15%, the same it had been in G. Washington’s day. That a higher tariff passed in 1861 as the direct result of southern congressmen leaving due to secession doesn’t invalidate my point at all.
More critically, I think you are getting a free ride by claiming that tariff rates justify secession and war. Absolutely nobody made this claim in 1860, since they openly and proudly proclaimed that the purpose of secession was to protect the institution of slavery.
By the end of the war, it was no longer possible to even try to justify secession in defense of slavery, so another “reason” had to be found.
Look, here, under the cushions! It’s the tariff we’d all forgotten about! That’s why we seceded! That’s the ticket!
Yet this in itself makes the unexamined claim that if tariff rates were indeed raised, secesssion and therefore by implication war or at least the risk of war would have been fully justified.
Really? Does any tariff rate really justify such extreme action? If killing 600,000 to 750,000 men isn’t justified by defense (or abolition) of slavery, we are somehow supposed to agree that killing them over a tariff rate is right and proper?