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.
More importantly, the Tariff of Abominations was a bill assembled by Calhoun and his cronies, as he publicly admitted 10 years later.
He loaded it with poison pills so New England congressmen would reject it, at which point the southerners would join in voting down their own bill.
He outsmarted himself, and the bill passed.
Exactly why this example of extreme southern stupidity should instead by considered an example of northern oppression is quite beyond me.
“What that plan was, Calhoun explained very frankly nine years later, in a speech reviewing the events of 1828 and defending the course taken by himself and his southern fellow members. A high-tariff bill was to be laid before the House. It was to contain not only a high general range of duties, but duties especially high on those raw materials on which New England wanted the duties to be low. It was to satisfy the protective demands of the Western and Middle States, and at the same time to be obnoxious to the New England members. The Jackson men of all shades, the protectionists from the North and the free-traders from the South, were to unite in preventing any amendments; that bill, and no other, was to be voted on. When the final vote came, the southern men were to turn around and vote against their own measure. The New England men, and the Adams men in general, would be unable to swallow it, and would also vote against it. Combined, they would prevent its passage, even though the Jackson men from the North voted for it. The result expected was that no tariff bill at all would be passed during the session, which was the object of the southern wing of the opposition. On the other hand, the obloquy of defeating it would be cast on the Adams party, which was the object of the Jacksonians of the North. The tariff bill would be defeated, and yet the Jackson men would be able to parade as the true “friends.”
http://mises.org/etexts/taussig.pdf page 55
Interesting book I just found. If we’re going to argue about tariffs, we might as well have some actual data. I suspect the actual history turns out to be a great deal more complex than “northern oppression of southern innocents.”
You know that. Straw man argument.
Your comments on rate variations are irrelevant.
What was important was the Confederate tariff rate vs. the Union rate in 1861.