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You are right, as far as you go – about halfway through Rhett’s address. If you read the second half of Rhett’s address, you find it talks almost exclusively about slavery, and not taxes or tariffs (I thought I had made that point in my original response). To summarize, it appears that the second half was spent a lot of time talking about how the South was a collection of slaveholding states, and that they never would have agreed to Union if they thought that the North would try to abolish slavery. I assume you have read the whole (not just the first 8 paragraphs) of the address. I’m sure you have seen the last line, which reads “We ask you to join us, in forming a Confederacy of Slaveholding States”. It doesn’t say “join us in forming a Confederacy based on low tariffs, or low taxes. It appears that the definition of a Slaveholding Confederacy is the important definition, not taxes or tariffs. I am sure I am misreading the last half of Rhett’s address, and the constant references to slavery are somehow unimportant, and I am sure you will respond to let me know exactly how I am misreading it. To be clear, it is not my contention that slavery was the only reason the South chose to secede. It is however the primary reason.

I agree it was an issue. I agree it was an important issue. I just do not agree that it was THE issue....at least not for most. Sure, some thought it really important. Some believed it really was a better system than early stage industrialization with its itinerant housing, slums, lack of child labor laws, lack of tort law, lack of OSHA standards, etc etc that they saw up North. Some just got their backs up when Northerners they knew had sold their fathers and grandfathers the slaves in the first place and made a lot of money in the process suddenly started pointing an accusatory finger at them. Most however did not own any slaves. That was a large majority depending on how you calculate it, at least 3/4s of families and almost certainly a higher percentage than that. Of those who did own slaves, half owned 5 or fewer. That was usually domestic servants for townsfolk. The big plantations represented only a small percentage of slave owners though they represented a high proportion of all the slaves because they could easily have hundreds. Even among slaveowners there were plenty who saw which way the wind was blowing. Industrialization had killed slavery throughout the British Empire by 1838 and had slowly killed off slavery in the formerly slave owning Northern states. It was having the same effect elsewhere including Maryland, Virginia, etc as the process of industrialization spread southward. Slavery simply was not the issue that touched most. Tariffs and the feeling (based on good reason) that they were being exploited for the benefit of others via tariffs and unequal federal expenditures really was something that touched every Southerner's pocket. Needless to say, emancipating the slaves is certainly not what the North was fighting for. The whole "it was all about slavery" mantra is something that was cooked up years after the conflict started and after it had become a bloodbath by an embarrassed Lincoln administration in order to try to claim they had some kind of noble purpose for the frightful cost Northerners were paying when really, it was all about money and empire.

Team Cuda to FLT-bird: "You are right, as far as you go – about halfway through Rhett’s address.
If you read the second half of Rhett’s address, you find it talks almost exclusively about slavery, and not taxes or tariffs "

FLT-bird: "I agree it was an issue.
I agree it was an important issue.
I just do not agree that it was THE issue....at least not for most."

Judging by the seven "Reasons for Secession" documents before Fort Sumter slavery was THE issue for some and an important issue for all.
In every such document slavery is discussed at greater length than any other reason.

And even for those who claim slavery was just "pretext", the reason given is quite telling:

"Slavery is not the cause of the rebellion ....
Slavery is the pretext on which the leaders of the rebellion rely, 'to fire the Southern Heart' and through which the greatest degree of unanimity can be produced....
Mr. Calhoun, after finding that the South could not be brought into sufficient unanimity by a clamor about the tariff, selected slavery as the better subject for agitation."

This (alleged) quote is often posted by Lost Causers like FLT-bird to "prove" their point that it was all about "money, money, money".
But the quote actually proves something quite different -- it proves that average Southerners would not reject their own country only for "money, money, money", but rather they needed something much more important to their "way of life", namely slavery.

Nobody then much cared if average tariffs were 10% or 15%, but everybody cared a lot if slaves were arbitrarily set free by Washington, DC, and let loose on their former masters!

So it was "all about slavery" for average Southern voters, even if the top 1% of 1% also had greedy eyes on "money flows from Europe" and those so-called "Northeastern power brokers".