Let me quote from Alexander Stephens, soon to be vice president of the confederacy:
"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that...Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at.
How could tariffs be the cause is they were at the rate the southern politicians wanted them at?
The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery...
Let's quote from the confederate constitution:
"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
How would that make possible the gradual elimination of slavery?
Neither did he lift a finger to repeal the anti-Negro laws that besotted all Northern states, Illinois in particular.
Leaving aside for a moment the Black Codes implemented down south after the rebellion, how could the president dictate the repeal of state laws? Don't you believe in states rights?