[PeaRidge]

"Did you guys forget why we were talking about this?"

They are so used to using "extremes" to try to refute a point, that their convoluted logic has caused them to go into reverse gear. And they will reverse again, thus completing a circle of logic. Reminds me of that early 70s song, "You Got Me Going in Circles".

"The whole point of this was that Southern investments were turning away from plantations and slave labor, and serious improvements were being introduced to allow them to compete with Northern shipping."

That is exactly right. These guys look as if they have never read anything on the South of the 1850s. Shipbuilding and warehousing were on the increase. Banking and finance were becoming competitive. The South was turning more toward their own manufacturing.

And with secession, all of these industries would no longer be regulated by Federal Laws. The South would direct export and import with no taxes or tariffs. Newly dredged Charleston would compete with New York, and the New Orleans--Mississippi trade to the West would siphon off traffic on the other side of New York.

They were in a bad fix.

[Heyworth]

And despite all that, South Carolina didn't think to mention it in their declaration, and instead just keeping talking on and on about slavery. Ultimately all of the south's objections to the tariff can be seen as merely another aspect of their defense of an economic system that hypocritically trumpeted the virtues of free trade while standing on the backs of slave labor.

It's interesting, for example, that the rising price of slaves ( at a time when it's claimed the institution was on its last legs) led the Southern Commercial Convention to adopt a resolution calling for renewing the slave trade, maybe on those new ships Charleston was building.