For instance, the neo-confeds Exhibit 1 in the "protective tariff as intentional repression of the South" display is the Tariff of Abominations of 1828. This is portrayed as the North (in this context generally meaning the NE and in particular New England) using its power to impose policies that would enrich the North at the cost of despoliation of the South.
While that may indeed, to some extent, have been its effect, that bears little relationship to the intent of the parties involved.
That this particular tariff ever got to a floor vote was because of a disastrously failed southern parliamentary maneuver.
The presumption that a unanimous NE imposed its will is also inaccurate.
Here's how the House vote went:
Region - For - Against
New England - 16 - 23
Middle States (Mid-Atlantic) - 57 - 11
West (Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri)- 17 - 1
South (including Louisiana) - 3 - 50
Southwest (Tennessee, Kentucky) - 12 - 9
Total - 105 - 94
So in no region was the vote unanimous. New England actually voted against it.The greatest number of For votes were from the Middle States, but the greatest percentage For vote was from the West, which at this point was every bit as agricultural as the South, possibly more so. Even the South was not unanimous Against.
The Southwest, slave states, along with Missouri, included in the West, were solidly For. Indeed, the leader of the protection forces, Henry Clay, was a large slaveowner from KY.
So the common southern portrayal of this as a solid industrial North (free states) vote intentionally imposing destruction on the agricultural South (slave states) is just inaccurate.
I was just reading about this the other night in Thomas Krannawitter's book, Vindicating Lincoln. Krannawatter, who's posted here, points out that the "Tariff of Abominations" was rushed to a vote by anti-tariff forces who expected Congress to defeat it. After it was voted up, Calhoun and the others who'd demanded the bill come up for a vote led the campaign against it.
New Englanders were more opposed to the bill than in favor of it, since in those days, shipping interests (and domestic wool production) were still stronger than the textile industry was. It was the West and the Mid-Atlantic states that put the bill through.