“They confuse the Tariff of Abominations of the 1830s with the situation in 1860.”
No, they don’t. Ever hear of the Morrel Tariff?
Which was passed only after and because votes against it were lost when southern states seceded and their reps went home.
It was thus a consequence of secession, not its cause.
But let’s assume it was the cause, and the only cause. What you’re saying is that the South destroyed itself and killed more than 700,000 Americans over the question of a few tens of millions of dollars in taxation, most of which would be paid by northern consumers.
The effects of protective tariffs were not distributed by region, but by occupation. Those owning and working in protected industries benefited, and to a lesser extent those who did business with them. Everybody else paid.
The regional effect was due simply to the fact that more southerners were engaged in non-protected occupants than northerners.
The hilarious part is that the idea that this disparity justified secession and war is based on “disparate impact,” by which Group A is disadvantaged in relationship to Group B, even though that is not the wording of the law nor necessarily its intent. Most conservatives today believe, rightly, that disparate impact should not automatically be cause to reject a law. Yet some of them claim that disparate impact on the South justified secession and war.
BTW, I’m curious how y’all explain how the Union not only managed to keep its economy and government going during the war, being utterly dependent on southern exports as it supposedly was, but expanded economically while carrying the costs of the war?
US total exports in 1860 were $270M, mostly cotton. In 1863 they were $75M and in 1865 had recovered to $174M, almost none of it cotton.
All the talk about how the US government and economy was utterly dependent on the South was a bunch of hooey, as comprehensively demonstrated by the fact that the Union economy did NOT collapse.
No I haven't. When did they put a tariff on mushrooms? :)