DiogenesLamp: quoting Boston Transcript, March 18, 1861:
"The difference is so great between thee tariff of the Union and that of Confederate States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York." This references debate over the Morrill Tariff, passed on March 2, 1861, supported by Republicans opposed by Democrats North and South.
Democrats opposed would include Boston merchants and industrialists who didn't want to disturb their long-standing trade patterns with the South.
But Republicans who supported Merrill were not tied to the South and had more interest in promoting their own industries than preserving the Southern based New England economy.
Regardless, the appropriate peacetime response to this editorial would be to adjust Morrill rates to make them competitive with pre-Morrill rates then in effect in the Confederacy.
Nothing in this editorial suggests anything else.
This references debate over the Morrill Tariff, passed on March 2, 1861, supported by Republicans opposed by Democrats North and South. Democrats opposed would include Boston merchants and industrialists who didn't want to disturb their long-standing trade patterns with the South. Perish the thought that people would be motivated by money!
But Republicans who supported Merrill were not tied to the South and had more interest in promoting their own industries than preserving the Southern based New England economy.
Were they producing the bulk of the exports?
Were these laws not meant to apply to everyone but them? Funny how that works.
But the larger point here is that the Boston Transcript recognized the threat to the manufactures of the North East from the Southern states becoming independent.
The entire NorthWest would be supplied by imported goods from New Orleans, and the existing power structure in New York/New England would lose those customers to cheaper foreign imports.
As I've said, Southern independence was a serious economic threat to the wealthy men whose hands were on the levers of Washington DC power.
Their bone of contention was not with slavery, it was with the competitive threat the South would later pose to their money stream and power structure.
The "war against slavery" was just propaganda to cover up the war against economic competition with the existing power structure of the Acela corridor.