[BroJoeK]

rustbucket: "Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff."

Except the Morrill tariff was not that much higher.
In effect, the two competing tariffs were the old 1846 Walker tariff, passed by Democrats under Southern Democrat President Polk and the newer, lower 1857 Tariff passed by Democrats under Democrat President Buchanan.
Morrill basically returned to 1846 levels.

So, in February 1861 Confederates adopted the lower 1857 Tariff and two weeks later the Union returned to the 1846 Walker tariff levels.

rustbucket: "Northern goods sold in the South would have to pay the same tariff to the South as that placed on European goods by the Confederate tariff."

Which is the real key here -- not the 8% of US imports (circa $30 million) which landed in Confederate ports, but the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South.
Those now would have to pay, in effect, export tariffs on top import tariffs paid for raw materials.
So the real issue here was not whether Walker charged 25% on some item and the 1857 Tariff only 20%, that was irrelevant.
What mattered is the fact that Northern exporters would have to pay a tariff twice.

The same is true going the other way -- if Europeans landed their presumably cheaper goods in, say, Confederate New Orleans for sale in Union St. Louis, they'd pay two tariffs, one each to Confederates and the Union.
So the individual rates were irrelevant, what mattered was paying twice.

rustbucket: "All of that would reduce the $200 million dollars of Northern goods sold in the South.
Ripple effects would follow throughout the Northern economy."

The damage would be done not by marginally lower Confederate rates, but by the fact that exporters, North or South, would pay two tariffs instead of just one.

rustbucket: "The South initially set their tariff the same as the then current US tariff, then about two weeks later the North passed the much higher Morrill Tariff for the US.
Talk about shooting themselves in the foot! "

But the Morrill rates were more or less irrelevant.
What mattered was importers & exporters North or South would now have to pay two tariffs instead of just one.

rustbucket: "That set up the two-tariff problem that prompted Northern newspapers to basically cry 'blockade the Southern ports', 'our pockets have been touched'.
Northern import businesses started closing.
The picture looked bleak for Northern tariff income."

Maybe, but remember, one purpose of the new Morrill tariff was to reduce imports by, ahem, putting American manufacturing first and making America's products great.
That's a historical theme of Republicans from Day One.

So the fact that some Democrat globalist importers in New York were fearful did not overly concern Republicans.

rustbucket: "As Lincoln said, "And what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government -- no resources." [Link 1 and Link 2]."

Those quotes are totally suspect as misrepresenting Lincoln's concerns.
Confederate Col. John Baldwin's 1866 account is especially ludicrous in claiming Lincoln believed all Federal tariffs were at stake in Charleston Harbor.
In fact, Charleston produced well under 1% of US tariff revenues.
So regardless of what Lincoln thought of tariffs in general, Fort Sumter had nothing to do with it.

rustbucket: "Lincoln was a smart guy.
He thought outside the box and provoked a war so that he could invade the South and blockade their ports solving the two-tariff problem.
The tariff was not the main reason the South seceded, but the tariff income problem was the reason why Lincoln started the war. "

Jefferson Davis started the war, as he'd promised, when he thought Confederate "integrity" was "assailed" at Fort Sumter.
And because Davis wanted the Upper South to secede too, even Lincoln's mere announcement of a resupply mission to Union troops in Fort Sumter was plenty enough to trigger Davis.
Once war started, then many other issues jumped to the forefront, including Gen. Scott's Anaconda plan, originally prepared under Secretary of War Jefferson Davis in the event of a Southern rebellion.

It cannot have been a surprise to the new Confederate President.

[BroJoeK]

By the way -- now that rustbucket has acknowledged the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South, I think we can turn the tables on Lost Causers who've endlessly claimed Lincoln "started war" over "money", i.e. $50 million in Union tariff revenues: "follow the money", they say.

1. DiogenesLamp post #672: "...it's about money.
   Prominent Northern Newspapers of the time period tell them it's about money.
   They want to believe it's about slavery..."

2. DiogenesLamp post #497: "The war was about money, but was successfully rebranded as a war about freedom, to cover up the reality..."

3. DiogenesLamp post #716: Confederates "...would not only take over the European money streams going into the North, they would take over the market for the products the North East was manufacturing and distributing by way of the Great lakes and Railroads."

4. FLT-bird post #707: "Like most wars, this one too was all about money."

5. FLT-bird post #621: "Lincoln started the war due to his insistence that the Southern states pay TAXES.
   It was about money."

6. FLT-bird post #157: "There was no way in hell the northern states were going to fight a war over slavery.
   When it came to money however, they were all in favor of not letting their cash cow slip away.
   So you are exactly wrong about that.
   It was ALL about money for the North."

For Confederates, of course, it couldn't possibly be "about money" since Confederates were driven by the highest ideals like freedom, liberty & constitutional states' rights.
No money in that, right?

Well, we can now identify at least three instances when "all about money" drove those freedom loving Confederates:

1. Most obvious was the $4 billion estimated asset value of slaves in 1860.
   In relative terms, $4 billion in 1860 is about $20 trillion today -- equivalent to our GDP or National Debt, a huge number which 1860 Fire Eaters said Lincoln's Black Republicans threatened.
   So secession too could be said was "all about money".

2. Southern planters owed money to Northern banks to the tune of ~$300 million, debts which could be repudiated and collected by the Confederate government once war began.

3. Perhaps less obvious is the $200 million per year the "North" "exported" to the "South" -- those words in quotes because definitions are vague & inconsistent.
   Such exports could, in theory, generate $20 million in Confederate tariff revenues, so wouldn't Jefferson Davis want such income?

   Well... no... because if you're Jefferson Davis, $20 million only begins to cover your government's costs.
   What you really want is the $200 million Southerners are spending on Northern imports, because that money, if stopped, will pay for your war and help cripple the Northern economy.
   So Davis didn't just want "money flows from Europe" diverted to Confederates, he also wanted money flows from the South to the North stopped.
   And nothing could stop such money flows quicker & better than Civil War.!

So, low and behold, turns out for Confederates too, starting war at Fort Sumter was also "all about the money".

Or at least so in the minds of our Marxist trained economic dialecticians.

[rustbucket]

But the Morrill rates were more or less irrelevant. What mattered was importers & exporters North or South would now have to pay two tariffs instead of just one.

Sorry, I don't follow your logic. If European goods are shipped directly to Charleston they would pay only the Confederate tariff. On the other hand, perhaps you were assuming that Lincoln was going to stop and board the foreign ships outside of Charleston and demand they pay the US tariff. Perhaps he would have been that bold, but by doing so he might just have opened a two-front war, one with Confederates and one with one or more European countries whose ships had been boarded and basically robbed.

Similarly, how would exports to Europe from the Confederacy have to pay two tariffs? Are you assuming that Lincoln would demand that the Confederacy export everything through the Port of New York and pay a US tariff there? Or maybe Lincoln's ships would stand off the Charleston Harbor and stop ships coming out of the harbor to demand payment? Maybe he was really a Barbary pirate.

In time, the Confederacy would probably open up warehouses in several of their ports to store imported merchandise until it was sold, like the warehouses in New York gave an incentive to importers to land stuff at New York and pay tariff there.

What mattered is the fact that Northern exporters would have to pay a tariff twice.

I'm scratching my head again. What two tariffs would Northern exporters pay? Was Lincoln planning to charge a tariff, or really, an export fee, on things exported from the US? I wasn't aware of these secret plans of Lincoln.

By buying Northern goods whose prices had been boosted by the US protective tariff, Southerners were paying the basic price of the goods plus the amount the Northern manufacturers were able to raise their price because of the US protective tariff. The Northern manufacturers pocketed the selling price; the US government did not. The Southerners would have been paying the basic price of the Northern goods plus the increase in price that the Morrill Tariff enabled the manufacturers to charge. In that sense, the Southerners were paying the US tariff to Northern manufacturers. Cheaper for Southerners to buy European goods even with the Confederate tariff applied.

If the Confederacy imposed their tariff on those Northern goods, which they well might have, then the Confederate people would have been paying the Confederate tariff on Northern goods, plus however much the Morrill Tariff would have enabled Northern manufacturers to increase their prices. Unless Northern manufactures significantly lowered the price of their goods, the Confederate people would have switched to buying European goods which didn't have the cost of US tariffs built into their selling price. The European goods would have been cheaper than Northern goods unless the Northern manufacturers lowered their prices in the South to meet competition.

if Europeans landed their presumably cheaper goods in, say, Confederate New Orleans for sale in Union St. Louis, they'd pay two tariffs, one each to Confederates and the Union. So the individual rates were irrelevant, what mattered was paying twice.

The Confederacy had promised not to interfere with shipping on the Mississippi. The real problem for the North was European goods offloaded at a Southern port, paying the Confederate tariff there, then smuggled into the North and sold for less that the same items imported directly into the US that paid the Morrill Tariff to the US.

[rustbucket]

[You quoting me]: "Northern manufacturers anticipated greater profits and probable future expansion of their businesses under the higher Morrill Tariff."

[You responding to my point]: Except the Morrill tariff was not that much higher.
In effect, the two competing tariffs were the old 1846 Walker tariff, passed by Democrats under Southern Democrat President Polk and the newer, lower 1857 Tariff passed by Democrats under Democrat President Buchanan.
Morrill basically returned to 1846 levels.

Not quite true. I suggest that you read, "The Tariff and Secession: Statements on the Tariff as a Major Factor in Sectional Strife and Southern Secession" by Michael T. Griffith, 2014. [Link].

Griffith said that the Morrill Tariff was a "huge" rate increase over the 1857 tariff, apparently in part because of a change in the way the Morrill Tariff calculated the actual rate of tariff compared to the 1846 tariff. He quotes a paper by Phil Magnes that said, "Morrill’s abandonment of the ad valorem schedule in favor of specific duties provided a pretext for raising the tariff on several items well above their 1846 levels.", and Griffith cites Frank Taussig's classic "The Tariff History of the United States" [see page 138] in support of the specific Morrill duties being higher than the 1846 rate.

Which is the real key here -- not the 8% of US imports (circa $30 million) which landed in Confederate ports, but the $200 million in Northern "exports" to the South.

There were calculations back in those days of how much of the imports into the US ultimately went to the South. Those calculations were based on Treasury statistics. Imports might have arrived at the Port of New York and gone into the warehouse system and ultimately had tariff paid on them in New York when they were sold to buyers from the North, West, or South in the Treasury figures. The Treasury figures apparently showed that Southerners bought substantially more than 8 percent of the value of the imports. If the Treasury figures were analyzed correctly, the Southern purchases of imports amounted to a third of the total value of imports to the US. That is a serious chunk of Lincoln's tariff revenue. From an old post of mine:

I found a non-Debow analysis of 1859 that put the figure at 71% [of the value of the entire export of the United States], so it agrees in general. The figure came from: Southern Wealth and Northern Profits by Thomas Prentice Kettell. Published in 1860.

This source also broke down the distribution of imports to regions by consumption. For 1859, it calculates Southern consumption of imports as $106,000,000, Western consumption as $63,000,000, and Northern consumption of imports as $149,000,000. Kettell bases the split among regions on Treasury figures from 1856.

Kettell also estimates that the North sent $240,000,000 in domestic goods (protected by tariff no doubt) to the South in 1859, and that the South paid to the North some $63,000,000 in interest and brokerage.

I note that the calculated figure of Northern produced goods being sold to Southern buyers was higher than the $200 million figure you cited. I also remember that the 1846 tariff was supported by Southern Democrats because it reduced the 1842 tariff.

I have a lot of personal business to attend to starting now for at least the next two or three of weeks. Hopefully when my business is finished, I can resume looking at these threads. Until then, hasta la vista.