Here are some from the NY Times. You won’t have to search too hard. I’ll provide the dates for you.
“The predicament in which both the government and the commerce of the country are placed, through the non-enforcement of our revenue laws, is now thoroughly understood the world over....If the manufacturer at Manchester (England) can send his goods into the Western States through New Orleans at less cost than through New York, he is a fool for not availing himself of his advantage....if the importations of the country are made through Southern ports, its exports will go through the same channel. The produce of the West, instead of coming to our own port by millions of tons to be transported abroad by the same ships through which we received our importations, will seek other routes and other outlets. With the loss of our foreign trade, what is to become of our public works, conducted at the cost of many hundred millions of dollars, to turn into our harbor the products of the interior? They share in the common ruin. So do our manufacturers. Once at New Orleans, goods may be distributed over the whole country duty free. The process is perfectly simple. The commercial bearing of the question has acted upon the North. We now see whither our tending, and the policy we must adopt. With us it is no longer an abstract question of Constitutional construction, or of the reserved or delegated power of the State or Federal Government, but of material existence and moral position both at home and abroad. We were divided and confused till our pockets were touched.” New York Times March 30, 1861
......Similarly, the economic editor of the NY Times, who had maintained for months that secession would not injure Northern commerce or prosperity, changed his mind on 22 March 1861: “At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.”
Here’s the Old Gray Lady on slavery:
(opposed abolition of slavery….. proposed slaves should be allowed to marry and taught to read and invest their money in savings accounts...)which would “ameliorate rather than to abolish the slavery of the Southern States.”...and would thus permit slavery to be “a very tolerable system.” New York Times Jan 22 1861
LOL! I would say they’d like to have that one back and their articles about how it was all about money.....but remember this is the paper that employed and never gave back Walter Duranty’s apologia for Stalin and efforts to cover up the Holodomor and now there’s the whole Russia Collusion conspiracy theory. So you see the NY Times has been an embarrassment for quite some time.....
The March 30 piece is interesting beyond your cherry picking. “Can Government for an instant rest under the imputation of counseling or permitting legislation that raises rebel provinces to power upon the ruins of those that remain faithful, and that secures to the favorable consideration of the civilized world a revolt, whose sole motive was the perpetuation of Slavery?”
It was the March 23 edition, "An Extra Session of Congress", page 4.
...But Congress should go further. It must adopt some measures which will enable it to act in regard to secession. At present, the action of our Government contrasts most unfavorably with the energy and freedom of action displayed at Montgomery. The Government installed there acts with a view to its own interests and convictions alone. Let us show it that while we desire peace, this is a game that two can play at. We can at once shut up every Southern port, destroy its commerce and bring utter ruin upon the Confederate States. We should injure our trade somewhat, but not more, perhaps, than by our present inaction, which every one sees may have to terminate in some decisive step, of the character indicated. Let us begin to have some kind of a policy. The country cannot wait till the end of next December. There is no knowing where we may drift before that time. We may not have to exert force, but a nation that cannot do so, whenever its vital interests are assailed, inspires only contempt. We cannot place ourselves in such a category.
https://www.nytimes.com/1861/03/23/archives/an-extra-session-of-congress.html
Looks like you have the History Deniers on this one. ;-)
From the article An Extra Session of Congress, it almost seems as though it was a deliberate provocation by the Pubbie CONgress, forcing Lincoln to act against his own will.
It cheesed off the Brits mightily - except a certain sewer rat living in Britain who has plagued the world and caused the death of millions, even after he checked out of this life:
"Communist philosopher Karl Marx was among the few writers in Britain who saw slavery as the major cause of the war."
A non-sewer rat wrote about his perception of the war:
The well known novelist Charles Dickens used his magazine, All the Year Round, to attack the new tariff. On December 28, 1861 Dickens published a lengthy article, believed to be written by Henry Morley, which blamed the American Civil War on the Morrill Tariff:
If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? ...Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance.
With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived ...
The conflict is between semi-independent communities [in which] every feeling and interest [in the South] calls for political partition, and every pocket interest [in the North] calls for union ...
So the case stands, and under all the passion of the parties and the cries of battle lie the two chief moving causes of the struggle.
Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils ... [T]he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.