Unfortunately it wasn't. If you read the northern papers of the day, before lincoln shut them down illegally and immediately prior to the war, most editorials were in favor of letting the South go. However, after the attack at Charleston, the cry came specifically for regaining the monies lost at the Charleston port. Now contrary to the belief of some around here, documentation clearly shows that the north relied on the monies from Southern ports. Not suprisingly, the loudest call for war in the lincoln cabinet was from none other than Sam Chase, the Secretary of the Treasury and the head honcho over how the tariff money was spent
The first political prisoner of the Civil War was a newspaper reporter. He printed something that Beauregard didn't like and the general tossed him in the slammer. On a per capita basis more people were jailed without trial and in violation of their civil rights in the confederacy (8000) than in the Union (13,000 to 25,000 depending on the source. No worries about them, billbears?
If "the north relied on the monies from the Southern ports", how in the world did they manage to finance an expensive war against the Confederate slaveholderocracy without collecting any import tariffs from the South?