Here's a good history book for you. "Lifeline of the Confederacy: Blockade Running During the Civil War" by Stephen Wise. In it he gives a table that showed over 95% of all tariff income was collected in three Northern ports - New York, Boston, and Philadelphia. How could tariffs be such a bone of contention when the overwhelming majority of them were paid by northerners?
If that number is true (of which I am sketical), I think it makes sense - the North set up tariffs to spur industrialism. The South is exporting agricultural goods, cotton, tobacco, etc. to the North and Europe. Tariffs and land sales were the federal governments two sources of income. Land sales were down from settlers/homestead acts out west, so tariffs are bumped.