It does little to explain it, especially when they knew that Morill would decrease revenues. Your repeated attempts to justify it with the deficit only make the situation more confusing.
Of course, the truth of the matter was that most of the 80 million was stolen by the south in one form or another. When you don't produce, you must depend on the kindness of strangers, and if not then you must steal like a thief in the night. How is this stealing better than a balanced budget and the concept of paying one's own way in the world. Do elaborate
Zealotry in action. Can I pull this back on topic by asking why it was that Lincoln refused all attempts to negotiate the debt?
Ah, but GOP has already established the fact that the Morrill tariff was implemented before the war started. Therefore, you are in fact alleging that they passed the tariff knowing that the war would decrease tariff income. To say the tariff decreased that income is about as cogent as arguing that the Titanic sank because it hit whale before it hit the iceberg. IN wartime, the consumption of common consumables is decreased. Consider what happened to sugar in WWII. The argument that a few cents here or there on a tax that in total represented only a few cents on the dollar is ridiculous by any economic evaluation. To argue as you do that a tax that raised some 20 to thrity million from a GNP over 1.5 billion would be too much to bare is just silly.
Zealotry in action.
Yes, that explains your motives quite aptly. Can I pull this back on topic by asking why it was that Lincoln refused all attempts to negotiate the debt?
Certainly. First of all, the south didn't negotiate for the hundreds of millions they took, they just took them and then made a pretense of negotiating payment. The reason it was absurd to honor such a suggestion was that it would have acknowledged that felony crime was lawful, which it isn't. Secondly, under no stretch of anyone's imaginiation was the south in an shape financially to begin to pay what it had taken, not just in the months before the war, but in all the years leading up to it. If some homeless and jobless guy with no credit steals your car and then offers tp you for it on time, are you obligated to take his note? I think not.