There were no tariffs on southern products (at least none enacted by the US). Southern products were exported, and tariffs are enacted only on imports.
The north had plenty of cash crops. No cash crops needed slaves, as was shown by southern agricultural productivity after the war, when slavey was no more.
One issue loomed larger than any other in that year as in the previous three decades: the Northern tariff. It was imposed to benefit Northern industrial interests by subsidizing their production through public works.
But it had the effect of forcing the South to pay more for manufactured goods and disproportionately taxing it to support the central government. It also injured the South’s trading relations with other parts of the world.
In effect, the South was being looted to pay for the North’s early version of industrial policy. The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the “tariff of abomination.”
Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime.
The South as a region was being reduced to a slave status, with the federal government as its master.
Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.