Per chance you have never read the speeches given on the floor of the US Senate and the House before secession began. I suggest you do that and pay particular attention to the speeches given by the Southern Senators re: shipping of cotton, tobacco, rice, sugar cane, etc. When you figure the freight rates utilized at that time, you will see the disparity involved, done solely to protect the Northern farmers and factories. Each of the Southern states had reasons for seperation,(none good though)and the rhetoric at that time was slavery and ownership of same. My great Grandfather wrote in the family bible his reasons for fighting for the South, and nowhere is slavery mentioned other than for his being against "any man owning the body of any other." Gee, sounds like a real slave owner to me, what do you think?
Really? What agency of the government was setting freight rates?
As for the rest, let me just quote Alexander Stephens (soon to be CSA VP):
The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that.[Mr. Toombs: That tariff lessened the duties.]
[Mr. Stephens:[ Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question? And who can say that by 1875 or 1890, Massachusetts may not vote with South Carolina and Georgia upon all those questions that now distract the country and threaten its peace and existence? I believe in the power and efficiency of truth, in the omnipotence of truth, and its ultimate triumph when properly wielded. (Applause.)
Another matter of grievance alluded to by my honorable friend, was the Navigation Laws. This policy was also commenced under the administration of one of these Southern Presidents, who ruled so well, and has been continued through all of them since. The gentleman's views of the policy of these laws and my own do not disagree. We occupied the same ground in relation to them in Congress. It is not my purpose to defend them now. But it is proper to state some matters connected with their origin.
One of the objects was to build up a commercial American marine by giving American bottoms the exclusive carrying trade between our own ports. This is a great arm of national power. This object was accomplished. We now have an amount of shipping, not only coastwise but to foreign countries, which puts us in the front rank of the nations of the world. England can no longer be styled the mistress of the seas. What American is not proud of the result? Whether those laws should be continued it another question. But one thing is certain, no President, Northern or Southern, has ever yet recommended their repeal. And my friend's effort to get them repealed has met with little favor North or South.
These were three of the grievances or grounds of complaint against the general system of our Government and its workings; I mean the administration of the federal government. As to the acts of several of the States, I shall speak presently, but these three were the main ones urged against the common Head. Now suppose it be admitted that all of these are evils in the system; do they overbalance and outweight the advantages and great good which this same Government affords in a thousand innumerable ways that cannot be estimated? Have we not at the South, as well as the North, grown great, prosperouse and happy under its operation? Has any part of the world ever shown such rapid progess in the development of wealth, and all the material resources of national power and greatness, as the Southern States have under the general government, notwithstanding all its defects?
source
A lot of tobacco, suger cane, rice, and cotton farmers up North was there?
My great Grandfather wrote in the family bible his reasons for fighting for the South, and nowhere is slavery mentioned other than for his being against "any man owning the body of any other." Gee, sounds like a real slave owner to me, what do you think?
Your great grandfather made have had his reason for fighting, but the Southern leadership had their own reasons for starting the rebellion that sent him off to fight in the first place. And by far the single, most important reason to them was the defense of the institution of slavery.