The Southern states had trade agreements with Britain? Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't that a clear violation of Article I, Section 10, Clause 3: "No State shall, without the Consent of Congress...enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power..."?
When the federal government instituted revenue tariffs it threatened Southern imports, so in many instances Southern traders opted to pay the tariffs that Europe owed in order to keep commerce and trade flowing.
But there is little evidence that there were a lot of goods imported into the South to begin with.
However, Europe (especially Britain) was incensed that tariffs were applied at all, and ended up instituting some of their own, and since the South was Europe’s main trading partner, it bore the brunt of those tariffs.
How is this possible? The European powers paid the market price for the Southern exports. Any tariff, assuming that there were tariffs to begin with and I've never seen anything indicating there were, would have been borne by the European consumers. Just as U.S. tariffs were borne by U.S. consumers.
Then, when the federal government applied protective tariffs, it cut the South’s economy off at the knees. Protective tariffs didn’t affect the North much at all, but they seriously impacted the South.
Nonsense. Protective tariffs impacted anyone who was buying the protected goods.
Where to begin?
(1) Southerners were allowed to enter into trade with foreign entities just like Northerners were (though, you don’t like that);
(2) Read some basic American economic history. Southern interests imported a great deal from Europe as part of the trade contracts they had for Southern cotton (especially) and other goods. Kind of like what goes on nowadays, and what has so many people up in arms about trade deficits;
(3) Many Southern mercantile interests agreed to pay the tariffs (or a portion of them) for the Europeans in order to keep up commerce (such practices are even practiced today in some sectors). When European exporters retaliated by initiating their own tariffs, they did not agree to pick them up, in whole or in part, for their customers in the South;
(4) Southern merchants purchased the goods that were affected by the protective tariffs, and thus had to pay them.
Really, non-sequitur, everyone on FR knows of your utter contempt and disdain for anything Southern, and your lap-dog adoration of Abraham Lincoln. Anything or anyone who holds a different view from your inflexible and egocentric opinion is, in your eyes, just wet mud.
I’m through with you. Go back to your mother’s basement and don’t bother the adults anymore. And go back to school!