Maybe I misstated a little bit but what hurt the South was the high tarrifs the North put on imported manufactured and other goods that the South wanted to buy.
Northerners paid exactly the same tariffs as southerners, and there were few if any products that southerners wanted to buy that weren’t also popular among northerners. Also, tariffs in 1860 were the lowest they’d been in 30 years. 15%, if I remember correctly.
Wouldn’t it be nice if we only paid taxes to the federal government when we purchased imported goods, and at that rate? What horrible oppression!
You need to get you neo-confederate story straight. The claim is that northerners oppressed southerners because protective tariffs were placed on some goods to protect manufacturers from “unfair competition” from foreigners.
Since a larger percentage of northerners than southerners benefited from these protective tariffs, southerners claimed oppression. Supposedly enough to justify secession and risk of war. (This claim, to may knowledge, was made only after losing the war, when defense of slavery was no longer a respectable reason for secession, even in the South.)
To view this as horrible oppression by one section of the other requires ignoring a large number of inconvenient facts. I bring up those only on the top of my mind.
Most northerners, like most southerners, were farmers or anyway in the rural economy. A smaller percentage to be sure, but still a considerable majority.
Protective tariffs were originally proposed because the USA had serious problems during the War of 1812 when they discovered the drawbacks of being dependent on foreign sources for essential military equipment, especially when you foe was that main supplier. The original idea was to build up an armaments industry for national defense reasons. Of course it got twisted into semi-corruption, but that was the original idea.
The main proponent of protective tariffs for most of the 1800s was Henry Clay, a southerner and large slaveowner.
If the South had won it independence, I’m sure they would have put in some kind of protective tariff, despite it being prohibited in their Constitution. Or perhaps you believe they would have been eternally willing to submit to the risks of a blockade shutting off essentiual military supplies?
The total federal budget for 1860 was $60,000,000. Are you seriously contending that such a sum, spread out among $30M+ people, constituted excessive taxation justifying secession and probable war? Really? That was less than $2 per capita. I realize a dollar was worth a lot more than, but it wasn’t worth THAT much more.
White southerners were so far from being economically oppressed by northerners that they were significantly more prosperous on average than northerners were. The ratio 2:1 sticks in my mind, but that could well be off.