"There are, however, other important elements to be taken into the account. During the last fiscal year the exports of the United States, exclusive of specie, were $278,000,000. Of this amount, the free States furnished, exclusively, $5,281,000, the slave States $188,693,000, and the two sections jointly, also, $84,417,000. Of this latter sum of $84,000,000, the slave States probably furnished one third, but certainly one' fourth. A fourth added to the amount exclusively furnished by them, makes a total of $210,000,00 as the value of their exports to foreign countries. They also exported alarge amount to the free States. New England alone received about fifty millior dollars' worth of southern productions; and to the rest of i the free States were sent, doubtless, more. The entire'exports from the slaveholding States to the free States, and to foreign countries combined, must greatly have exceeded three hundred million dollars. As the South sells this much,it, of course, can afford to buy a like amount. If, therefore, it constituted a separate confederacy, its imports would exceed three hundred million dollars; a duty of twenty per cent. on this amount, which would be a lower rate than has generally been paid under our tariffs heretofore, would yield a revenue of $60,000,000. More than fifty million of this sum could well be spared for the defense of our section, and the support of larger armies and navies than the present Government has. Though it may seem strange to you that the South should in this way raise as large a revenue as the whole Union has ever done, and this, too, with a lower tariff, you must remember that most of the tariff taxes the South pays go, in fact, in the shape of protection to those northern manufacturers who thireaten us with negro insurrections and subjugation."
Yeah, the noise about slavery was definitely higher than it was on tariffs.
"[The chief obstacle to reconciliation] is the absoulute impossibility of revolutionizing Northern opinion in relation to slavery. Without a change of heart, radical and thorough, all guarantees which might be offered are not worth the paper on which they are inscribed. As long as slavery is looked upon by the North with abhorrance; as long as the south is regarded as a mere slave-breding and slave-driving community; as long as false and pernicious theories are cherish respecting the inherant equality and rights of every human being, ther can be no satisfactory political union between the two sections." New Orleans Bee, December 14, 1860 Quoted in "The Causes of the Civil War" Keneth M. Stampp, ed.
Walt