[rustbucket]

...the speaker's assumption that the Southerners could simply shift their importing to Southern ports is highly suspect, since it is apparent that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient.

Would your assertion still be true if the seceded Southern states charged a much lower tariff than the Northern states? That was the prospect facing the North.

As to your contention that the tariff played no role, consider the following newspaper editorials from early April 1861:

The New York Evening Post: "Bad as the law is in itself, the injustice of many of its provisions is hardly as gross as the stupidity of passing it at the very moment when the quarrel with the seceding states had reached its climax, and thus playing into their hands."

The New York Times: "How can we maintain any national spirit under such humiliation? We take the step of all others most calculated to alienate the border states and foreign nations."

The Daily Picayune (New Orleans): "Having driven the South to resistance, instead of adopting a policy of conciliation, it added to the existing exasperation by adopting a tariff as hostile as could be to Southern interests. The estrangement of North and South was not sufficiently marked and intense. New fuel must be added to the fires of strife, new incentives to embittered feelings."

[Grand Old Partisan]

Neo-Confederates also forget that most federal government spending in the ante bellum period was in the South. Do they ever wonder why, for example, Pensacola, Norfolk, and Charleston had powerful harbor forts while Boston, New York, and Philadelphia did not?

[ravinson]

Would your assertion [that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient for Southerners] still be true if the seceded Southern states charged a much lower tariff than the Northern states?

That's the question that the speaker didn't really answer very persuasively. Going all the way from Europe to Southern ports is a much longer haul (than just from Europe to Boston or New York City) and involves going through hurricane prone seas.

As to your contention that the tariff played no role, consider the following newspaper editorials from early April 1861:

That was after secession of most of the Southern stated, so I don't understand your point. The secessionists very clearly stated that they seceded to preserve slavery in light of the election of a "Black Republican" (Lincoln), so the stage for the Civil War was set when Lincoln was elected and nothing except Union capitulation to secession could have avoided war. Thus, tariffs had nothing to do with secession or the war.

[ravinson]

Would your assertion [that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient for Southerners] still be true if the seceded Southern states charged a much lower tariff than the Northern states?

That's the question that the speaker didn't really answer very persuasively. Going all the way from Europe to Southern ports is a much longer haul (than just from Europe to Boston or New York City) and involves going through hurricane prone seas.

As to your contention that the tariff played no role, consider the following newspaper editorials from early April 1861:

That was after secession of most of the Southern stated, so I don't understand your point. The secessionists very clearly stated that they seceded to preserve slavery in light of the election of a "Black Republican" (Lincoln), so the stage for the Civil War was set when Lincoln was elected and nothing except Union capitulation to secession could have avoided war. Thus, tariffs had nothing to do with secession or the war.

[ravinson]

Would your assertion [that importing European goods through Northeastern ports was much more cost efficient for Southerners] still be true if the seceded Southern states charged a much lower tariff than the Northern states?

That's the question that the speaker didn't really answer very persuasively. Going all the way from Europe to Southern ports is a much longer haul (than just from Europe to Boston or New York City) and involves going through hurricane prone seas.

As to your contention that the tariff played no role, consider the following newspaper editorials from early April 1861:

That was after secession of most of the Southern stated, so I don't understand your point. The secessionists very clearly stated that they seceded to preserve slavery in light of the election of a "Black Republican" (Lincoln), so the stage for the Civil War was set when Lincoln was elected and nothing except Union capitulation to secession could have avoided war. Thus, tariffs had nothing to do with secession or the war.