Will, the tariffs were on goods predominately needed in the South but little of which was needed in the North, which is WHY those taxes were so great. Products desired by the North had low tariffs. Products made in the North were sold in the South without taxes, all contrived to force the South to pay the costs of Northern production. If you think all that was a lofty plan of the northern industrialists and northern politicians to 'strenthen the economy of the Union' rather than lining the pockets of the northern rich you have been deluded.
The South didn't develop a large industrial base because of economics, same as the North did do so. Why isn't have to figger out; agriculture was much easier to do in the South and, with fairly taxed imports/exports, they could easily sell cotton, etc, to buy the superior industrial products of England and Europe. That was NOT what the North wanted of course so they had squeezed the South almost from the founding of the Republic, and it was getting worse each year. I doubt the North thought the South would ever seperate but when it happened they just switched to military products and got richer than they would have ever done without the war.
The North had no plans to 'win a war' in 1861 (where did you get that idea, for either side?). But, with virtually all of the nation's ships and industrial plants in their hands, it was no great intellectual challange to devise one of blockade, was it? And, after only four years, with all that capacity and only four-five times the man power of the South, those really smart northern guys did in fact win the fight to subjegate the villianous South. Nothing to it when they had such brains and human virtue on their side, right??
Prior to 1861, and for some time afterwards, the South had no plans for a war at all, much less plans of how to win one; why should they? The South simply intended to form an economic Confederation that met the needs of the region, leaving the North to go its way in peace! Why should they not have thought so; southern states had freely joined in the Union (of still independant states) to escape a tyrannical government and had fought much of the second half of the American (civil war) Revelotion. And, unlike much of what had happened in the North, they usually won. The South had no Constitutional reason to think states couldn't freely seceed if the central government became oppressive, as it had done and certainly planned to continue.
The WAR came because of Lincoln and the indignate northern wealthy suddenly faced with the loss of easy financial pickings, not because of the South. At that, if the fight had not begun in Charleston it would have somewhere else because Abe was determined it would be so. None of it was to 'free slaves', that only came into the picture as a propaganda ploy to raise indignation in the northern population so they would send their sons south to die.
All of that is fact, not the 'winner's' continueing propaganda.
