"This sounds exactly like the 'agenda' I mentioned earlier concerning the NPS and our Federal Government."

Or, it could be an accurate historical assessment.

"HUGE tarriffs on imported goods coming into the South from Europe not only provided a large amount of revenue to the Federal Government but it also forced the South to deal with Northern industrialists in order to avoid these tarriffs."

No, not really. Tariffs were lower in 1860 than they had been in years. In fact, tariffs had been declining since 1833.

Here is an interesting study on the topic: http://www.dartmouth.edu/~dirwin/internal2.pdf

The author, Douglas Irwin, points out what many people fail to realize in the "North versus South" tariff discussion---the "North" really only included the northeastern section of the US, not the western states. Westerners had more in common with Southerners when it came to tariff interests. Being also primarily agricultural, they had just as much to lose from high duties on imported goods. Early in the 19th century, westerners often sided with northeasterners on the tariff issue because of other incentives, such as support for internal improvements. This changed in the 1830s, and western representatives increasingly became the swing vote in Congress. Often, westerners voted with Southerners against high tariffs. Irwin concludes this was instrumental in bringing tariff rates down.

"The South basically paid the tab for America's expenses during the early 1800's."

Do you have evidence of this?

"I'd have to conclude that "THE issue" at the onset of the war was how to get Washington's hand out of the South's pockets."

Well, you'll have to conclude that against the words of some actual Southerners of the time. Alexander Stephens refuted the claim that tariffs were a problem during Georgia's secession debate. He said:

"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that."---Alexander Stephens, November 1860, http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/steph2.html

Looking through other secessionist speeches and pamphlets, it is clear that concerns about slavery under the Lincoln administration was paramount.

"To-day our government stands totally revolutionized in its main features, and our Constitution broken and overturned. The new administration, which has effected this revolution, only awaits the 4th of March for the inauguration of the new government, the new principles, and the new policy, upon the success of which they have proclaimed freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and for us."---William Harris of Mississippi, December 1860. http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/wharris.html

"In my opinion the election of Mr. Lincoln, viewed only in the light of the triumph of a successful candidate, is not sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union. This, however, is a very contracted and narrow view of the question. Mr. Lincoln is a mere mote in the great political atmosphere of the country, which, as it floats, only shows the direction in which the wind blows. He is the mere representative of a fanatical abolition sentiment-- the mere instrument of a great triumphant political party, the principles of which are deadly hostile to the institution of Slavery, and openly at war with the fundamental doctrines of the Constitution of the United States. The rights of the South, and the institution of slavery, are not endangered by the triumph of Mr. Lincoln, the man; but they are in imminent danger from the triumph of the powerful party which he represents, and of the fanatical abolition sentiment which brought him into power, as the candidate of the Northern section of the Union, over the united opposition of the Southern section against him."---Georgia Governor Joseph Brown, December 1860, http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/jbrown.html

"It has been a conviction of pressing necessity -- it has been a belief that we are to be deprived in the Union of the rights which our fathers bequeathed to us -- which has brought Mississippi to her present decision. She has heard proclaimed the theory that all men are created free and equal, and this made the basis of an attack upon her social institutions; and the sacred Declaration of Independence has been invoked to maintain the position of the equality of the races. That Declaration is to be construed by the circumstances and purposes for which it was made. The communities were declaring their independence; the people of those communities were asserting that no man was born -- to use the language of Mr. Jefferson -- booted and spurred, to ride over the rest of mankind; that men were created equal -- meaning the men of the political community; that there was no divine right to rule; that no man inherited the right to govern; that there were no classes by which power and place descended to families; but that all stations were equally within the grasp of each member of the body politic. These were the great principles they announced; these were the purposes for which they made their declaration; these were the ends to which their enunciation was directed. They have no reference to the slave; else, how happened it that among the items of arraignment against George III was that he endeavored to do just what the North has been endeavoring of late to do, to stir up insurrection among our slaves? Had the Declaration announced that the negroes were free and equal, how was the prince to be arraigned for raising up insurrection among them?"---Jefferson Davis, Farewell to the Senate, January 1861, http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/davisexit.html

"To your... interrogatory I answer: that Lincoln stands before the country the representative of the anti-slavery ideas and agitators of the times-- that his election or defeat must rest alone upon the people of the free States to carry out those ideas and to execute the purposes of the agitators, or to repudiate those ideas and arrest that agitation. The one idea of opposition to negro slavery brought the republican party into existence, and holds it together. His election by a purely sectional vote of the people of the free States would pledge his administration and party and section to carry out the doctrines upon which he was run and would be elected. The doctrines of his party, are that negro slavery, as it exists with us, is religiously, morally, socially, and politically wrong. It is proclaimed by the great leaders of that party, by its political conventions, by its ministers of the Gospel, and by every other means they have of giving currency and importance to the declaration, that it is its mission to abolish slavery in the Union. Their legislation in most of the free States, and their efforts at legislation in Congress, prove that the Federal Constitution presents no barrier to the accomplishment of their purpose, where they have the power to override and disregard its provisions. They are pledged to exclude slavery from the common Territories, to abolish it in the District of Columbia, in the Forts, Dock Yards, &c., and to prevent the inter-State slave trade."---letter of John Reagan of Texas, October 1860, http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/reagan.html

"The real cause of the intense excitement of the South, is not vain dreams of national glory in a separate confederacy, nor the love of the filthy lucre of the African slave-trade; it is the profound conviction that the Constitution, in its relations to slavery, has been virtually repealed; that the Government has assumed a new and dangerous attitude upon this subject; that we have, in short, new terms of union submitted to our acceptance or rejection. Here lies the evil. The election of Lincoln, when properly interpreted, is nothing more nor less than a proposition to the South to consent to a Government, fundamentally different upon the question of slavery, from that which our fathers established."---James Henley Thornwell, January 1861, http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/thorn.htm