You asked: "How can anyone possibly think that Southerners took up arms against an invading force of Northern soldiers to perpetuate the institution of slavery?"

There are numerous studies that explain how this was the case. Most recently, Chandra Manning's _What This Cruel War Was Over_. Further studies, including some I mentioned in a post to George (by Lacy Ford, J. Mills Thornton, and William J. Cooper), explain how the defense of slavery became consuming in the South during the 1850s.

Now, to give you some quick answer in the meantime, there are some very important factors that (while obvious) so many people ignore or do not consider. Slavery by 1860 was not simply an economic institution that benefitted a wealthy minority. Slavery had come to create the South's political, economic, social, and ideological landscape. Owning slaves was not only financially appealing to Southerners, but socially reaffirming. The institution as a whole provided a racial caste system which, according to white Southerners of the time, elevated even the lowliest white above every black.

But don't just take my word for it. Read the words of Jabez L. M. Curry from November 1860. (Curry was a Confederate legislator and later an officer in the 5th Alabama Cavalry.) [Emphasis added]

"Unreflecting partisans have sometimes insinuated, rather than openly expressed the opinion, that non-slaveholders are not interested in the institution of slavery. No greater or more mischievous mistake could be made, and a few suggestions will show it. The most perplexing problem to modern governments is the relation between labor and capital. Nothing is so terrible to England, nothing so fearful to France, nothing awakens such serious apprehensions with the thoughtful and far-seeing in the populous portions of the North. Laws are passed regulating labor, fixing wages, restricting capital and lubricating the friction between clashing labor and capital. Between the two opposing forces in free society, there is a constant tendency to collision. In Europe standing armies, and restricted suffrage, and artificial privileged classes, and sumptuary laws, and perpetual governmental interference, keep the interests of labor in subordination. In the North, facility of emigration to the fertile and unoccupied West and the conservative influence of slavery have mitigated the severity of the conflict, significant premonitions of the irrepressibility of which are occasionally heard in the 'strikes' of the operatives and the bated whisperings of 'bread or blood.' Where slavery does not exist, the antagonism between labor and capital is everywhere felt, and it is mitigated or aggravated by the mode of employment of both. The warfare 'between opposing and enduring forces' is inseparable from the unadjusted relation. There is no sympathy, no recognized and felt moral relation between the combatting forces and capital tyrannizes over labor, depriving it of political rights, of personal freedom and wresting from its hard earnings all but a scanty subsistence.

"The difficult problem finds a solution in African slavery, and here labor and capital are identified. The two are blended in harmony and political irreconcilability is adjusted by the providential and predestined distinction of color. Profits and wages in our social organization are blended. The slaveholder, owning both capital and labor in the negro, is interested in receiving for his labor a remunerating return, and hence the wages of mechanics and field-laborers in the South are higher than at the North. Besides, no matter how the price of produce may fluctuate, the slaveholder makes his largest possible crop, as his negroes must be clothed and subsisted. Labor is not turned loose adrift in times of pecuniary depression, and thus all classes of the community and every profession, the lawyer, the merchant, the overseer, the mechanic, the physician, the preacher, are interested in the products of slave labor. IN THE NORTH, SOCIAL DISTINCTIONS ARE DEFINED BY THE RICH AND THE POOR. IN THE SOUTH, COLOR DRAWS THE INEFFACEABLE LINE OF SEPARATION. In Europe, to preserve the wall of partition, privileged classes are created and voting is confined to a favored few or prohibited altogether. In the North, like distinctions would be made but for connection with the South. Putting out of view, in the event of abolition, the abhorrent degradation of social and political equality, the probability of a war of extermination between the races or the necessity of flying the country to avoid the association, it is susceptible of demonstration, that those whom the abolitionists stigmatize as 'the poor whites of the South' are more interested in the institution than any other portion of the community. Thank God, they cannot be duped by the wiles of their enemies, and none are more ready when the occasion demands to

"'Strike for their altars and their fires,
Strike for the green graves of their sires,
God and their native land.'"
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/curry.htm

I quoted Georgia Governor Joseph Brown's letter in my earlier post. Here is a later portion of that letter, which outlined his predictions of the financial burden abolition would place upon all white Southerners:

"What effect will the abolition of slavery have upon the interest and social position of the large class of nonslaveholders and poor white laborers in the South? Here would be the scene of the most misery and ruin. Probably no one is so unjust as to say that it would be right to take from the slaveholder his property without paying for it. What would it cost to do this? There are, in round numbers, 4,500,000 slaves in the Southern States. They are worth, at a low estimate, 500 dollars each. All will agree to this. Multiply the 4,500,000 by the 500 and you have twenty-two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, which these slaves are worth. No one would agree that it is right to rob the Southern slaveholders of this vast sum of money without compensation. The Northern States would not agree to pay their proportion of the money, and the people of the South must be taxed to raise the money. If Georgia were only an average Southern State, she would have to pay one fifteenth part of this sum, which would be $150,000,000. Georgia is much more than an average State, and she must therefore pay a larger sum. Her people now pay less than half a million dollars a year, of tax. Suppose we had ten years within which to raise the $150,000,000, we whould then have to raise, in addition to our present tax, $15,000,000 per annum, or over thirty times as much as we now pay.-- The poor man, who now pays one dollar, would then have to pay $30.00. But suppose the Northern States agreed to help pay for these slaves, (who believes they would do it?) the share of Georgia would then be about one thirtieth of the twenty-two hundred and fifty millions of dollars, or over seventy-five millions; which, if raised in ten years, would be over fifteen times as much as our present tax. In this calculation, I have counted the slave-holder as taxed upon his own slaves to raise money to pay him for them. This would be a great injustice to him. If the sum is to be raised by the tax upon others, the nonslaveholders and poor white men of the South, would have to pay nearly the whole of this enormous sum, out of their labor. This would load them and their children with grievous indebtedness and heavy taxes for a long time to come. But suppose we were rid of this difficulty, what shall be done with these 4,500,000 negroes, when set free? Some of the Northern States have already passed laws prohibiting free negroes from coming into their limits. They will help to harbor our runaway slaves, but will not receive among them our free negroes. They would not permit them to go there and live with them. Then what? One may say, send them to Africa. To such a proposition I might reply, send them to the moon. You may say that is not practicable. It is quite as much so as it is for us to pay for and send this vast number of negroes to Africa, with the means at our command."

Beyond simple economics, Brown told of the great social horrors he envisioned----racial equality:

"Again, the poor white man wishes to rent land from the wealthy landlord-- this landlord asks him half the crop of common upland or two thirds or even three fourths, for the best bottom land. The poor man says this seems very hard. I cannot make a decent support for my family at these rates. The landlord replies, here are negroes all around me anxious to take it at these rates; I can let you have it for no less. The negro therefore, comes into competition with the poor white man, when he seeks to rent land on which to make his bread, or a shelter to protect his wife and his little ones, from the cold and from the rain; and when he seeks employment as a day laborer. In every such case if the negro will do the work the cheapest, he must be preferred. It is sickening to contemplate the miseries of our poor white people under these circumstances. They now get higher wages for their labor than the poor of any other country on the globe. Most of them are land owners, and they are now respected. They are in no sense placed down upon a level with the negro. They are a superior race, and they feel and know it. Abolish slavery, and you make the negroes their equals, legally and socially (not naturally, for no human law can change God's law) and you very soon make them all tenants, and reduce their wages for daily labor to the smallest pittance that will sustain life. Then the negro and the white man, and their families, must labor in the field together as equals. Their children must go to the same poor school together, if they are educated at all. They must go to church as equals; enter the Courts of justice as equals, sue and be sued as equals, sit on juries together as equals, have the right to give evidence in Court as equals, stand side by side in our military corps as equals, enter each others' houses in social intercourse as equals; and very soon their children must marry together as equals. May our kind Heavenly Father avert the evil, and deliver the poor from such a fate. So soon as the slaves were at liberty, thousands of them would leave the cotton and rice fields in the lower parts of our State, and make their way to the healthier climate in the mountain region. We should have them plundering and stealing, robbing and killing, in all the lovely vallies of the mountains. This I can never consent to see. The mountains contain the place of my nativity, the home of my manhood, and the theatre of most of the acts of my life; and I can never forget the condition and interest of the people who reside there. It is true, the people there are generally poor; but they are brave, honest, patriotic, and pure hearted. Some who do not know them, have doubted their capacity to understand these questions, and their patriotism and valor to defend their rights when invaded. I know them well, and I know that no greater mistake could be made. They love the Union of our fathers, and would never consent to dissolve it so long as the constitution is not violated, and so long as it protects their rights; but they love liberty and justice more; and they will never consent to submit to abolition rule, and permit the evils to come upon them, which must result from a continuance in the Union when the government is in the hands of our enemies, who will use all its power for our destruction. When it becomes necessary to defend our rights against so foul a domination, I would call upon the mountain boys as well as the people of the lowlands, and they would come down like an avalanche and swarm around the flag of Georgia with a resolution that would strike terror into the ranks of the abolition cohorts of the North. Wealth is timid, and wealthy men may cry for peace, and submit to wrong for fear they may lose their money: but the poor, honest laborers of Georgia, can never consent to see slavery abolished, and submit to all the taxation, vassalage, low wages and downright degradation, which must follow. They will never take the negro's place; God forbid."
http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/jbrown.html

Both of these letters outlined the fears of many white Southerners---including nonslaveholding white Southerners. Slavery did not mean money in the pockets of the wealthy, but meant the social, political, economic, and racial stability of their cherished Southern society. An end of slavery, as they saw it, meant competition with blacks for jobs as well as social and political interaction with blacks. Four million freed slaves in the South was a terrifying specter for many whites.

You said: "Tarriffs on goods from Europe arriving in Southern ports were about 40%."

On which goods? Tariffs were specific to certain goods, and most goods arrived in northern docks. Furthermore, do you have evidence that only Southerners paid duties on tariffs?

"Check into revenues paid to the Federal Government by the population of the South as compared to the population of the North on a per capita basis. Not only did the South feed and cloth America they paid for the development of the country's infrastructure."

Okay, do you have sources for me to check?

"That 'agenda' I mentioned has blossomed in the recent years. It's kind of like the police telling the citizenry not to fight back and protect themselves. Why? Because if they did there would be no need for police. Our government doesn't want to lend any credibility to a cause in the South for fear that the population may rise up again and seperate itself from this grand Union."

You think historians, government officials, and the NPS are all skewing historical information in fear of legitimizing a modern secessionist movement? I have never heard that theory. Do you have any evidence of this at all?

"Secession was not uniquely Southern. Massachusetts discussed secession in 1830. The 1800's in this country saw the greatest increase in government control, government spending, and government growth in it's short history. We have become the same evil that we fought against in 1776."

I agree that secessionist talk was not unique to the South. I would also point out that the defense of states' rights was not unique to the South and the emphasis of federal authority over the states was not unique to the North. Americans adopted and denounced various political ideas according to their specific interests. When they feared that the federal government infringed upon their interests, Americans (North and South) emphasized the authority of the state. When the federal government proved to be a useful tool in protecting their interests, Americans (North and South) emphasized federal authority.

As for your comments about modern-day government issues, I have no interest in making this a political discussion. I am here to talk about history (as I would hope everyone is), not promote a political campaign or cause.