The Road to Civil War (sic) II

(My G, G Grandfather - Tariff Must Be Reduced) =========================================

The 1828 Tariff of Abominations
Part 2 of a Series

Mike Scruggs

The 1816 Tariff had raised the average tariff on aggregate (all) imports from less than seven percent to over 20 percent. Henry Clay’s clearly protectionist 1824 Tariff had increased average dutiable rates from about 25 percent to 35 percent. Southern protest was so strong that the state legislatures of five of eight Southern states passed resolutions declaring it unconstitutional, and the South Carolina Legislature added that Henry Clay’s “American System” of tariffs and corporate subsidies was “a system of robbery and plunder” that “made one section tributary to another.” The 1824 Tariff resulted in painful increases in the cost of living and doing business in Southern states and severely reduced Southern export business. South Carolina’s export business dropped 25 percent over the next two years.

Yet the tragic suffering imposed on the South by the 1824 Tariff was ignored by the Northern special interests that dominated Congress. Higher tariffs meant bigger profits to them. In 1828, another tariff bill was passed, which was so overbearing and unjust that it is known in history as the Tariff of Abominations. The dutiable tariff rate was raised to an average of 50 percent, bringing the aggregate rate on all imports to 35 percent, the highest in history to that point. The original impetus was that Northern textile manufacturers believed they needed greater protection, but the bill became a comprehensive bribery scheme to win the votes of Middle and Western states for the party of John Quincy Adams in the 1828 election. Duties on many raw materials were added, which had a mixed effect on New England, since they imported many raw materials for their industries. Logrolling was extensive, and Hemp from Kentucky and lead from Missouri were also added to gain more votes and grease the bill’s passage through the House. Many items had both fixed and ad valorem rates to disguise the enormous total increase in the tariff burden. Minimum fixed rates added to both the costs and confusion. In addition, tariffs were put on many formerly duty-free items.

South Carolina Representative George McDuffie made some memorable and prophetic remarks to the House during the 1828 debate:

“If the Union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, the historian who records those disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation. Its inevitable tendency is to corrupt, not only the public functionaries, but all those portions of the Union, and classes of society, who have an interest, real or imaginary, in the bounties it provides, by taxing other nations and other classes. It brings ambition, and avarice, and wealth, into a combination it is fearful to contemplate, because it is impossible to resist.”

Yet the 1828 Tariff of Abominations passed the House 105 to 94. It’s greatest region of resistance was the South, where, except for Tennessee and Kentucky, the vote was 50 to 3 against it. Logrolling promises on sugarcane imports probably influenced the three favorable votes. New England representatives voted against it 23 to 16, but the combined Mid-Atlantic and Western states plus Kentucky and Tennessee supported it by a vote of 86 to 21. The bill finally passed the Senate 26 to 21, with the only Southern votes being two from Kentucky, one from Tennessee, and one from Louisiana, all heavily influenced by logrolling and pork-barreling.

Senator Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri explained the injustice felt by Southerners: “The South believed itself impoverished to enrich the North.” Benton further pointed out the appalling burden the Federal Government had placed on Southern States: “…its double action of levying revenue upon the industry of one section of the Union and expending it in another.”

Tariff historian Frank W. Taussig, writing in 1888, described passage of the 1828 Tariff in censorious terms:

“The whole scheme was a characteristic product of the politicians who were then becoming prominent as leaders of the Democracy, men of a type very different from the statesmen of the preceding generation.

Its passage, however, resulted in the defeat of John Quincy Adams in the 1828 presidential election by Andrew Jackson of Tennessee, who opposed the Tariff. His Vice President, John C. Calhoun of South Carolina, a brilliant intellectual and elegant speaker, became one of the strongest advocates for States Rights and one of the most vehement opponents of protective tariffs in the antebellum era. Jackson, a fellow Southerner, had similar views but was not as committed to expeditious correction of the evils thereof. Understandably, Jackson believed that materials important to military defense should be protected. But he also believed that the tariff should not be reduced until the national debt was paid off. This thinking must have alarmed Calhoun, since Southern States paid most of the tariff revenues while the Northern States received a disproportionate share of the benefits to spend on Northern “internal improvements.” This meant that the South would be called upon to pay off most of a national debt caused by over-expenditures on mostly Northern internal improvements—an outrageous injustice.

The Tariff of Abominations was regarded with almost universal anger in the South. In December 1828, Calhoun wrote an anonymous 35,000-word dissertation entitled “South Carolina Exposition and Protest.” His main point was that in a constitutional republic power must not be allowed to define its own limits, otherwise growing tyranny is inevitable.
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The Road to Civil War (sic) II