The Compromise Tariff of 1833

Military Conflict Narrowly Avoided
Part 4 of a Series

Mike Scruggs

On November 24, 1832, the people of South Carolina acting through a Nullification Convention authorized by the state legislature, passed an Ordinance of Nullification declaring the 1828 and 1832 U.S. tariff acts unconstitutional and therefore unenforceable. On January 16, 1833, President Andrew Jackson requested that Congress pass a Force Bill to authorize military intervention against South Carolina. However, others, including former supporters of the 1828 Tariff of Abominations—Senator Henry Clay and President Andrew Jackson’s Secretary of State Martin Van Buren—saw that the only way to avoid the impending clash of arms was compromise and began working on a compromise tariff bill to replace the 1832 Act with terms more amenable to South Carolina and other Southern states. Fortunately, John C. Calhoun was back in the Senate to assist. The Force Bill was tabled by a vote of 30 to 15 in the Senate, and the House Judiciary Committee voted 4 to 3 against it while both the House and Senate worked franticly to come up with what would become the Compromise Tariff of 1833. Meanwhile, South Carolina had postponed enforcement of Nullification to avoid unnecessary conflict. General terms for the compromise were reached after a private meeting between Clay and Calhoun.

Jackson’s Force bill was passed only after the Compromise Tariff had passed by votes of 119 to 85 in the House and 29 to 16 in the Senate, making the Force Bill effectively moot. South Carolina voided its Nullification Ordinance and disbursed the 27,000 military reserves called up to defend its territory and rights against Federal intervention.

The 1833 Tariff Act authorized tariff rates to be gradually rolled back by 1842 to the levels of 1816, with dutiable ad valorem rates averaging about 20 percent.

Many had opposed the concept of nullification, but the fact is that it forced a rethinking of the unbearable tariff injuries being imposed on the South and resulted in intelligent compromise, just as it was intended to do in the conception of Calhoun. What is shocking is that the lessons of the Nullification Crisis of 1832—with its narrowly avoided threat of secession and armed conflict—were forgotten by 1860 when the more populous North again tried to impose unbearable taxes and extreme economic disadvantages on the South for the sake of Northern industrial growth and prosperity.

Whig leaders in congress were again able to pass protectionist legislation in the Tariff of 1842, also known as the Black Tariff. This tariff primarily benefited the iron industry, nearly doubling the rates for both raw and manufactured iron goods. By 1843, imports had dropped by half, thus actually reducing total tariff revenues. Exports dropped approximately 20 percent. Following the 1844 elections, the disastrous 1842 Tariff was replaced by the 1846 Walker Tariff, lowering rates to pre-1842 levels.

The 1857 “Free-Trade” Tariff was passed by a nonpartisan coalition dominated by conservative Southern Democrats and reduced tariff rates to almost free-trade levels. This was strongly opposed by Northern industry and Northern industrial workers. When a financial panic caused by loose banking practices resulted in a Northern recession in 1857, the new Republican Party—continuing the old Whig economic policies— blamed it on free trade and the 1857 Tariff Law. By 1858, the Republicans had submitted new tariff legislation, the Morrill Tariff, to the House Ways and Means Committee.

Like many modern legislative attempts to conceal the purposes, costs, and political and economic benefits and injuries of a bad bill, the title of the Morrill Tariff commenced with deceptive obfuscation:

“An Act, to provide for the payment of outstanding treasury notes to authorize a loan…”

Tying legislation to urgently needed treasury needs or some alleged crisis is a common method for rushing bad bills through Congress. Sometimes bad bills are held back so they can be rushed through Congress under the cover of urgency and confusion. No one, of course, wants to be responsible for halting the wheels of government and causing injury to the public, whether the alleged damaging consequences are probable or the improbable fiction of demagogues. Many bills are filled with pages of unrelated pork-barreling to enhance their passage through Congress. The Morrill Tariff made extensive use of logrolling and pork-barreling to entice bargains made between various special interests. These corrupt bargains, however, inflicted injury and injustice on the South.

The whole history of protectionist legislation, especially from 1824 to 1832, should have alerted all Americans to the danger that the Morrill Tariff posed to the nation. Its ideological predecessors had caused a crisis in 1832 that brought the nation to within days of secession and military conflict that could easily have expanded. Yet sectional prejudices and greed blinded the dominant Northern political and economic interests to that danger in 1860 and 1861. The Morrill Tariff was so damaging to the interests of the Southern cotton-producing states that it essentially forced them out of the Union. The hardened and unrelenting prejudice of the dominant political and economic interests of the North toward the South left little hope for justice or reasonable compromise. Secession was felt to be the only honorable choice.

The Confederate Constitution outlawed protective tariffs, and the Confederate Congress set an economic course for low-tariffs and free trade. But what would happen to Northern ports, shipping, industry, labor, and tax revenues under this new economic scenario? The answer was obvious, and Northern commercial interests and newspapers began to call for military intervention to prevent Southern Independence.
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The Compromise Tariff of 1833