Any serious student of the Civil War knows that the Southern economic complaints referred to the tariff, unless they specified otherwise. The Florida declaration complained that some federal legislation favored the North at the expense of the South:
"The majority section may legislate imperiously and ruinously to the interests of the minority section not only without injury but to great benefit and advantage of their own section. In proof of this we need only refer to the fishing bounties, the monopoly of the coast navigation which is possessed almost exclusively by the Northern States and in one word the bounties to every employment of northern labor and capital. Such a government must in the nature of things and the universal principles of human nature and human conduct very soon lead, as it has done, to a grinding and degrading despotism."
The Texas declaration likewise complained that unfair federal legislation was enriching the North at the expense of the Southern states:
"They [the Northern states] have impoverished the slave-holding States by unequal and partial legislation, thereby enriching themselves by draining our substance."
Everyone knew this was referring to the tariff.
The Georgia declaration complained about federal protectionism and subsidies for Northern business interests:
"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 [about $8.5 million in today’s dollars] is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually [about $34 million today] for the support of these objects. These interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually [about $119 million today], throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and have clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors."
Eleven years earlier, Senator John Calhoun of South Carolina discussed some of the South’s concerns about Northern political and economic domination in a famous speech in the U.S. Senate in 1850:
"Had this destruction [of the balance between the Northern and Southern states] been the operation of time without the interference of government, the South would have had no reason to complain; but such was not the fact. It was caused by the legislation of this government, which was appointed as the common agent of all and charged with the protection of the interests and security of all.
"The legislation by which it has been effected may be classed under three heads: The first is that series of acts by which the South has been excluded from the common territory belonging to all the States as members of the federal Union--which have had the effect of extending vastly the portion allotted to the Northern section, and restricting within narrow limits the portion left the South. The next consists in adopting a system of revenue and disbursements by which an undue proportion of the burden of taxation has been imposed upon the South, and an undue proportion of its proceeds appropriated to the North. And the last is a system of political measures by which the original character of the government has been radically changed. . . .
"I have not included the territory recently acquired by the treaty with Mexico. The North is making the most strenuous efforts to appropriate the whole to herself, by excluding the South from every foot of it. If she should succeed, it will add to that from which the South has already been excluded 526,078 square miles, and would increase the whole which the North has appropriated to herself to 1,764,023, not including the portion that she may succeed in excluding us from in Texas. To sum up the whole, the United States, since they declared their independence, have acquired 2,373,046 square miles of territory, from which the North will have excluded the South, if she should succeed in monopolizing the newly-acquired Territories, about three-fourths of the whole, leaving to the South but about one-fourth. Such is the first and great cause that has destroyed the equilibrium between the two sections in the government.
"The next is the system of revenue and disbursements which has been adopted by the government. It is well known that the government has derived its revenue mainly from duties on imports. I shall not undertake to show that such duties must necessarily fall mainly on the exporting States, and that the South, as the great exporting portion of the Union, has in reality paid vastly more than her due proportion of the revenue; because I deem it unnecessary, as the subject has on so many occasions been fully discussed. Nor shall I, for the same reason, undertake to show that a far greater portion of the revenue has been disbursed in the North, than its due share; and that the joint effect of these causes has been to transfer a vast amount from South to North, which, under an equal system of revenue and disbursements, would not have been lost to her. If to this be added that many of the duties were imposed, not for revenue but for protection--that is, intended to put money, not in the Treasury, but directly into the pocket of the manufacturers--some conception may be formed of the immense amount which in the long course of sixty years has been transferred from South to North. (Calhoun, speech to the U.S. Senate on the Henry Clay compromise measures, March 4, 1850)"
The South’s long-standing opposition to the federal tariff was a factor that led to secession. The South’s concern over the tariff was nothing new. South Carolina and the federal government nearly went to war over the tariff in 1832-1833. In the session of Congress before Lincoln’s inauguration, the House of Representatives passed a huge increase in the tariff, over the loud objections of Southern congressmen. Naturally, this alarmed Southern statesmen at all levels, since the South was usually hit hardest by the tariff. One only has to read the many speeches that Southern representatives gave against the 1860-1861 tariff increase, i.e., the Morrill Tariff, to see how seriously they took this issue. Moreover, in the congressional debates from the previous four decades, one can find dozens of Southern speeches against the tariff. Opposition to the tariff led some Southern leaders to talk of secession over thirty years before the Civil War occurred (Walter Brian Cisco,
Taking A Stand: Portraits from the Southern Secession Movement, Shippensburg, Pennsylvania: White Mane Books, 2000, pp. 1-44). Scholars who argue that Southern statesmen didn’t really care about the tariff and that this was merely a “smoke screen” are ignoring a massive body of historical evidence.
The South had valid complaints about the tariff. Adams discusses the effects of the tariff on the Southern states:
"The high tariff in the North compelled the Southern states to pay tribute to the North, either in taxes to fatten Republican coffers or in the inflated prices that had to be paid for Northern goods. Besides being unfair, this violated the uniformity command of the Constitution by having the South pay an undue proportion of the national revenue, which was expended more in the North than in the South. . . ." (
When In the Course of Human Events, p. 26)
Economist Frank Taussig, one of the foremost authorities on the tariff, acknowledged that the tariff fell “with particular weight” on the South:
"The Southern members, who were almost to a man supporters of Jackson, were opposed unconditionally not only to an increase of duties, but to the high range which the tariff had already reached. They were convinced,
and in the main justly convinced, that the taxes levied by the tariff fell with particular weight on the slave States. . . ." (
The Tariff History of the United States, New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1910, p. 54, emphasis added)
Steven Weisman, in his study of the role that taxation has played in American history, notes that Northern economic exploitation of the South, particularly in the form of the tariff, was a major concern to Southerners:
"The tariff would effectively raise prices on clothing, farm equipment and many other everyday necessities. Farmers in the South . . . squeezed by these high prices and struggling to sell their own farm products abroad, protested the high tariff. . . .
These were some of the factors that thrust Lincoln to the threshold of the most violent and transforming presidency in American history. . . .
"South Carolina went first. The state’s grievances had been long-standing and not simply focused on slavery. Its major complaint went to the heart of the nation’s finances–tariffs. A generation earlier, South Carolina had provoked a states’ rights crisis over its doctrine that states could "nullify" or override, the national tariff system. The nullification fight in 1832 was actually a tax revolt. It pitted the state’s spokesman, Vice President John C. Calhoun, against President Andrew Jackson. Because tariffs rewarded manufacturers but punished farmers with higher prices on everything they needed–clothing, farm equipment and even essential food products like salt and meats–Calhoun argued that the tariff system was discriminatory and unconstitutional. Calhoun’s anti-tariff battle was a rebellion against a system seen throughout the South as protecting the producers of the North. . . .
"The new [Confederate] president, Jefferson Davis, had been a hero of the Mexican War, a former Secretary of War to President Franklin Pierce, and a respected champion of the South as senator from Mississippi. He was a vigorous exponent of the view that the war was, at its core, not a fight to preserve slavery but a struggle to overthrow an exploitative economic system headquartered in the North.
"There was a great deal of evidence to support Davis’s view of the South as the nation’s stepchild. . . . The South had to import two-thirds of its clothing and manufactured goods from outside the region, and southerners paid artificially high prices because of the high tariffs. The South even had to import food. . . .
"From the perspective of the South, the North’s economy rested on a kind of state capitalism of trade barriers, government-sponsored railroads, coddling of trusts, suppression of labor and public investment in canals, roads and other infrastructures. Southern slave owners sought . . . to secure free trade, overseas markets and cheaper imports. Southern resentment of the tariff system propelled the Democratic Party to define itself as the main challenger to the primacy of the industrialist and capitalist overlords of the system." (
The Great Tax Wars: Lincoln to Wilson--The Fierce Battles Over Money and Power that Transformed the Nation, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2002, pp. 21-22, 52)
Weisman notes that even when New York merchants initially issued a resolution of support for the South’s right to leave in peace, Southerners suspected that the merchants’ support was based on their desire to maintain a commercial relationship that exploited the South:
"As South Carolina and other states seceded, New York’s merchants issued a resolution of solidarity with the South and the right of its states to break away. . . . Southerners were cynical about the support, knowing that it derived from a commercial relationship that primarily benefited New York and exploited the South." (
The Great Tax Wars, p. 76)
Weisman also points out that the Confederate Constitution’s prohibition against protective tariffs and government favoritism toward particular businesses was based on the South’s desire to avoid the Union practice of favoring certain industries. Under the Confederate Constitution, says Weisman,
"State legislatures were given the right to overrule . . . [officials of the national Confederate government] on certain issues, and taxes and tariffs “designed to promote or foster any branch of industry” were barred, as were public expenditures to benefit a particular section of the populace. These clauses were a residue of the South’s desire to avoid the Union practice of showering largesse on certain industries." (
The Great Tax Wars, p. 65)
Jeffrey R. Hummel, a professor of economics and history, notes the negative impact of the tariff on the Southern states and concedes that Southern complaints about the tariff were justified:
"Despite a steady decline in import duties, tariffs fell disproportionately on Southerners, reducing their income from cotton production by at least 10 percent just before the Civil War. . . .
"At least with respect to the tariff’s adverse impact, Southerners were not only absolutely correct but displayed a sophisticated understanding of economics. . . . The tariff was inefficient; it not only redistributed wealth from farmers and planters to manufacturers and laborers but overall made the country poorer." (
Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War, Chicago: Open Court, 1996, pp. 39-40, 73)
Economists Mark Thornton and Robert Ekelund explain why the tariff was such an important issue to the South:
"The South was basically an agrarian economy. This input-producing region’s major crops were tobacco, rice, and cotton, with much of the latter intended for export or for the textile mills of the North. Southerners had to earn their revenue to buy finished goods from the North and from abroad through the export of raw materials. Since tariffs on finished goods, such as textiles and luxuries, and on capital goods, such as machinery, raised the prices paid by Southerners, they believed correctly that the “terms of trade” were set against them by high protectionist tariffs. Thus, from the earliest days of the nation, the tariff issue was paramount to Southerners." (
Tariffs, Blockades, and Inflation: The Economics of the Civil War, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2004, p. 16)
Civil War scholar Webb Garrison, a former associate dean of Emory University, discusses the South’s long-standing problem with the tariff, the history of the tariff, and the fact that most Southerners believed their cost of living would go down if the South were independent:
"Long before Charlestonians began taking over forts, the U.S. Customs Service and the tariff system had angered the South. Tariffs on imported goods served to protect the industrialized North and boosted the cost of manufactured goods in the agricultural South.
"Such sectional differences had surfaced while the United States was still in its infancy. Congress had imposed an 8 percent tariff on imports in 1789, but by 1816 the rate had jumped to 25 percent and continued to rise. A ceiling was reached in 1828 when the so-called tariff of abominations boosted the cost of imported goods 45 percent. . . .
"When the seceded states merged to form the Confederate States of America, most of the southern population believed their cost of living would decline because tariffs would no longer be collected." (
Lincoln’s Little War, Nashville, Tennessee: Rutledge Hill Press, 1997, p. 27)
Historians William and Bruce Catton summarized the economic case that Southern leaders put forth in favor of secession:
"On the economic front, long-standing Southern grievances against Northern financial and commercial exploitation, Northern high-tariff policies, Northern monopoly of the coastwise trade, and similar items, were contrasted to the bright future that awaited an independent South, secure and prosperous on a foundation of cotton, free trade, and an inexhaustible European market with no Northern middlemen to siphon off the profits." (
Two Roads to Sumter: Abraham Lincoln, Jefferson Davis, and the March to Civil War, Edison, New Jersey: Castle Books, 2004, reprint of original edition, p. 251)
For much more documentation, see:
The Tariff and Secession
