Tariffs

Slavery in the territories was not the only issue dividing North and South. The question of tariffs (or taxes) on foreign imports proved so volatile that one state tried to nullify an act of Congress and threatened to secede from the Union. South Carolina saw tariffs imposed by the national government on foreign imports not for general revenue purposes, but to help domestic, manufacturing industries located mainly in the North. With depressed cotton prices and reduced foreign demand for raw goods from the South, the 1828 and 1832 tariffs eventually provoked South Carolina to desperate measures.

On November 24, 1832, in response to federal tariffs seen as favoring northern manufacturers against southern agricultural interests, South Carolina issued an Ordinance of Nullification declaring these tariffs "null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State." The State also claimed a right to "organize a separate government," i.e., to secede, because its leaders believed that the federal union existed as a compact or league of states. In a "Proclamation Regarding Nullification" (December 24, 1832), Andrew Jackson rejected this claim to a right of nullification and the notion that the federal union was merely a league of states.

Flags were flown at half-mast in Charleston, South Carolina, and throughout the South there was talk of boycotting northern goods. By 1832, when Congress passed a new tariff bill that did not lower tariff rates enough to please the southern states, talk turned openly to nullification. South Carolina went so far as to call a state convention that declared the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 "null, void, and no law, nor binding upon" the state. Whereupon President Andrew Jackson rebuked South Carolina and threatened to invade the state. When Congress passed his 1833 "Force Bill," which empowered the military to collect the tariffs, the now Senator Henry Clay fashioned yet another compromise that revised the tariff to South Carolina's satisfaction. This kept the tariff on the books and South Carolina in the Union. v South Carolina's attempt to nullify federal tariffs she deemed unconstitutional was not the first time a disgruntled state considered rejecting specific federal laws. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, which countered the federal Alien and Sedition Acts, maintained that the federal government was a compact of sovereign states and could only act according to powers specifically delegated by the states. Any broad interpretation and exercise of federal authority beyond the express grant of authority could therefore be considered null and void by individual states. In late 1814, five New England states also showed they could find enough reasons to complain of federal actions that appeared to favor one section of the Union over another. The Hartford Convention, called in response to the War of 1812 and its associated economic measures, debated (but rejected) secession from the United States and recommended amendments to reduce what they saw as a disproportionate southern influence in the Congress.

The Tariff of 1828 was somewhat more complicated than a simple disregard of the South by the North. This "Tariff of Abominations," as southerners took to calling it, originated as a result of a plot on the part of congressional Democrats to do political damage to President John Quincy Adams. Adams had narrowly won the election of 1824, and Democrats wanted Andrew Jackson to win the presidency in 1828. Democrats, therefore, including southerners such as John C. Calhoun, devised a scheme to discredit the Adams administration by raising the tariff rates so high that not even New England congressmen would support it. The plan backfired, however, as Congress passed the tariff bill with just a few amendments. However conceived, the Tariff of Abominations was widely protested in the South.

These early threats of secession show that Americans had long disputed the meaning of the American union and its connection to securing individual liberty. Did it rest on a compact theory of the federal union, with the Unites States acting more like a league of sovereign states than a nation of individuals? Or was the country based more fundamentally on the action of the American people as a whole, making the U.S. Constitution truly "the supreme law of the land" in its delegated spheres of governance? Tragically, for a nation founded upon ideals and not mere tradition or blood, this important question would eventually be answered by war instead of words.

The South felt increasingly isolated on the political front, especially when the Democratic National Convention in April 1860, led by the eventual nominee of the Northern Democrats, Stephen A. Douglas, refused to endorse a federal law protecting slavery in the federal territories. Southerners walked out of the convention. After a second convention in June failed to reconcile these opposing interests, Southerners bolted again and drafted a separate platform. For President they nominated the vice president under James Buchanan, Kentucky Senator John C. Breckenridge. But this turned them into a regional party. In fact, the electoral returns of 1860 showed it to be a regional election across the board, with the Republican Party as the party of the North and Northeast.

When the victorious Republicans suggested a modest protective tariff - something that had long been opposed in the South - Southerners became convinced that their concerns were not appreciated by the party now in power in the executive branch. Because Northerners had elected someone from a party hostile to the interests of the South, Southerners thought that the Union had made the first move in cutting them adrift: the Union had left the South "in sympathy," so seven Southern states responded by leaving the Union "in fact" by seceding.