TRADE AND TARIFFS
Tariffs—duties levied on imported goods—have two purposes: to raise revenue and protect American industry. The raising of revenue is deemed necessary to support the cost of protecting America's ports and boundaries. A nation must regulate what is imported, and that regulation costs money. Revenue tariffs, however, have small individual costs and do not appreciable affect the cost of imported goods to the consumer.
Protective tariffs, on the other hand, are designed to raise the price of imported goods in order to encourage the purchase of comparable domestic products. High protective tariffs do tend to support domestic production, but they also hurt trade and are thus opposed by commercial traders—those in the import-export business. Since high protective tariffs are often reciprocated by other nations (on different products) high tariffs tend to stifle trade in general. On the other hand, because manufacturing in the U.S. was not as advanced as in England, manufacturing interests favored protectionism. Consumers and farmers were hurt by higher prices on taxed imports, and most agricultural areas eventually came to reject protectionism. Since manufacturing was more and more centered in the North as cotton and grain production boomed in the South and West, tariffs divided the country along regional lines.
Tariffs and international trade issues continue to be controversial political issues to this day.
Like other issues in the Era of Good Feelings, the tariff controversy was agitated by both the War of 1812 and the Panic of 1819. The Tariff Act of 1816 was enacted to protect American manufacturing against British postwar textile imports and promote national economic self-sufficiency. The Panic of 1819 encouraged high tariffs in order to protect American jobs and businesses. Except for the commercial interests of New England, high tariffs were supported in every section of the country. In time, the South and Southwest turned against protective tariffs because they increased the costs of imports and inhibited the export of southern cotton.
Summary of Tariffs
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS: South, west, needed roads, canals to get goods to market; Older sections had roads, etc.; didn’t want to spend money on what they already had; Federal government stayed mostly out of it. In 1817 Madison believed Constitutional amendment needed for U.S. to get into building of roads, canals. Calhoun supports under notion of "general welfare," military necessity. Also: Gallatin’s National Road Bill of 1807; National Road to Vandalia, Illinois.
LAND POLICY
THE NATIONAL BANK.
THE DIVISIVE ISSUE OF SLAVERY
Slavery has been called with good reason the great paradox of American history. Historians have often wondered how a nation built on the premise that “all men are created equal” could at the same time have endorsed the enslavement of Africans. It should be noted that, as one historian has said, “Slavery was old when Moses was young.” Until the Age of Enlightenment—the 18th-centurythe moral issues of slavery were hardly raised. But as more and more discussion of individual freedom and the nature of human institutions took place, critics began to view slavery is a moral shortcoming. It was outlawed in Great Britain before the American Revolution and throughout the Empire by the 1830s.
While there were squabbles over tariff, bank, and land policies, slavery was the most divisive sectional issue. This issue generated surprisingly little controversy from 1789 to 1819. Slave importations increased in the 1790s, but the slave trade was quietly abolished in 1808. Free and slave states entered the Union in equal numbers (11 each in 1819), and slave-produced cotton became king in the South. Southerners ardently defended slavery while most northerners were indifferent, believing slavery was a local issue. Many westerners, especially native southerners, also supported slavery. For many, the Missouri Compromise of 1820 settled the issue more or less for good.
While the young nation was preoccupied with organizing its government and sorting out the nature of American democracy, the issue of slavery continued to be treated as a political or economic issue. Most of the founding fathers—Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin, Hamilton—all understood that slavery was an institution that brought no glory to the country, and each of them feared to some degree the price that the country would eventually pay for having embraced slavery. As Jefferson said in 1820, “We have the wolf by the ear, and we can neither hold him, nor safely let him go.”
But in the late 1820s the abolitionist movement began and placed the issue in a different context. Slavery was no longer merely politically troubling or economically slanted: slavery began to be seen as a moral evil, and slave owners were seen as sinners. In response to the attacks of the abolitionists, Southern slave owners and those who supported the institution had three choices: they could ignore the abolitionists and continue to operate as if nothing had happened; second, some could—and did—begin to free their slaves, so that a substantial number of free blacks lived in the South in 1860; third, the most ardent supporters of the institution could claim that the charges were false, and that slavery was a positive good—God's order of things. This was the approach taken by the most radical slave owners, those who eventually became willing to see the country split rather than to give up their peculiar institution
Slavery or remained a moral, political and economic issue that dominated American life until the end of the Civil War, and its legacy has continued into modern times. Although the issue tended to follow geographical lines, opinion was divided in all sections of country. Many southerners opposed slavery but stuck with it because of invested capital in slaves. Many Northerners opposed slavery but were afraid of a flood of cheap labor if the slaves were freed. Southern non-slave owning farmers resented unfair competition from slave labor. In short, it posed a dilemma for anyone aware of its dark presence, and as is well known, it took a great war to finally end it.
1819: AFRICAN SLAVE TRADE—$50 bounty granted to informers of illegal slaves being imported when seized;
1820: Foreign Slave Trade declared piracy; death penalty assigned for U.S. citizens engaged in slave trade.
1820: Missouri Compromise
States' Rights. Sometimes sectional differences in the country could be seen in terms of individual states' rights. The American Revolution had been fought against centralized power, and in the great debate over the Constitution, those who opposed ratification had also feared an excess of centralized—or federal—power. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 in response to the Sedition Act of that year were a manifestation of states' rights. The South Carolina protest against what they called the “tariff of abominations” in 1828 was an individual states' rights issue, as was the nullification crisis of 1832. Sometimes the states or regions may have had a strong case. For example, in the case of protective tariffs, which were imposed to support northern industry in the face of European competition, a case could be made that the Constitution was designed “to promote the general welfare” of the entire country, and not the particular welfare of a certain section.
Leaders like Alexander Hamilton, however, had repeatedly made the case that an order for America to be strong, it needed to develop its own industry and commerce without being dependent upon European nations. In any case, instead of issuing its ordinance of nullification, South Carolina might well have challenged the constitutionality of the tariff in the federal courts. Whether they would have won their case remains to be seen; it is likely that John Marshall, who supported both judicial nationalism and economic nationalism, as when he declared that the federal government had sole control over interstate commerce, might well have ruled against South Carolina. But the legitimacy of the tariff was never tested in the courts.
The states' rights issue was sharply outlined in the famous debate between Senator Robert Hayne of South Carolina and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts in 1830. The question was, did the federal government—the union—or did the states have the last word in political power. Jackson had declared in his proclamation to the people of South Carolina at the right of the state to nullify or oppose federal law was “impracticable absurdity.” and Daniel Webster is ringing oratory extolled the virtues of the Union, which he described as “dear to every American heart.” 1861 and thousands of Yankee young men were willing to go off and fight for the principal of the Union, just as many Southern boys were fighting for what they believe to be Southern states' rights.