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The Morrill Tariff of 1861 was a major protectionist tariff bill instituted in the United States. The act is informally named after its sponsor, Rep. Justin Morrill of Vermont, who designed the bill around recommendations by economist Henry C Carey. The tax is significant for severely altering American commercial policy after a period of relative free trade to several decades of heavy protection. It replaced the Tariff of 1857. The Morrill Tariff is also remembered as a contentious issue that fueled sectional disputes on the eve of the American Civil War.
History & Impact
The immediate effect of the Morrill Tariff was to more than double the tax collected on most dutiable items entering the United States. In 1860 American tariff rates were among the lowest in the world and also at historical lows by 19th century standards, the average rate being around 18% ad valorem. The Morrill Tariff immediately raised this average to 37%, and in subsequent years was revised upward until in 1864 (when it could only be collected from states under Union control) the average rate stood at 47%.
The act passed the United States House of Representatives by a strictly sectional vote during the first session of the 36th Congress on May 10, 1860. Virtually all of the northern representatives supported it and southern representatives opposed it. The bill was headed toward adoption in the United States Senate when Senator Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia, a free trade advocate, employed parliamentary tactics to delay the vote until the second session after recess. This second session did not meet until after the 1860 election, so the move guaranteed that the tax issue would come up during the campaigns that fall.
During the campaign the Republican Party endorsed higher tariffs in their 1860 platform and campaigned on a protectionist ticket - especially in states like Pennsylvania (home of powerful Congressman and iron producer Thaddeus Stevens) and New Jersey where several industrial interests backed the rate hike. A large majority of Southerners opposed the tax increase because it hurt them financially and campaigned against it (though protective tariffs could benefit Louisiana's sugar plantation owners from Caribbean imports). Unlike the north where manufacturers benefited from protection, the south had few manufacturing industries. Most of the southern economy depended on the export of crops like cotton and tobacco, which were hurt on the world scene by policies that adversely impacted international trade.
Returning in December, after the election, the Senate again took up the Morrill bill and intensely debated it for the next several months. On February 14, 1861 the new President-elect Abraham Lincoln publicly announced that he would make a new tariff his priority if the bill did not pass by inauguration day on March 4th.
- "According to my political education, I am inclined to believe that the people in the various sections of the country should have their own views carried out through their representatives in Congress, and if the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff."
On February 28 the Senate finally voted on and adopted the Morrill Tariff. The vote was again on sectional lines and came at the height of the secession crisis, but many southern senators had already resigned their seats to side with their states (somewhat ironically, thus ensuring easy passage). It was one of the last bills signed by outgoing Democratic president, James Buchanan of Pennsylvania.
The bill was proposed after the Panic of 1857, which northerners such as Henry Carey blamed on the country's free trade policy - a problem he claimed the bill would rectify with protectionism (economists now recognize that the Panic of 1857 was caused by other unrelated factors). The main purpose of the Morrill Tariff's high rates was the protection of industrial manufacturing, located mostly in the northeast, from foreign competitor products. Due to the penalties it imposed on foreign traded goods the act formented hostility and condemnation of the United States from abroad. Anger over the new American tariff caused many British commentators and politicians to express sympathy for the new Confederate States of America over the north. The high rates probably also contributed to the rapid decline in British exports to the United States in the early summer of 1861.
Other provisions of the bill altered and restricted the Warehousing Act of 1846
Relation to the Secession Controversy
The Morrill tariff was compared to and even higher than the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, which had led to the 1832 Nullification Crisis. On November 19, 1860 US Senator Robert Toombs denounced the "infamous Morrill bill" as the product of a coalition of "the robber and the incendiary...united in joint raid against the South" in his speech advocating secession to the Georgia Legislature. Of the four Secession Declarations, only Georgia's mentions the tariff issue. [1] (http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/full.html) The December 25, 1860 Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States complains about excessive taxation and heavy import duties - a reference to the then-pending Morrill Bill
- "And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures."[2] (http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=433)
Historians are not unanimous as to the relative importance which Southern fear and hatred of a high tariff had in causing the secession of the slave states, but there has been a growing tendency to lay more emphasis on it than formerly. Historical opinion of the bill's role dates to the commentators of the 1860's itself.
A debate was waged in England over which side to support in the war. Two irreconcilable views emerged. The tariff hurt the British economy and most British newspapers opposed it, siding with the South, and contending that the tariff was the major reason why the Southern states wanted to secede. One notable writer who supported this view was Charles Dickens who in All the Year Round 28 December 1861, wrote "The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel", attacking the tariff as an unjust economic measure, and calling Lincoln's unionist rhetoric "specious humbug".
One of the early voices in Britain opposing that view was that of Karl Marx, contending that the major cause of secession was slavery – and that the tariff was just a pretext.
- Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a free trade system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. Secession, therefore, did not take place because the Morrill tariff had gone through Congress, but, at most, the Morrill tariff went through Congress because secession had taken place.[3] (http://www.aotc.net/Marxen.htm)
Marx's paragraph, part of a much larger argument, suggests the interpretation that the Morrill tariff could not have been a cause for secession since it was passed after the first round of secession took place, and perhaps even that it was passed to finance the Civil War. However, as explained above, the Morrill Act had been debated in both the House and the Senate for many months even before the election of 1860. Several southern politicians cited its anticipated adoption as one of their reasons for secession, so its role as a cause cannot be dismissed.
Many modern historians have tended to preserve these opposing positions that developed in England, with few if any exploring any middle ground. Some historians such as Charles Beard and most economists, especially Thomas DiLorenzo, follow Dickens and have identified the Morrill Tariff as an underlying cause for the Civil War. They contend that the tariff was a source of major irritation for the south, and also note that many northerners opposed secession for fear that it would undermine the Morrill Tariff's implementation and the protection they received from it.
Historians including Alan Nevins and James M. McPherson take a view that is very similar to that of Marx. They downplay the significance of the tariff dispute, arguing that it was secondary to the issue of slavery. They point out that slavery dominated the secessionist declarations from the four states that published them (only Georgia's mentions tariffs at length). Nevins also points to the argument of Alexander Stephens, who initially opposed Georgia's secession and disputed the severity of the threat that the Morrill Bill posed in a speech on tariffs to the Georgia Secession Convention.
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