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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 and 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%.

Frank Taussig, whose work "The Tariff History of the United States" is recognized as the foremost authority on the subject wrote: "In 1857 duties were still further reduced, the rate on most protected commodities going down to 24 per cent., and remaining at this comparatively low level until the outbreak of the Civil War." Taussig goes on to say:

It is true that the first steps towards a policy of higher protection were taken just before the war began. In the session of 1860-61, immediately preceding the outbreak of the conflict, the Morrill Tariff Act was passed by the Republican party, then in control because the defection of Southern members of Congress had already begun. It substituted specific duties for the ad valorem duties of 1846 and 1857, and made some other changes of significance, as in the higher duties upon iron and steel. Nevertheless, the advances then made were of little importance as compared with the far-reaching increases of duty during the Civil War.

Taussig also concludes: "It is clear that the Morrill tariff was carried in the House before any serious expectation of war was entertained; and it was accepted by the Senate in the session of 1861 without material change. It therefore forms no part of the financial legislation of the war, which gave rise in time to a series of measures that entirely superseded the Morrill (p. 159) tariff."

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 iron and manufacturing 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 (protective tariffs could theoretically benefit Louisiana's sugar plantation owners from Caribbean imports, but Louisiana's congressional delegation voted unanimously against the Morrill bill). 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 relate the Panic of 1857 to other 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. 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.

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 views emerged. One was that the chief cause of the war was slavery. One of the early voices in Britain supporting this view was that of Karl Marx, who contended that the major cause of secession was slavery – and that the tariff was just a pretext. Marx wrote, in October 1861:

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.

Following Lincoln's orders early in the American Civil War rescinding the orders (of Union generals) freeing slaves in captured territories, people in England (and even in the North) began to doubt the genuineness of the claim that slavery was the cause of the war. 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. An unsigned article taking this viewpoint appeared in Charles Dickens' magazine All the Year Round on 28 December 1861:

If it be not slavery, where lies the partition of the interests that has led at last to actual separation of the Southern from the Northern States? …Every year, for some years back, this or that Southern state had declared that it would submit to this extortion only while it had not the strength for resistance. With the election of Lincoln and an exclusive Northern party taking over the federal government, the time for withdrawal had arrived … The conflict is between semi-independent communities every feeling and interest calls for political partition, and every pocket interest calls for union … Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many other evils.… he quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.

The article that the above quote is from is widely regarded by scholars as a follow-up to an article from a week earlier, entitled American Disunion - the title of which is a variation on James Spence's The American Union, its Effects on National Character and Policy, with an Inquiry into Secession as a Constitutional Right, and the Causes of the Disruption (1861). There is no list recording the authors of the articles in the periodical, and the authorship of these particular two unsigned articles - widely attributed to Dickens - is a matter of considerable contention. Graham Storey in The Letters of Charles Dickens attributes both articles to staff writer Henry Morley, based on a letter by Dickens referring to Morley's reading a book on "American Union" for an upcoming article, and afterwards that Morley had hardly mentioned "Spence's book". None dispute that Dickens must have endorsed the ideas in the articles - for he read, and often revised articles to agree with his own point of view.

Many modern historians have tended to preserve these opposing positions that developed in England, with few if any exploring any middle ground. Historian Charles Beard and economist Thomas DiLorenzo 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 Allan Nevins and James M. McPherson 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 who, in a speech to the Georgia Secession Convention, disputed the severity of the threat that the Morrill Bill posed.

References

• Adams, Charles. "When in the Course of Human Events," Rowman and Littlefield - 2000
• Adrian, Arthur. Dickens on American Slavery, Journal of the Modern Language Association, Vol. 67, No. 4
• Beard, Charles & Mary. The Rise of American Civilization, Macmillan, 1927. ISBN 1100023497
• Graham Storey, editor. The Letters of Charles Dickens,The Pilgrim Edition, Volume Nine 1859-1861, Clarendon Press – Oxford, 1997, Assistant Editor: Margaret Brown, Consultant: Kathleen Tillotson ISBN 0198122934

External links

• A Brief Explanation of the Impact of the Morrill Tariff Posted on the Patriotist.com blog by Mike Scruggs, a member of Sons of Confederate Veterans.
• Marx & Engels - English newspaper articles on the American Civil War

• United States tariff acts