Did Tariffs Really Cause the Civil War? The Morrill Act at 150
Did protective tariffs really bring about the Civil War? It's an argument that enthusiasts of the era are bound to encounter at some point, and also among the most contentious and least understood of the many debates surrounding the instigating causes of secession 150 years ago this month. The tariff thesis is contentious because it is often interpreted as an attempt to displace the primacy of slavery as the underlying instigator of events in Civil War causality. In this simplified form, the argument may be easily disposed of by referring to South Carolina's Declaration of Immediate Causes, which attributed their action to "an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery." Yet as we will see, the tariff issue cannot be completely discounted from the discussion of Civil War causality. Sociologist James W. Loewen attempted to do as much in a recent article for the Washington Post proclaiming tariffs one of the "5 myths" of the Civil War (this article has since provoked a lively discussion on the history blogosphere with economist – and fellow Austrian School thinker – Thomas DiLorenzo offering a strong rebuttal, and Loewen answering at HNN by digging in and reiterating his original position with little more to answer its indicated faults). The gist of Loewen's claim appears in the Washington Post: "[The Tariff Thesis is] flatly wrong. High tariffs had prompted the Nullification Crisis in 1831-33, when, after South Carolina demanded the right to nullify federal laws or secede in protest, President Andrew Jackson threatened force. No state joined the movement, and South Carolina backed down. Tariffs were not an issue in 1860, and Southern states said nothing about them. Why would they? Southerners had written the tariff of 1857, under which the nation was functioning. Its rates were lower than at any point since 1816." Several fundamental problems with this assessment immediately jump out. To state that tariffs were not an issue in 1860 is itself "flatly wrong," as my recent article in the Journal of the Early Republic illustrates. Nor was the Tariff of 1857 the source of southern angst, but rather the Morrill Tariff of 1861, which had been the subject of an intense political feud in Congress for some two years prior and an issue in the presidential election of 1860. The Nullification topic is long and complicated, enlisting not only the South Carolinians of 1828-33 but Thomas Jefferson before them and will unfortunately have to wait for another discussion, but given the timeliness of tariff issue a little much-needed light appears in order. The history of the Morrill Tariff is complicated by historiography though, and elsewhere in his articles Loewen identifies a strain of postbellum revisionism toward the tariff thesis within the "Lost Cause" mythos (for more on that see Robert Penn Warren's centennial essay on the war). By the late 19th century the "cause" of slavery was no longer in vogue for self-evident reasons, and many former slaveowners cast about for other ways through which they could interpret the war, the tariff (which incidentally happened to be at the center of the national political debate at the time) was a popular choice. This is a separate issue of historical discussion though, and the attempt to account for "Lost Cause" historiography should not obscure the actual history of the tariff itself. So where did the tariff issue stand on the eve of the Civil War? Like so many other facets of American politics at the time, it stood in the middle of a complex and heated political fight that fell largely on North-South sectional lines. The Morrill Tariff For some years prior to the war the tariff rates actually stabilized around a relatively free trade status quo. This was due to the Walker Tariff of 1846, a lesser known American counterpart to Britain's repeal of the Corn Laws that same year. Southern and western agricultural interests succeeded in lowering the tariff even further in 1857 with an across-the-board rate reduction, authored by Senate Finance Committee Chairman Robert M.T. Hunter of Virginia. The main destabilizing event of this status quo occured that same year with the Panic of 1857. Though caused primarily by international price shocks in agricultural food markets, the Panic breathed new life into the beleaguered protectionist movement, which proposed a high tariff as a policy remedy. The Panic pushed the tariff issue to the forefront of economic policy at the national level, already in a frenzied state over the Dred Scott decision that same year. Along with the territorial question surrounding slavery, tariffs became the primary issue in the hotly contested ballot Speaker of the House in 1858. In fact, Richard Franklin Bensel has shown that southern steadfastness on the tariff combined with the protectionist inclinations of Republican candidate John Sherman kept the Speaker ballot deadlocked for over two months after the start of the session. Sherman was ultimately dropped from the ballot though in exchange for freshman Rep. William Pennington, and was given chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee as consolation. This brought the tariff issue to the forefront, as Sherman and Vermont Rep. Justin Morrill drafted a new and highly protectionist tariff schedule to replace the 1857 rates. The resultant Morrill Tariff bill was hotly debated for the better part of a year in the House, ultimately passing on strict North-South lines in May 1860 shortly before the summer recess. Enter Robert M.T. Hunter, author of the 1857 Tariff, who used his position on the Finance committee to table the measure in the Senate. Though little noticed at the time, Hunter's move (1) effectively guaranteed the tariff would become a campaign issue in the 1860 presidential election and (2) pushed the Senate's vote on the House bill back into the Winter 1860-61 lame duck session, the same that would become the infamous "Secession Winter" Congress. February 1, 2011 Copyright © 2011 Kosmos
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