The Second American Party System and the Tariff
Following the crises with France and Britain, the federal government came to rely almost exclusively on the tariff as a source of funding. As the nation’s economic and political systems began to mature and diversify, however, the consensus on the tariff’s role gradually broke down. Particularly within the context of sectional and partisan conflict, the tariff assumed a political significance beyond its putative revenue-generating function.
1819 In the wake of the Panic of 1819, a credit crisis sparked by a sharp drop in world agricultural prices, numerous economic interests pushed for protective tariffs to minimize the threat of cheap imported goods from Europe, setting the stage for the later tariffs of 1824 and 1828.
In the landmark case McCulloch v. Maryland, the Supreme Court struck down a Maryland state tax on notes issued by the Baltimore branch of the Second National Bank of the United States. The Maryland legislature had designed the tax to preserve the competitive advantage of state-chartered banks and to reign in the Second Bank’s powers to monitor reserves and regulate credit. Speaking for the Court, Chief Justice John Marshall rejected the defendants’ claims that (1) Congress had no constitutional authority to charter a Bank and (2) Maryland had a right to tax activities within its borders. He rebutted the first argument with an expansive reading of the "necessary and proper" clause. Favoring the Federalists’ "loose construction" of the Constitution, he determined control of currency and credit well within the purview of congressional authority. In rejecting the second point, Marshall concurred with Daniel Webster, legal counsel for the bank, who insisted that a tax employed in this manner would render the national government dependent on the states. "The power to tax is the power to destroy," Marshall asserted, and in so doing he proclaimed the dominance of national statutes over state legislation.
1824 Henry Clay, a champion of federally sponsored internal economic development (articulated in a set of policies, including protective tariffs, known collectively as the American System) served as Speaker of the House. He controlled the selection of committee chairman, and installed John Tod of Pennsylvania, an ardent protectionist, to head the Committee on Manufactures. Tod wasted little time reporting out a bill that levied a 35 percent duty on imported iron, wool, cotton, and hemp. Since the federal Treasury reported a surplus, the rate increases had little to do with revenue needs.
1828 During the administration of John Quincy Adams, Jackson supporters lobbied to raise tariffs on hemp, wool, fur, flax, liquor, and imported textiles, a package catered to the benefit of states in the Mid-Atlantic, Ohio Valley, and New England. In fact, the tariff elevated the rate on manufactured goods to about 50 percent of their value, resulting in significantly greater protection for New England cloth manufacturers. The South, by contrast, did not benefit at all from this scheme, and stood to get soaked by higher prices on goods the region did not produce. The tariff also threatened to reduce the flow of British goods, making it difficult for the British to pay for the cotton they imported from the south.
Jackson supporters, with a strong southern base, normally opposed the protective tariffs advanced by the Adams faction. The 1828 bill represented a blatant appeal to sections where the Jacksonians were weaker politically. Congressional supporters of Jackson felt they had little to lose, figuring their rivals would shoulder the blame in the upcoming election anyway. The marked upward revision of the tariff rates enacted by the Tariff of 1828, dubbed the Tariff of Abominations by its southern opponents, formed the basis for the nullification crisis.
John Calhoun and South Carolina’s Nullification Strategy
Calhoun was one of the most fervent War Hawks during the 1812 crisis with Britain, and a sponsor of the tariff enacted in 1816. Constitutionally speaking, his early career seemed to mark him as a loose contructionist. During the late 1820s, however, his views began to undergo significant revision. The South Carolina senator ultimately emerged as the era’s leading states’ rights sectionalist.
Calhoun’s opposition to tariffs, or more accurately the federal powers they implied, cannot be separated from his pressing desire to preserve the slave system. He feared that as border-south states gravitated to northern economic orbits, slavery in those states would grow less economically viable, their percentage of black slaves would diminish, and anti-slavery factions would succeed in eliminating slavery there (the percentage of slaves in states like Maryland had dropped precipitously since 1790). If slavery evaporated at the periphery, Calhoun believed, southern slave interests would face perpetual political perils. The same geographic coalitions that enacted the tariff laws in Congress could succeed in limiting slavery’s expansion into western territories, and might even threaten the institution in the deep south. Kentucky’s Henry Clay, one of the congressional champions of the tariff, actually proposed that some of the revenue collected be used to fund state colonization societies dedicated to relocating African Americans overseas. By diffusing the American black population abroad, such organizations effectively sought to phase out slavery in the United States. In this context, Calhoun and his supporters targeted the tariff issue to test the limits of federal power, since the south had continually lost tariff-related battles.
From Calhoun’s perspective, tariffs redistributed wealth from the South to northern manufacturers, which meant that federal power was being routinely employed to benefit one section over another. The fear that certain factions would capture federal powers to repress minorities had resonated since the Constitution had first been debated. The Virginia and Kentucky Resolves of 1798 [external link] , drafted in reaction to Alien and Sedition Act, hypothesized a limited compact among states authorizing a federal government of limited powers. Under this scheme, Congress could pass only those acts that served a common purpose — protective tariffs didn’t fit those requirements.
Calhoun believed a measure’s constitutionality turned on whether it provided equal benefits to all interests. In his South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828) he argued that the Tariff of 1828 was unconstitutional, and that the states had the right to nullify such laws within their borders by calling nullification conventions. Following this act of interposition, if three-fourths of the rest of the states affirmed Congress’s power to enforce the law, the dissident state had the option of seceding from the Union. Implicit in this scheme was the concept of the concurrent majority: If each state possessed a veto, then every conceivable interest would theoretically be represented. Calhoun trusted such a system to ensure a truly disinterested government where all interests had to be in accord. The threat of a state veto would prevent federal taxes not fair to all, which, in fact, meant most taxes. An institutionalized paucity of funds would discourage patronage-minded office seekers. For Calhoun, the concurrent majority would foster both disinterested laws and disinterested representatives, tempering the excesses of a corrupt democratic spoils system.
1832 In July, Congress passed legislation that lowered tariff rates somewhat, but retained the high 1828 rates on manufactured cloth and iron. In November, South Carolina’s special Nullification Convention declared the Tariffs of 1832 and 1828 unconstitutional [external link], and forbade collection of customs duties within the state.
Democrat Andrew Jackson served as both president and the leader of a national party. That party included pro-tariff states like Pennsylvania that had proffered supported for his candidacy. Jackson had never been as captivated by the tariff issue as most southern, agrarian, states-rights Jacksonians had (particularly South Carolinians), even though they represented his majority constituency. Jackson concerned himself more with defeating the National Bank and Indian removal. In December, he called for a further easing of tariff rates. Simultaneously, however, he declared secession a "revolutionary act" in his Nullification Proclamation [external link], and specifically attacked the idea that secession represented a viable constitutional option.
1840 In an electoral sweep, the Whigs gained a congressional majority and won the presidency (their candidate, William Henry Harrison, died soon after the election, with Virginia’s John Tyler replacing him). The party platform endorsed revenue tariffs designed to generate significant funds, part of which were to be distributed to the states to pay for internal improvements (roads and canals), another component of the American System.
In Britain, Parliament repealed the Corn Laws (external link] (tariffs on imported bread grains). Along with the Walker Tariff, the repeal of the Corn Laws seemed to signal a new era of freer world trade.
1857 Democrats lowered tariffs further. An economic panic hit soon thereafter, precipitating a fall-off in imports in the wake of the recession that followed. Government revenues plummeted by 30 percent. In response, the nascent Republican Party called for higher tariffs.