There are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” -—James Madison
By 1828, the North had become more and more industrialized, leaving its agricultural roots taking the role of a great producer of products and goods. The South maintained its agrarian roots, growing much of the nation’s food as well as exporting a tremendous amount of agricultural products to Europe. As the North grew in factories and production, more people moved to the North. Meanwhile, the voting base in the South did not grow. When the North picked up increasingly more votes in Congress due to the population growth, it was in a position to assert its will. Unfortunately, it started to wield its power unjustly.
The greatest manifestation of this was the Tariff of 1828.
Many European goods were still much less expensive than the same goods from the North. In 1828, Congress, against the will of the Southern minority, imposed a tax on many European goods so that those goods would now be more expensive and U.S. citizens would then have to purchase the more expensive goods from the North. This meant Europe sold much less of their products to the U.S. and had much less money to purchase agricultural products from the South. Worse yet, Southerners also had to pay more for the goods they needed to farm and to live, so their cost of agricultural production went up.
This artificially drove up the cost of Southern agricultural products. Because Europe was the number one market for Southern agricultural goods, the South suddenly lost its market for its products. Therefore, the new tariffs made the North artificially wealthy and financially damaged the South . The citizens of the agricultural South were injured by this unequal treatment, despite prohibitions against this condition by the Constitution. They later expressed this treatment in secession decrees
South Carolinian John C. Calhoun’s reaction to the Tariff of Abominations was immediate. He became an Anti-Federalist and wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest. In this protest, Calhoun stated that if the Tariff of 1828 was not repealed, SC would secede.
More importantly he introduced his Doctrine of Nullification, the basis of which came from the states’ rights arguments of famous Anti-Federalists James Madison and Thomas Jefferson. Calhoun argued that the several states were not bound to stay under the Federal government if their rights were trampled under the U.S. Constitution. In other words, a state always had the right to nullify any act of Congress that violated the U.S. Constitution, and if Congress did not thereafter repeal said act, then the state had the right to secede.
Rather than abolish the unjust tariffs, Congress proceeded to slightly mitigate the tariffs with new tariffs in 1832. At that point, the South Carolina Legislature acted upon Calhoun’s protest and passed the Ordinance of Nullification, stating that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void within the state of SC.
Unbelievably, Congress also passed the Force Bill, which authorized the president to organize troops against SC if she did not enforce the tariffs. The War of Northern Aggression was only averted at that point by Senator Henry Clay of Kentucky, who offered a new compromise that would lessen the tariffs on SC.
The inherent problem remained that Congress had no problem continuing to pass legislation that benefited the Northern states at the expense of the Southern states simply because they had the votes and the power to do so. This became visibly manifest in Congress’adoption of the Morrill Tariff legislation in 1860-61.
From the time Lincoln had entered politics, he championed the political agenda of the “American system.” First advocated by his mentor, Henry Clay, it had become a three-part program of protective tariffs, internal improvements, and centralized banking. This program tied economic development to strong centralized national authority.
Lincoln believed that import tariffs were necessary, even at the expense of consumers. He believed that American industries needed to be shielded from foreign competition and cheaper imported goods. Lincoln and the Republicans were absolutely determined to push mercantilist legislation, and this was documented by their platform in 1860.
Regardless of the Republican party’s infrastructure and protectionist rationalization, the fact was that tariffs were about to go up again.
Many in the North could not perceive that there was anything threatening about tariff legislation.
Economically there was.
“The people of the U.S. owe their Independence & their liberty, to the wisdom of descrying in the minute tax of 3 pence on tea, the magnitude of the evil comprised in the precedent. Let them exert the same wisdom, in watching against every evil lurking under plausible disguises, and growing up from small beginnings.” —James Madison
An export economy's entire livelihood depends upon being able to trade. Unless one is in the business of intentionally sending regions of a country into recession, heavy protectionism is indeed an apocalyptic event to those economies.
The South provided increasingly greater percentages of exports while the north's share declined (this was in part due to the fact that protectionism between 1816 and 1846 severely impaired technological modernization in the northern economy by encouraging a lazy domestic monopoly).
By 1860 the south literally supported the entire nation in the world economy. It provided in excess of 70% of the country's exports with most of the remainder coming from Midwestern and Western agriculture. Despite the success of the Southern farmer, the tariff system was defeating the work of the entire region to the benefit of Northern and Mid-Western states that were receiving the benefit of the protectionism and inflated prices.
This smoldering inequality eventually led to the state of SC acting on December 20, 1860, to secede from the Union. Shortly thereafter, ten more Southern states seceded and created a new country, the Confederate States of America. This would not have happened if Congress did not abuse its power by treating its states and citizens unequally.
Because of all of this, John C. Calhoun is widely recognized as the Father of Secession. He established that the Southern states should not be subjected to continued unequal treatment under the U.S. Constitution. When unequal treatment continued unabated, on December 20, 1860, SC became the first state to secede from an oppressive Union.
Excellent; kudos.