Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article

To: SoCal Pubbie
Tell me about the tarrif acts of 1845 and 1857 at least.

They aren't salient to my argument. My argument revolves around the money flow and the European trade. What percentages of what goods were taxed is not that important when you look at the bigger picture.

I've dug through the specifics of the tariffs a long time ago, and they invariably protected Northern manufactures, but I don't consider the details to be all that important.

Henry Clay's mercantilism (Lincoln's Mentor) made protectionism a centerpiece of their methodology.

93 posted on 04/09/2018 4:05:49 PM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 91 | View Replies ]


To: DiogenesLamp

Southerns COULD NOT have based secession on unfair taxes placed on them by northern interests. The democrats dominated congress in most of the antebellum period, led by southern democrats. The Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 forced a partial abandonment of the Whig position supporting higher tariffs, and by 1835 Andrew Jackson, a southern democrat from Tennessee, cut tariff rates roughly in half and eliminated nearly all federal excise taxes. The Whigs managed to raise tariffs again in 1842, but James Polk, another Tennessean, cut them again in 1846.

Though the South had achieved its goal of low tariff rates before the Civil War, they were cut again in 1857. The rate was all the way down to 18%.

The idea that tariffs caused the Civil War is an after-the-fact obfuscation of the reality that southern democrats simply refused to accept Lincoln as president. That’s why the word “tariff” is not found even once in South Carolina’s secession document, but the word “slavery” is found six times and “slave” another five.


101 posted on 04/10/2018 4:33:02 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 93 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
General/Chat
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson