Morrill Tariff

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. The tax is significant for severely altering American commercial policy after a period of relative free trade to several decades of heavy protection. It is also remembered as a contentious issue that fueled sectional disputes on the eve of the American Civil War.

History & 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 subsequent upward adjustments to it over the next three years raised the average rate to 47%.

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 states like Pennsylvania (home of powerful Congressman and steel mill owner Thaddeus Stevens) and New Jersey where several industrial interests backed the rate hike. Southerners campaigned against the bill. They opposed the tax increase because it hurt them financially. 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.

The Senate took up the Morrill bill after returning in December 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. It was one of the last bills signed by outgoing Democratic president, James Buchanan.

The bill was proposed in response to the Panic of 1857, which industrialists at the time blamed on the country's free trade policy (economists now recognize it was caused by other unrelated 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 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. Out of four Secession Declarations, only Georgia's mentions the tariff issue in detail [1] 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."[2]

Historiography

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.

Two of the earliest people to write about the Morrill Tariff were Karl Marx and Charles Dickens, who both published opinion pieces in British and American newspapers. Dickens believed the Morrill Tariff to have been the underlying motive of the civil war. Writing that "The quarrel between the North and South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel," Dickens attacked the tariff as an unjust economic measure and called Lincoln's unionist rhetoric "specious humbug."

Marx took the alternative view and denied the tariff's role entirely:

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.

The Morrill Act was still being debated in the Senate when the first southern states began to secede (and its senators resigned) and the bill did not become law until the end of February. However several southern politician cited the new tariff act, or its anticipated adoption in the near future, as one of their reasons for secession, so its role as a cause cannot be dismissed. The war itself did not begin until the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861.

Marx's view has, in part, given rise to a common misconceptionthat the bill was passed as a result of the Civil War. Another variation contends that the Morrill Tariff was adopted to finance the Civil War. The bill had been pending in Congress well over a year before the war broke out though.

In more recent times, scholars have taken both views. Some historians such as Charles Beard and most economists, especially Thomas DiLorenzo, follow Dickens and 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 Alan Nevins and James M. McPherson take a view closer to Marx's, arguing that the tariff dispute was secondary to the issue of slavery

External Links

• A Brief Explanation of the Impact of the Morrill Tariff