Morrill Tariff
The Morrill tariff of 1861 was a major protectionist tax bill instituted in the United States. The act is informally named after its sponsor, Rep. Justin Morrill of Vermont. The act is significant for severely altering the American tariff system 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 almost 40% and subsequent upward adjustments to it over the next three years raised the average rate to almost 50%.
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, 1861. 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 2nd.
- "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 president, James Buchanan.
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
Many historians have long neglected, overlooked, or misunderstood the role that the Morrill Tariff played in the larger secession controversy of 1860 and 1861. A common misconception claims that the bill was passed as a result of the Civil War. This claim dates to 1861 when it was first made by Karl Marx, who was writing as a newspaper commentator at the time.
- 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.
Marx's timeline was in error though. The Morrill Act was still being debated in the Senate when the first southern states began to secede but the bill became law by the end of February. The war itself did not begin until the attack on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861. Furthermore, several southern politician cited the new tariff act, or its anticipated adoption in the near future, as one of their reasons for secession. On November 19, 1860 Senator Robert Toombs of Georgia denounced the "infamous Morrill bill" as the product of a coalition of "the robber and the incendiary...united in joint raid against the South." The declaration adopted by South Carolina, the first state to secede, at their Secession Convention on December 25, 1860 similarly announced:
- "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."[1]
Another variation of Marx's argument claims that the Morrill Tariff was adopted to finance the Civil War, but again the war had not yet begun when the bill was proposed or made into a law.