GELO Assignment – Option 2
Tariff of 1828, Slavery, and the Cause of the Civil War?
The main purpose here is to see was a root cause of division between the North and the South. Even the tariff of 1828 showed that the division between the North and the South was not just over the tariff but over the different economic systems of the two regions – one based on free labor in an industrial society, the other based on slavery in an agrarian society. The argument that the tariff was the main reason and that slavery was not a factor continues to today even though there is no evidence for it. (Note: there is a consensus among academic historians that tariffs did not cause the war.) Nonetheless, the tariff issue raised another issue, as John C. Calhoun’s source below will show. Think of how Calhoun’s source shows that the tariff issue was connected to the slavery issue. The second source is by Alexander Stephens, the Vice President of the Confederacy, written shortly after the Confederate States of America formed (and before the Confederate attach on Fort Sumter sparked the Civil War).
What did both authors’ mean when they referred to the “peculiar institution”? What was Calhoun’s argument for why South Carolina could leave the United States if it wanted to do so? How does the speech by Stephens, Vice President of the Confederacy, make clear what the conflict between the North and South was about? What did Stephens say was the foundation for the Confederacy’s Constitution (in opposition to the United States Constitution)? Note that Stephens was not just a random person. He was the VP of the Confederacy.
Source: John C. Calhoun’s South Carolina Exposition and Protest (December 19, 1828) – the excerpt is based off the version provided by Dr. Eric Foner in his Give Me Liberty! Textbook.
Background: Although Andrew Jackson was a firm believer in states’ rights, the beginning of his time in office was marked by a series of battles to preserve federal authority over the states. Many conflicts took place under the shadow of slavery and because the southern states were intensely concerned that the federal government would take action against that institution of slavery. The Tariff of 1828 was just such an issue. Called the “tariff of abominations” in South Carolina, it offered some protection to domestic manufacturers and raised the price of wool and iron in the South. In this essay, Vice President John C. Calhoun objected to the tariffs imposed by the federal government and in broad constitutional terms laid out his state’s justification for resisting the law. Calhoun argued that a single state might overrule or “nullify” a federal law within its own territory. Calhoun went even further and threated that South Carolina would leave the United States. His argument was that each state was sovereign and that it could leave the United States at its own will.
It provides Calhoun’s 1828 argument against the tariff. Did Calhoun see the tariff debate as connected to slavery? Or, as a separate issue?
The Source Itself:
PROTEST (December 19, 1828)
The Senate and House of Representatives of South Carolina, now met and sitting in General Assembly-through the Honorable William Smith, and the Honorable Robert Y. Hayne, their representatives in the Senate of the United States, do, in the name and on behalf of the good people of the said Commonwealth, solemnly protest against the system of protecting duties lately adopted by the Federal Government, for the following reasons:
6. Because that whilst the power to protect manufactures is no where expressly granted to Congress, nor can be considered as necessary and proper to carry into effect any specified power, it seems to be expressly reserved to the States by the tenth section of the first article of the Constitution.
7. Because even admitting Congress to have a constitutional right to protect manufactures by the imposition of the duties or by regulations of commerce, designed principally for that purpose, yet a Tariff of which the operation is grossly unequal and oppressive, is such an abuse of power, as is incompatible with the principles of a free government and the great ends of civil society, justice and equality of rights and protection.
8. Finally, because South Carolina, from her climate, situation, and peculiar institutions, is, and must ever continue to be, wholly dependant upon agriculture and commerce, not only for her prosperity, but for her very existence as a state-because the valuable products of her soil-the blessings by which Divine Providence seems to have designed to compensate for the great disadvantages under which she suffers in other respects-are among the very few that can be cultivated with any profit by slave labor-and if by the loss of her foreign commerce, these products should be confined to an inadequate market, the fate of this fertile State would be poverty and utter desolation -her citizens in despair would emigrate to more fortunate regions, and the whole frame and constitution of her civil polity be impaired and deranged, if not dissolved entirely.
Deeply impressed with these considerations, the Representatives of the good people of this Commonwealth, anxiously desiring to live in peace with their fellow citizens, and to do all that in them lies to preserve and perpetuate the union of the States and the liberties of which it is the surest pledge-but feeling it to be their bounden duty to expose and to resist all encroachments upon the true spirit of the Constitution, lest an apparent acquiescence in the system of protecting duties should be drawn into precedent, do, in the name of the Commonwealth of South Carolina, claim to enter upon the Journals of the [U.S.] Senate, their protest against it as unconstitutional, oppressive, and unjust.
Source: Excerpt from Alexander H. Stephens, “Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861 ” in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events with Documents, Narratives, Illustrative Incidents, Poetry, etc., vol. 1, ed. Frank Moore (New York: O.P. Putnam, 1862), pp. 44-46.
Background: Note that the tariff issue faded into the background after the tariff level was dramatically lowered within a few years. More than 3 decades later, in March 1861, Southern states had already started to secede from the United States and the Confederate States of America had just formed. Alexander H. Stephens (1812-1883), although originally opposed to secession, was elected vice-president of the Confederacy. After the war he returned to political service in Georgia and in the House of Representatives. He was elected governor of Georgia in 1882 and died in office. The following is from his Cornerstone Address, given in March 1861.
The Source Itself: The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us…