Lincoln and Tariffs

It was a shakedown cruise
And now we're sending out the news
There ain't no victory at sea
Unless it's mutiny
--Jay Ferguson

These pages have occasionally considered the myths surrounding Abraham Lincoln, often with the help of Professor Tom DiLorenzo. In this article, DiLorenzo discusses how Lincoln's position on tariffs helped vault him to the presidency.

By the 1850s, the world was largely moving away from mercantilist policy. Protective tariffs were being eliminated across Europe in favor of free trade. By 1857, the 15% average American tariff was the country's lowest import tax rate of the nineteenth century. The subsequent Confederate Constitution outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether.

Leaders in Northern states, however, were reluctant to surrender wealth gained from decades of cronyism afforded by the American System. They wanted to continue tariff protections as well as government funded 'internal improvement' projects. They also lusted for a central bank controlled by politicians similar to the Bank of England.

Lincoln was the ideal presidential candidate for the going institutionalization of the American System. He was a devout protectionist who, through his railroad industry connections, could wire himself into influential industrialists and media moguls in the North to get out the protectionist vote.

Two days before Lincoln's inauguration, his predecessor James Buchanan signed the Morrill Tariff bill into law which legally raised tariffs on some imports by 100%+ and hastened Southern secession proceedings.  The South, you see, had already borne the brunt of protective tariffs for many years. Being primarily agricultural producers, Southern states had to purchase manufactured goods either from the North (where protectionist tariffs permitted higher prices on domestic goods) or from producers abroad (whose goods were being taxed at exorbitant tariff rates). Consequently, Southern standard of living was being compromised whenever American tariffs were imposed on imported goods.

Lincoln would subsequently sign ten more tariff-increasing bills over the course of his presidency.

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln stated that it was his 'duty' to collect the newly implemented tariffs. He promised that, in one of the more thinly veiled threats uttered in presidential history, there would be no 'invasions' or 'bloodshed' as long as states dutifully collected the requisite tariff fees on imported goods. He subsequently imposed naval blockades on several Southern ports, including Charleston, to ensure tariff collection.

We know how that worked out.