ABOUT THIS BOOK

Before the Civil War, the American people did not have to worry about a federal tax collector coming to their door. The reason why was the tariff, taxing foreign goods and imports on arrival in the United States. Tariff Wars and the Politics of Jacksonian America attempts to show why the tariff was an important part of the national narrative in the antebellum period. The debates in Congress over the tariff were acrimonious, with pitched arguments between politicians, interest groups, newspapers, and a broader electorate.

The spreading of democracy caused by the tariff evoked bitter sectional controversy among Americans. Northerners claimed they needed a tariff to protect their industries and also their wages. Southerners alleged the tariff forced them to buy goods at increased prices. Having lost the argument against the tariff on its merits, in the 1820s, southerners began to argue the Constitution did not allow Congress to enact a protective tariff. In this fight, we see increased tensions between northerners and southerners in the decades before the Civil War began.

As Tariff Wars reveals, this struggle spawned a controversy that placed the nation on a path that would lead to the early morning hours of Charleston Harbor in April of 1861.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

William K. Bolt is Assistant Professor of History at Francis Marion University and former assistant editor on the James K. Polk Project.

REVIEWS

"Bolt wisely integrates the discussion of the economic aspect of tariff rates with the political dimension. We discover shifting viewpoints, pledges, promises, half-truths, and outright deceit deftly engaged in by the likes of Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, Andrew Jackson, and James K. Polk. This volume is critical to understanding the intersection of the American economy and politics in the antebellum period."
--John Belohlavek, author of Broken Glass: Caleb Cushing and the Shattering of the Union— -

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Cover

Title Page

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

List of Tables

Preface

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. "The new system which out Hamiltons Alexander Hamilton"

2. "Whatever the people will, at any particular moment, must be done"

3. "A step between the throne and the scaffold"

4. Judicious and Injudicious Tariffs

5. Scratching an Itch

6. The Harrisburg Convention

7. "Wolves in sheep's clothing"

8. "The people are generally greatly excited on the subject of the Tariff"

9. "Every American must give up a little for his country"

10. "Repeal the Tariff or Repeal the Union"

11. "Our country is at an awful and momentous crisis"

12. The Winter of Discontent

13. "Democracy seeks the benefit of all at the expense of none"

14. "Congress should be made to see and hear that the People are in earnest"

15. "If you elect us, boys, the Tariff of 1842 is safe"

16. "Mr. Polk's political death warrant is sealed"

17. "Even the tariff is not a question on which opposite political parties are united in taking opposite sides"

18. "Free trade and slavery are twin measures"

The Authors

The Actors

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index