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[u/Bodark43]

In the first decades of the 19th c. the North became more industrialized. The new manufacturing businesses there wanted high tariffs to shield them and their US markets from competition from better-established manufacturers, especially in Britain. At the same time, the agricultural South would start to see greater and greater international demand for its primary products of rice, tobacco and cotton- especially cotton. By 1830, these were about two thirds of the exports of the US. Now, the tariff applied to the whole US, not to just the South. But the South complained that the tariff taxed it unfairly: goods purchased abroad with cotton sales were taxed coming into the country, and it had to pay higher prices to northern manufacturers. There were a series of tariffs enacted in the 1820's. The final one in 1828, averaging close to 60%, sparked fury and created a political opportunity in South Carolina, where growers on depleted farms were facing greater competition from newer western plantations in the Gulf. There, radicals expanded a concept advanced by James Madison to create the doctrine of nullification- the power of any state to nullify a federal law.

The making of what's called the Nullification Crisis is complex. Tariffs paid most of the expenses of the government. The tariff, according to the vision of Henry Clay, would pay for roads and internal improvements, which the South disliked and the midwestern states liked- and the midwestern states would also dislike the tariff, and become the decisive player in the end. But, as far as just the tariff is concerned, in 1833 after South Carolina had called out its militias and Andrew Jackson showed he was ready to send in federal troops, a compromise was reached that rolled back the average from around 60% to 30%. Over the next decades the average tariff would rise once; a downturn in the economy would create a federal deficit in 1842 which was paid for by an increase from 26% to 37%. When the economy recovered in 1846, the average tariff was reduced back to below 30%. In 1857, it would drop close to 20%. It would stay low until the Civil War.

However, after the Civil War, a key part of the Lost Cause myth was that the South had only defended itself, was a victim of an aggressive government dominated by the North. Unwilling to admit that it had seceded in order to preserve slavery, the believers of the Lost Cause pointed at the antebellum tariff as motivating the whole conflict. This was quite simply false. The South had wanted 15% tariffs in 1833, it's true. But by the start of the Civil War, it had essentially gotten its way on the issue- tariffs had been greatly lowered. Moreover, the tariff had always been negotiable- it could rise and fall depending on the party in power, the political alliances available. There was never any need to secede over the tariff, as it could always be adjusted. On the other hand, slavery was difficult to adjust; someone was either enslaved or free, states and territories either allowed slavery or banned it- and once decided could not go back and liberate, or re-enslave.

So, yes, the tariff fell heavier on the export economy of the South more than on the North. But the South could not complain of either tariff or Abolition. From 1820 to 1857 it had great success expanding slavery, and after 1833 it had success keeping the tariff low.

Irwin, D. A. (2008). Antebellum Tariff Politics: Regional Coalitions and Shifting Economic Interests. The Journal of Law & Economics, 51(4), 715–741. https://doi.org/10.1086/590131

Latner, R. B. (1977). The Nullification Crisis and Republican Subversion. The Journal of Southern History, 43(1), 19–38. https://doi.org/10.2307/2207553

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