Southern Historical Society Papers, Volume 32.
Reverend J. William Jones, Ed.

This was in 1859, and it is only two years later that these people, who said that ‘the Union was not worth supporting,’ were hiring substitutes to force the South back into the Union.

The great disruptive force which, in addition to the slavery question, operated to antagonize the Northern and Southern sections of the Union was the tariff.

As this is still a current issue, and universally discussed in all its bearings, it needs no great explanation here.

Beginning about 1816, the protective policy gradually grew and widened against the most strenuous opposition from the Southern States. At first protection was opposed by New England, as they considered their interests better advanced by promoting foreign commerce, and consequently their own carrying trade, than by protection; Daniel Webster was, in fact, one of the most earnest opponents of protection in its early stages. But soon New England found it more profitable to foster manufactories under protection than to nurse the carrying trade—hence she has ever since advocated protection as a patriotic measure.

Each successive tariff bill increased the bitter discontent and sense of injustice under which the South labored. The States of Georgia and South Carolina entered formal protests in their sovereign capacity.