Tariffs did not cause the Civil War — that was slavery — but their implementation by Congress in 1828 was a factor in building friction between the industrialized North and agrarian South.
Before federal income tax became law in 1913, tariffs made up the primary source of revenue for the US government.
When did they start raking it in? Way back in 1828 when President John Quincy Adams, who only served one term, signed a law imposing the highest tariffs, or taxes, ever levied by the US on goods from Europe.
Known in the South as the “Tariff of Abominations,” the law made imports — especially textiles and iron — much more expensive, thereby encouraging citizens to buy domestic goods and support the North’s nascent industrial sector.
While tariffs benefited northern states, they were a particular problem for southern states whose economies were dependent on cheap trade, explained Dr. Philip Magness, an economic historian who’s written extensively on the topic.
South Carolina, in an act of defiance, declared the tariffs null — marking the start of the Nullification Crisis. President Andrew Jackson, a populist elected in 1829, called this treason and prepared to take military action against the state to force it into compliance.
Before he could do so, Henry Clay, a senator from Kentucky and well-known champion of compromise, along with South Carolina’s Senator John C. Calhoun, proposed a solution: the Compromise Tariff of 1833. This aimed to gradually reduce tariffs over a 10-year span to placate tensions.
And it worked — but not for long.
As America expanded West, Congress debated whether or not new states should permit slavery. Southern states wanted to keep slavery, mostly due, they would argue, to economic purposes.
The debate came to a head in 1850 as southern states began calling for secession.
“The seams of compromise were bursting by 1850, as vast new territories acquired by the Mexican War accelerated the pace of the slavery controversy,” wrote President John F. Kennedy in his Pulitzer-Prize winning Profiles of Courage.
Then came 1857, when Dred Scott, a black man taken into a state where slavery was forbidden, sued for his freedom and found his case before the Supreme Court. In a 7–2 ruling, the justices essentially said: You, Mr. Scott, are a piece of property and have no right to sue.
Fast forward to 1860 — Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, was elected president by a wide margin. Because of his party’s anti-slavery agenda and rising tensions from the abolitionist movement, Southern states were afraid. Most had built their economies around slavery — what Thomas Jefferson once called a “necessary evil.” South Carolina, for instance, had more enslaved people than white citizens.
A little over a month after polls closed in December 1860, South Carolina became the first state to declare secession from the Union. Six more states followed in the spring of 1861.
On April 15, 1861, Abraham Lincoln issued a public declaration: there is an insurrection! He called for 75,000 troops to subdue the rebellion in the South — the first official act of what would be the Civil War.
Ashley Elizabeth Miller 
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