Tariff Wars and the Politics of Jacksonian America

New Perspectives on Jacksonian America

By: William K. Bolt

Narrated by: Paul E. Silbermann

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.

The book is published by Vanderbilt University Press. The audiobook is published by University Press Audiobooks.

"A valuable read.... Highly recommended." (Choice)

"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)

©2017 Vanderbilt University Press (P)2021 Redwood Audiobooks

Stops short of Lincoln’s deed to kill Americans for tariff money to keep power and enrich him and bis chronies

The book is informative about tariffs, but what seems to be his slam dunk, is not a slam dunk. Author ignores tariffs as war reason with Lincoln and Northern Industrialists. You do not stop with the South would have still had House by 5 and Senate by 1 and say tariffs were not reason for war, when it was the reason Lincoln waged war. You cannot collect tariffs from those who are protected by tariffs. If you lose control of tariffs (income of Federal branch) to a Country with lower tariffs, you lose control of the very stream of money that gives you power. Port of New York would not have dominated Port of New Orleans had Lincoln let the wayward Sisters go; and therefor, Anaconda was devised to cut off the South’s trade. Lincoln harassed imports to Southern Ports to force the tariffs back to Northern Ports. With that income Republicans dominated in power and controlled narrative, politics and elections until 1877. The Author did not finish his job.