Walker tariff (1946) lowered tariffs from 32% to 25%.
The Tariff of 1857 further decreased tariffs by 20 - 25%.
Morrill Tariff (1861) increased taxes by to 26%. The bill had passed the House in 1860 but Democrats in the Senate were able to bottle it up until the 14 Senators in the 7 seceding states left in January, 1861. It passed the Senate in March, 1861.
Neither attempt for secession compromises included tariff issues. All issues were about slavery.
U.S. Tariff Rates 1821 - 1996 (table)
U.S. Government statistics shows that ports in the south had a minuscule amount of traffic:
In 1860, Charleston only had $2.0 million in imports, Savannah had only $800,000 in imports, Mobile had only $600,000 in imports, New Orleans had only $20.6 million in imports, and other southern ports had only $3.0 million in imports. Total ($37 million)
In the same year, New York City alone had $231.3 million in imports and all other northern ports had $95.3 million in imports. (total = $326.6 million)
New Orleans was the southern port that collected the most in the tariff, and it was only $3.1 million. The total south only collected $4.0 million in tariff revenues, whereas New York City collected $34.9 million in tariff revenues and the total for northern ports was $48.3 million.
[Source: Douglas B. Ball,Financial Failure and Confederate Defeat, p. 205, Table 18, “Trade Figures by Port in 1860″ and “Customs Collections by Major Port (1860)”]
Canal boats (foreground) and blue-water sailing ships crowd the waterfront near South Street in lower Manhattan in this 1858 view by Franklin White of Lancaster, New Hampshire. In that year, customs duties collected at the Port of New York alone provided nearly half of all federal revenue. When foreign trade rebounded the next year after the Panic of 1857, customs duties collected at the Port of New York accounted for almost two-thirds of federal revenue. From Johnson and Lightfoot, Maritime New York in Nineteenth-Century Photographs.
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