Editing Morrill Tariff (section)

===Relation to tariff===
While slavery dominated the secession debate in the south,<ref>Dew p. 12. For example, Dew notes that in South Carolina the Declaration of Causes adopted by the secession convention "focused primarily on the Northern embrace of antislavery principles and the evil designs of the newly triumphant Republican Party" and Georgia's convention was "equally outspoken on the subject of slavery."</ref> the Morrill tariff provided an issue for secessionist agitation in some southern states. The law's critics compared it to the 1828 [[Tariff of Abominations]], which sparked the [[Nullification Crisis]], but its average rate was significantly lower.

[[Robert Barnwell Rhett]] railed against the pending Morrill Tariff before the 1860 South Carolina convention. Rhett included a lengthy attack on tariffs in the ''Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States'', which the convention adopted on December 25, 1860, to accompany its secession ordinance:

<blockquote>And so with the Southern States, towards the Northern States, in the vital matter of taxation. They are in a minority in Congress. Their representation in Congress, is useless to protect them against unjust taxation; and they are taxed by the people of the North for their benefit, exactly as the people of Great Britain taxed our ancestors in the British parliament for their benefit. For the last forty years, the taxes laid by the Congress of the United States have been laid with a view of subserving the interests of the North. The people of the South have been taxed by duties on imports, not for revenue, but for an object inconsistent with revenue— to promote, by prohibitions, Northern interests in the productions of their mines and manufactures.<ref>[http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=433 Address of South Carolina to Slaveholding States by Convention of South Carolina<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref></blockquote>

The Morrill Tariff played less prominently elsewhere in the South. In some portions of Virginia, secessionists promised a new protective tariff to assist the state's fledgling industries.<ref>Carlander and Majewski, 2003</ref>

In the North, enforcement of the tariff contributed to support for the Union cause by industrialists and merchant interests. The abolitionist [[Orestes Brownson]] derisively remarked that "the Morrill Tariff moved them more than the fall of Sumter."<ref>"Emancipation and Colonization," ''Brownson's Quarterly Review'', April 1862</ref> In one such example, the ''[[New York Times]]'', which had opposed Morrill's bill on free trade grounds, editorialized that the tariff imbalance would bring commercial ruin to the North and urged its suspension until the secession crisis passed: "We have imposed high duties on our commerce at the very moment the seceding states are inviting commerce to their ports by low duties."<ref>"[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1861/03/26/80263349.pdf The Tariff and Secession]", ''The New York Times'', March 26, 1861</ref> As secession became more evident and the fledgling Confederacy adopted a much lower tariff, the paper urged military action to enforce the Morrill Tariff in the South.<ref>"[https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1861/03/30/78655375.pdf The Great Question]", ''The New York Times'', March 30, 1861</ref>