Includes bibliographical references and index.

"This book analyzes the tariff debates in Congress during the Age of Jackson. Even though the tariff typically provided the federal government with ninety percent of its revenue, historians have neglected this issue. This first major work on the tariff in more than 100 years argues that the tariff helped to draw more Americans into the political process"--,Provided by publisher.

Before the Civil War, the American people did not have to worry about a federal tax collector coming to their door. The reason for this was the tariff, taxing foreign goods and imports on arrival in the United States. Yet debates in Congress over the tariff were acrimonious, with pitched arguments between politicians, interest groups, and newspapers, and led to more and more Americans becoming involved in the political process. Tariff Wars and the Politcs of Jacksonian America demonstrates that the tariff was an important part of the national narrative in the antebellum period. Growing engagement in the democratic process caused by the tariff resulted in bitter sectional controversy among Americans. Northerners claimed they needed a tariff to protect their industries and 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. This fight revealed increasing 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. -- from back cover.

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