The first Tariff Act of 1789 imposed an ad valorem duty of 5 per cent on imports (with a few specific duties of 15 per cent) for the support of the Federal government. This was ul addition to the taxes raised by each State for its own purposes. It was much higher taxa tion than under the colonial government, which required in ordinary times only a duty of 3 per cent on imports, with an export duty of 3d. on hides. Four years later the tariff was raised to 10 and 20 per cent. Ten years after, duties were increased 2Y2 per cent in aid of the Mediterranean Fund against the Barbary Powers. Double war duties, amounting to 25 to 40 per cent, were imposed in 1812. In 1816 a tariff protecting the in dustries, that had been found necessary but deficient during the late war, fixed duties at 25 per cent, to be reduced to 20 per cent in 1820. The Carolina representatives supported this not unreasonable protection. The reduc tion never took place, and at this the Carolina representatives protested. Disregarding their protest, a tariff imposing 12 to 50 per cent duties was passed in 1824. Again, in 1828, with out regard to the complaints of the Carolina farmers, who were being forced to contribute to the manufacturing profits of other States, a tariff raising duties 25 to 50 per cent was enacted. Wearied with unavailing remonstrance, a convention of the people of Carolina was called in 1832, which declared the protective tariff law unconstitutional, null and void. To meet this action of the State, Congress passed the Force Bill in 1833 for the collection of customs. In the same month of the same year Congress passed "the Clay Compromise Act° for a gradual reduction of duties until 1842, when they should reach a 20 per cent level. This restored tranquillity, although for the sec ond time the promised reduction was never fully realized.
Coincident with the tariff, another and more serious source of disturbance arose. In 1775 slavery extended over North America from Canada to Florida, inclusive. It had been in troduced by Queen Elizabeth, and James II belonged to the Royal African Company for trading in negro slaves. Now it began to be looked upon with horror, as something strange and foreign to human instincts. The New Eng land Anti-Slavery Society was formed in 1832. In less than four years more than 100,000 per sons had joined anti-slavery societies in the Northern and Western States. They demanded of Congress that "all slaves should be instantly set free without compensation of the owners .° They declared "we will give the Union for the abolition of slavery." The lesson was taught far and wide that the slaveholders of the South "a few arrogant domineering self-constituted aristocracy" were — through the representation allowed them "in proportion to the number of their slaves"— ruling the work-people of the North and denying their industries the pro tection due from the Federal government. They declared that "the country must become all free or all slave.° The non-slaveholding whites of the South were as violently opposed to the emancipation of the negroes as their brethren of the North were in favor of it. To them it meant industrial, political and social equality with a people in their midst whom they deemed inferior to themselves. They did not ask for aid
to their industries through Federal taxation and did not see why Northern manufacturers should. After years of angry discussion along these lines the crisis came— during a period of unprecedented prosperity in Carolina —on the election by the Anti-Slavery party of a President in 1860 by less than a third of the popular vote. It found the peoples North and South solidly arrayed against each other with fatal unanimity. The airrepressible conflict° burst into war. The North took the offensive for Federal domination and patronage and for race equality, freedom and fraternity. They were sustained by the popular sentiment of the European masses. South Carolina and the South rose to a man—with no sympathy or support from without — in defense of State autonomy and white supremacy. From an arms-bearing population of 55,046 in Carolina 44,000 volun teered (most of them not identified with the slave-holding class) in defense of the domestic institutions of the State, its sovereignty and free trade. Utimately 71,088 were mustered in.
Poorly armed, poorly clad, poorly fed, prac tically without pay for more than four years they maintained their cause, losing in battle and by disease 15,638 of their number. The negroes, who, in earlier days, had been enticed away by promises from the Spaniards and had sometimes sided with the Tories and the Brit ish, remained as a rule loyal to their masters in this war, served their families and tilled their fields, while they were absent. The issue was decided by force of arms and numbers and was never submitted to legal adjudication. No indictments for treason, as is usual in rebellions, were made. An export duty was placed on cotton and import duties were increased by the national government. For 12 years negro su.j premacy was enforced in the State by the Fed eral army. When on 10 April 1877 the Federal guard filed out of the south door of the Capitol at Columbia the negro government collapsed without a struggle. The white citizens quietly resumed the administration of affairs. President Eliot of Harvard, in a speech before the Ceti ti al Labor Union in Boston February 1904 on the world-wide conflict of labor and capital, sums up the result of this titanic struggle in these words: "How many things my genera tion thought were decided at Appomattox ; but during the subsequent 40 years it has gradually appeared that hardly anything was settled there except the preservation of the unity of the National territory.° For more than two cen turies, under 10 written constitutions, the State had been governed by a more than usually cen tralized democracy. Opposing a similar cen tralization of functions by the Federal Union, the collision dispersed these functions into smaller and smaller civil divisions; counties, townships, school districts. The latter, re stricted to an area of 9 to 40 square miles, were endowed with the sovereign power to lay taxes and incur debt. A centrifugal tendency is also, in subdivision of farms, and in the establishment of cross-road stores and vil lage banks.