Alexander Hamilton inaugurated the policy of giving governmental aid to
infant manufactures. The wisdom of diversifying the industries of the
young nation was acquiesced in by the leading statesmen of both
sections. Beset as the republic then was by international forces hostile
to democratic institutions, it was natural enough that the great men who
presided over its early years should seek by Federal legislation to
render it, as speedily and completely as possible, industrially
self-dependent and self-supporting. The war of 1812 enforced anew upon
the attention of statesmen the importance of industrial independence.
The war debt, together with certain governmental enterprises and
expenditures growing out of the war, was largely, if not wholly,
responsible for the tariff of 1816. This act dates the rise of our
American system of protection. It is curious to note that Southern men
were the leaders of this new departure in the national fiscal policy.
Calhoun, Clay, and Lowndes were the guiding spirits of that period of
industrial ferment and activity. They little dreamt what economic evils
were to fall in consequence upon the South. That section was not slow to
feel the unequal action of the protective principle. The character of
its labor incapacitated the South from dividing the benefits of the new
revenue policy with its free rival. The South of necessity was
restricted to a single industry, the tillage of the earth. Slave labor
did not possess the intelligence, the skill, the patience, the
mechanical versatility to embark successfully in manufacturing
enterprises. Free labor monopolised the protected industries, and
Northern capital caught all the golden showers of fiscal legislation.
What the South needed, from an economic point of view, was unrestricted
access to the markets of the world for her products, and the freest
competition of the world in her own markets. The limitations imposed
upon the slave States by their industrial system was in itself a