The first forty years' experience of the United States in tariff legislation resulted in a movement from moderately low rates to rates too high to be endured by certain sections of the country. The first tariff act, which was passed in 1789, was intended by Congress primarily as a revenue measure, though it did give, as its preamble states, a degree of protection to a few industries. During the next twenty-five years, tariff legislation received little attention at the hands of the lawmakers: in 1804 an increase of five per cent was made for raising funds for the Barbary War, and in 1812, in order to raise revenue for carrying on war, the rates were doubled.

The first real demand for a protective tariff came at the close of the War of 1812, when American manufacturers found the home trade which they had built up during the war seriously threatened by English exporters who were flooding the American markets with English-made goods. Congress and President Madison, realizing the justice of the demand, agreed to a new tariff law which should give special protection to woolen and cotton goods by imposing various rates, some as high as twenty-five per cent, on all such goods imported into the United States. During the next few years, however, the opinion grew rapidly in the South that the rates of 1816 were harmful to the interests of that section. Portions of New England, too, favored lower duties. This was the feeling when Congress took up the tariff question in 1824. Representatives from the middle states, from Kentucky, and from portions of New England supported protection. The opposition leaders came from the South and from New England. After protracted debate the friends of protection, led by Henry Clay, secured a continuation of the rates on woolen and cotton cloth; also increases in rates on other goods, notably iron.

The next seven years saw the Union almost broken asunder over the question of protection. The manufacturers, dissatisfied with the legislation of 1824, set up an agitation for higher tariff rates. By this time the South was disgusted with what its leading men said was the "greediness of the North." But the question would not be quiet. Accordingly in 1828 Congress once again took the matter under advisement. The debate that followed showed the South arrayed against the North, with the West divided. John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and other Southern members of Congress left nothing undone to convince their colleagues that an increase in tariff rates would be not only an injustice to the South, but also a means of destroying the bonds that held the Union together. But their efforts were in vain. Congress enacted the "Tariff of Abominations" law, which bore the highest rates of any tariff prior to the Civil War; and which, strange to say, satisfied nobody, not even protected manufacturers, since they now found it necessary to pay tariff duties on many of the raw materials which they were compelled to use in their business. The South was in a ferment over the tariff question. South Carolina took advanced ground by threatening to oppose within her boundaries the enforcement of the tariff law. Fearful of the outcome of such an action, Congress in 1832 modified somewhat the law of 1828, but not enough to satisfy South Carolina.