Morrill Tariff

The Morrill Tariff of 1861 was a high protective tariff in the United States, adopted on March 2, 1861, during the administration of President James Buchanan, a Democrat. It was a key element of the platform of the new Republican Party, and it appealed to industrialists and factory workers as a way to foster rapid industrial growth by limiting competition from lower-wage industries in Europe. It had been opposed by cotton planters, but they had mostly left the United States Congress when it was finally passed.

Named for its sponsor, Representative Justin Smith Morrill of Vermont, who drafted it with the advice of Pennsylvania economist Henry Charles Carey, passage of the tariff was possible because many tariff-adverse Southerners had resigned from Congress after their states declared their secession. The Morrill Tariff raised rates to protect and encourage industry and the high wages of industrial workers. It replaced the low Tariff of 1857, which was written to benefit the South. Two additional tariffs sponsored by Morrill, each one higher, were passed during Abraham Lincoln's administration to raise urgently needed revenue during the Civil War.

The high rates of the Morrill tariff inaugurated a period of continuous trade protection in the United States, a policy that remained until the adoption of the Revenue Act of 1913 (the Underwood tariff). The schedule of the Morrill Tariff and its two successor bills were retained long after the end of the Civil War.