- U. S. President John Quincy Adams signed the Tariff of 1828 into law on May 19, 1828
- The official name of the Tariff of 1828 was “An Act in alteration of the several acts imposing
- duties on imports.”
- The Tariff of 1828 is also known as the Tariff of Abominations.
- The Tariff of 1828 raised revenue for the federal government by imposing duties (taxes) on
- manufactured products and some raw materials imported into the United States.
- The Tariff of 1828 protected manufacturers in the Northeast and farmers in the West, at the
- expense of Southerners and New England importer-exporters.
- In the U.S. House of Representatives, the bulk of support for the Tariff of 1828 came from the
- Middle and Western states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana,
- Illinois, Missouri, and Kentucky), whose representatives voted 85 to 7 in favor of enactment.
- In the U.S. House of Representatives, members from the New England and the South voted
- against the Tariff of 1828 by a margin of 87 to 19.
- On April 22, 1828, the U.S. House of Representatives approved the Tariff of 1828 by a vote of
- 105-94.
- South Carolina was the hotbed of Southern dissatisfaction with the Tariff of 1828.
- In response to the enactment of the Tariff of 1828, U.S. Vice-president John C. Calhoun (a native
- of South Carolina anonymously penned a challenge entitled the Exposition and Protest.
- John C. Calhoun contended that the Constitution limited Congressional authority to impose
- duties solely for the purpose of raising revenue. Therefore, because the Tariff of 1828 was
- enacted to protect special interests, in addition to raising revenue, it was unconstitutional.
- In his protests against the Tariff of 1828, Calhoun C. Calhoun espoused the doctrine of
- nullification introduced by Thomas Jefferson in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1799.
- The South Carolina legislature considered, but did not adopt John C. Calhoun’s Exposition and
- Protest in December 1828.
On May 19, 1828, U.S. President John Quincy Adams signed into law congressional legislation entitled An Act in alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports. Commonly known as the Tariff of 1828, the measure raised revenue for the federal government by imposing duties (taxes) on manufactured products and some raw materials imported into the United States. [Wikimedia Commons]