In 1828 the US Congress increased taxes paid on imports to protect newly established northern industries from foreign competition The southern economy was hurt by this protective tariff?

Answer 1

Yes. Southerners tended to trade directly with Great Britain. Every plantation which was on the water - an inland sound, or a river - had a dock where ships tied up, and tobacco, or cotton, or lumber, indigo, rice, whatever, was loaded directly and shipped to England. This was the days of sailing ships on the oceans, though steam powered ships were appearing on inland rivers. The prevailing winds made the trip from the US to England easy. But shipping up and down the coast of the US was not easy by ship, because of winds and currents. There were no railroads. There were only a few roads, and they were dirt, and mud when it rained. Just about the only road connecting north and south was the Post Road, roughly paralleling modern I-95. Thus, it was difficult for goods to move from north to south in the US, even if anybody wanted northern goods. The Industrial Revolution had been going on in England for some time, and English goods were better, and cheaper. Every southern planter had a "factor" in England, who took care of selling the crop for the best price obtainable, and also filled the "shopping list" the planter and his family would send, and returned those goods back to the US. So this tariff made those preferred British goods more expensive, in an effort to force southerners to buy inferior northern goods, which were cheaper than the British goods plus the tax added on by the tariff. This tariff, which was a "duty" on imports, was the main source of revenue for the Federal government, other than what the government received from selling the public land. There was no income taxes or inheritance taxes then. Before the Civil War, with 1/5th of the free population of the US, the south paid 2/3rds of the money the government collected in taxes through the tariff.