In the Early Nineteenth Century Americans Sought to Resolve Their Political Disputes Through Compromise Yet by 1860 This No Longer Seemed Possible Analyze

As time passed the rapidly changing society in the nineteenth century, in 1820 the north and south began to have serious conflicting problems that were proved unfixable by compromise. During this time, the north underwent major social, economic, and industrial changes known as the Antebellum Period. While the south generally clung to king cotton and slavery and thus remained essentially the same. This arose a manifold of controversies with how issues such as tariffs, slavery, and land should be handled. Both the Union and the Confederacy tried to create compromises to resolve these problems, yet both sides were never completely satisfied no matter how hard they tried. This made it very close to impossible for them to completely put their differences at ease.

As the north began to grow more industrially, the south stuck to their farms that were mainly maintained by slaves. This brought up a difficult dispute with the matter of how tariffs should be handled. Since the north became industrial, it was more efficient of them to impose tariffs on the country to better their economy. Because instead of the people of the north getting better deals purchasing goods from Europe, the higher tariffs made it harder and cost them more to do business with Europe, as result they purchased goods from local businesses. This proved to be a major problem for the south because the high tariffs levels threatened their cotton exports and goods imports from their main buyers and sellers, the Europeans. This angered the south because the tariffs favored the North by protecting them from foreign competition such as with the Tariff of Abominations, so called by the south, in 1828. The tariff forced the South to buy manufactured goods from U.S. manufacturers, mainly in the North, at a higher price, while southern states also faced a reduced income from sales of raw materials. But then the tariff of 1832 was addressed by Andrew Jackson to further lower the tariffs, but the south was still not satisfied with this compromise and this lead to the nullification controversy. As a result of the threat of nullification, Henry Clay said it was impracticable for South Carolina to nullify and not smart to secede (Doc A). So he and John C. Calhoun proposed the Compromise Tariff of 1833 to further lower the rates gradually which still didn’t prove to achieve anything do to the fact of the Black Tariff of 1842 where tariffs were nearly doubled. Thus, ruling out compromise as a solution to their differences on the matter of tariffs.

The economy of the north and south were so different the way they ran their business, it did not agree. One problem for the south is that the north wanted for them to free slaves or at least the to stop the expansion of it. Some of the north felt that it was morally unjust and that it went against the declaration of independence which stated “All men are created equal “. But others like the Free-Soil Party viewed it as economically inefficient