Tariff of 1828 enacted

On May 19, 1828, President John Quincy Adams signed the Tariff of 1828 in Washington, D.C., after Congress approved a steep schedule of duties on imported iron, woolens, hemp, and manufactured goods. Southern critics quickly labeled the statute the Tariff of Abominations because the new rates protected Northern manufacturers while increasing costs for cotton states that depended on imported finished products. The enactment created an immediate sectional political crisis, especially in South Carolina, where John C. Calhoun viewed the tariff as an unconstitutional transfer of wealth.

The Tariff of 1828 intensified the constitutional dispute over whether Congress could use its revenue power to favor one regional economy over another. Calhoun anonymously drafted the South Carolina Exposition and Protest in December 1828, arguing that a state could judge an unconstitutional tariff and defend itself against oppressive federal legislation. Northern protectionists and the Adams administration answered that the tariff power belonged to Congress under the Constitution, turning a revenue law into a direct argument over sovereignty and union.

The South Carolina Exposition and Protest led directly into the Nullification Crisis of 1832-1833, when South Carolina attempted to nullify both the Tariff of 1828 and the Tariff of 1832. Henry Clay's Compromise Tariff of 1833 emerged from that confrontation, making the 1828 law the opening act in the most serious states'-rights crisis before secession.