was justly more interested in the overthrow of the protective system because of prospective injuries, but not because of present ones. It was denied that any southern staple product had fallen in price because of the restrictive policy; and it was insisted that, until other sources for the supply of cotton were opened, the injury and loss would not and could not be sectional.
The Patriot editor was not alone in pointing out that the tariff had not caused the fall in the price of cotton. A writer in the Courier gave a list of the prices of exported cotton from 1816 to the time when the tariff came to be so bitterly attacked.[1] His conclusion was that the tariff had had no effect on the price of cotton and that there was not the shadow of a reason why it should have; the South had glutted the market with cotton by the opening up of the fertile fields of the Southwest. The Yankees were not to blame; on the contrary, by setting up manufactures they had
- ↑ "Franklin," in the Courier, August 18, 1831. The average price had been: 1816, 28 cents; 1817, 27½ cents; 1818, 33 cents; 1819, 30 cents; 1820, 15½ cents; 1821, 14 cents; 1822, 16½ cents; 1823, 10½ cents. There was no tariff to cause a ruinous fall from 33 cents in 1818 to 10½ cents in 1823. In 1824, the year of the tariff, cotton sold for 14½ cents, taking the average prices in January and June. In 1825, the year after the tariff, it was 27 cents in June, and in June of 1826 only 9 cents.
