On March 31, 1865, the last tariff bill of the Civil War was passed, an amendment raising many duties, among others that on railroad iron. Nine days after it was passed Lee surrendered, and almost as soon as the news reached Washington orders went forth to stop many of the extraordinary measures which war had made imperative. It had been declared from the first that the high tariff and the direct taxes were simply and only measures for war revenue. In framing the tariff bill of 1862 the committee entitled it a bill to increase duties “_temporarily_.” Mr. Morrill, Mr. Stevens, and Mr. Fessenden all explained again and again that the increased duties were to compensate for excise taxes. There are repeated passages from their speeches of the same tenor as this from Mr. Fessenden in 1864: “The tariff is adjusted and was adjusted upon the simple principle with reference to the internal tax.” Sumner reiterated the idea whenever he had the chance. “I regard all our present legislation as temporary or provisional in its character,” he said in 1864, when an irate fellow Senator pointed out the growing hardihood of manufacturers in demanding protection and the danger of fastening high duties irrevocably on the country. “It is to meet the exigency of the hour.” Nothing is clearer indeed than that in the minds of the men who devised them—in the minds of the people who paid them, the tariffs with which the country found itself in 1865 were temporary, just as the army was temporary, the internal taxes temporary, that with the end of the war they would come off. But a war does not “end” with the laying down of the musket. That is but the turning point in the fever. The consequences are left to take care of—tens of thousands of men to detach from army life and reassimilate into civilian life; thousands of maimed and weakened soldiers to find occupation and homes for; thousands of widows and orphans to care for. It is over forty years since Lee surrendered to Grant, but the army of the Civil War is still with us. Nor does the laying down of the musket put an end to the cost. War means debt. It is fought on a nation’s credit—not wholly on its income—not on its surplus, and the debt remains. When the government at Washington came to consider its financial condition in 1865 after the so-called “end of the war,” it found itself with the colossal debt of over _twenty-eight hundred million dollars_ ($2,808,549,437.55 to be exact). Interest on this must be paid. The principal must be paid. Tariffs and taxes might be “temporary,” but it was evident that they must be adjusted to take care of the war debt. How was it to be done? It was evident that between redeeming its pledge to make the taxes temporary and meeting its obligations the government of the United States had a very pretty financial problem on its hands. CHAPTER II AN OUTBREAK OF PROTECTIONISM