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Letter: History forgotten

Our founding fathers established a loosely combined group of states joined for mutual advantage in a confederacy. As the young nation grew the South became agricultural and the North industrial.

The North, with a representative advantage in Congress, in the early 1800s began tariffs on imports as well as exports. These tariffs, in addition to protecting a nation from unfair foreign undercutting, can also be a detriment to domestic products. Before the Civil War, the North purchased raw materials such as cotton, tobacco and sugar from the South and turned them into products. By placing high tariffs on imported goods the North was able to force the South to pay higher prices for goods that could be gotten from Europe more cheaply. The North used the profits from the tariffs to build northern infrastructure such as railways, bridges and roads with little to no benefit from the profitable tariffs for the South. Some historians estimate that the North was the benefactor of 80 percent of...

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