Mississippi becomes the first Southern state to enact comprehensive Black Codes, creating a legal framework to re-enslave freed people through criminalization. The laws include draconian vagrancy statutes allowing arrest of any African American without a written labor contract, apprenticeship …
Mississippi State LegislatureGovernor William L. SharkeySouthern Planterssystematic-corruptioninstitutional-captureprison-industrial-complexracial-injustice
Congress passes and President John Quincy Adams signs the Tariff of 1828, an extraordinarily high protective tariff setting a 38% tax on some imported goods and a 45% tax on certain imported raw materials—the highest rates in American history to that point. The tariff seeks to protect Northern …
U.S. CongressJohn C. CalhounAndrew JacksonSouthern plantersNorthern manufacturerssectional-conflictnullificationeconomic-extractionregional-exploitationslave-power
Congress passes the Tariff of 1816, the first explicitly protective tariff in American history, taxing imported goods at a remarkable 25% rate to protect emerging domestic industries from cheap British goods flooding American markets after the War of 1812. The tariff represents the first pillar of …
Henry ClayU.S. CongressNorthern manufacturersSouthern planterseconomic-policysectional-conflictprotectionismamerican-systemregional-extraction
Eli Whitney receives a patent for the cotton gin, a machine using rotating brushes and teeth to separate cotton fibers from seeds, revolutionizing the processing of short-staple cotton that grows easily in the Deep South but had been difficult to process profitably. Whitney hopes his invention will …
Eli WhitneySouthern plantersEnslaved peopleslaveryinstitutional-corruptioneconomic-transformationcotton-economytechnological-exploitation