ABSTRACT
The American tariff had assumed its remorselessly protectionist shape during and immediately after the Civil War. The McKinley tariff, for Taussig 'a radical extension of the protective system', also encouraged a new wave of popular opposition to tariffs, especially for the sectional benefits which they bestowed on specific economic interests. This popular reaction led to the partial liberalization of the tariff with the return of the Democrats to office in 1894, but this proved purely temporary for in 1897 the Dingley tariff reinforced what the president of Harvard described as the 'commercial barbarism of protection'. Finally, however, American policy itself was to shift decisively when the Democrats under Woodrow Wilson returned to office in 1912. Nevertheless, the ideological link now made in American policy between free trade, peace and economic power would prove an enduring, if fitful, one in the twentieth century.
