Import/tonnage duties during the early Constitutional period (1788-1800 CE)

Miscellaneous History
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1

I am wondering if anyone knows anything about the duties on imports and tonnage which the Union imposed in the summer of 1789 as a result of the first session of Congress, or if anyone has any general knowledge about import/tonnage duties. Specifically, I would like answers to the following questions:

  1. How were duties typically collected in late-18th century USA (and how was compliance enforced)?

  2. In the United States Statutes at Large, Statute I, Chapter 3 (“An Act imposing Duties on Tonnage,” http://memory.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=llsl&fileName=001/llsl001.db&recNum=150), what is actually being taxed? More specifically, can anyone translate the language of the first paragraph in Section 1 into layman’s terms?

Any general contextual information or academic source recommendations on the topic would also be greatly appreciated. This inquiry is part of my broader effort to thoroughly understand the early part of the Constitutional Union, which I define as the late eighteenth century.

Egon

2
  1. Tonnage is just a tax based the size of the cargo.
  • 6c per ton on ships built in the US & owned by US citizens; or foreign built ships (constructed prior to May 29, 1789) & owned by US citizens
  • 30c per ton on US Ships (constructed after May 29, 1789) owned by foreign citizens
  • 50c per ton on all other ships
  • The right hand column seems to indicate these measures were later repealed

I don’t know the methods at which they calculated or collected the duties.

3

Hey, thanks, that’s a good start. Any further information not included in the above answer would also be useful.

4

For raw data, you might want to try the “Statistical Abstract of the United States” put out by the U.S Census bureau. I have found that this source has the oldest data in many areas, [back to colonial times] so it may/may not have what you are after.

The information used to be available in CD form from Amazon, [might still be] , and it was previously issued in book form.

I used to have the US centennial [1976] editions , which came in two large volumes.

You might still be able to get it/them cheap at www.abebooks.com , which deals in secondhand books on line.

Regards , onebornfree.