Nullification Crisis

"The Union next to our liberty most dear; may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union." - John C. Calhoun

Videos

Visuals

Click the image to see an enlarged version of it.

Articles

What was the Nullification Crisis? The Nullification Crisis of 1832 centered around Southern protests against the series of protective tariffs (taxes) that had been introduced to tax all foreign goods in order to boost the sales of US products and protect manufacturers in the North from cheap British goods. The South, being predominantly agricultural, and reliant on the North and foreign countries for manufactured goods, saw the protective tariffs as severely damaging to their economy. During the administration of John Quincy Adams his Vice President, John C. Calhoun, had drafted the South Carolina Exposition, a document that declared the tariffs were unconstitutional that caused the Nullification Crisis bringing the sectional interests of the North and the South into open conflict for the first time. 

The Andrew Jackson Administrations

Editors: Kelle S. Sisung and Gerda-Ann Raffaelle

Date: 2002

From: Presidential Administration Profiles for Students

Publisher: Gale

Document Type: Topic overview

Length: 11,411 words

Content Level: (Level 5)

Lexile Measure: 1320L

The Tariff of 1828 and Nullification

Just before Jackson took office in 1828, Congress passed an extremely high protective tariff. No legislators completely favored the tariff, but it was accepted by the majority and signed into law by John Quincy Adams. Specifically, the tariff imposed duties (TAXES) on imported goods to protect the prices of goods manufactured in the industrial Northern part of the U.S.A.. The South, which was the least prosperous U.S. region because of declining land productivity and an increasingly costly system of slave labor, had no such protections for its agricultural products. Southern farmers and plantation owners were squeezed at both ends, forced to buy manufactured goods from the North on a closed market, and forced to compete on an open international market with their cotton or tobacco exports. Foreign markets reacted by imposing their own tariffs.

Ironically, the Tariff of 1828--denounced in the South as the "Tariff of Abominations"--had been masterminded by Jackson's supporters in Congress. It was designed specifically to alienate Southern voters, driving them away from the Adams administration into the waiting arms of Jackson. The tariff did just that, but a year later President Jackson was left holding the bag. Most southerners hated the tariff, but the cotton planters of South Carolina were especially angry. Trade reprisals from Europe had denied the South its market, and South Carolina's land was becoming depleted because of the adverse effects of cotton on the soil. It also was facing increased competition from the rich cotton land in the Southwest. However, a constitutional majority had decided that this was the way trade would be administrated in the United States.

Calhoun Proposes Nullification 

It was the Constitution, however, to which South Carolina's most prominent politician, Vice President John C. Calhoun, turned to solve the problems presented by the tariff. In 1829 he secretly wrote and distributed copies of The South Carolina Exposition and Protest, a pamphlet with a novel and ingenious interpretation of the Constitution. Calhoun argued that the Union had not been formed directly by the people of the United States; it had rather been formed by the people through the individual states, of which they were citizens. It was the states, and not a single federal government, who were sovereign. The states themselves were the indivisible units of government that had formed an agreement, the Union, for their mutual benefit.

Obviously, Calhoun argued, South Carolina was not benefiting from the Tariff of 1828. When a state objected to a law passed by a majority in the Union, as South Carolina objected to the tariff, it had the right to nullify the law (block its enforcement) within its borders until three-quarters of the other states overruled its decision. At this time the state could choose to yield to the will of the other states, or to secede entirely from the Union. Though a highly provocative document, the Exposition did not have much immediate effect in the South; for the time being, South Carolina remained largely alone in its outrage. But the dangerous theories of nullification and secession had been presented to the American people and were destined to work their destruction. Despite his conduct in the Georgia controversy, Jackson was an ardent supporter of the Union, and the Exposition had identified a new political enemy for him: his own vice president.

The South had supported Jackson in 1828, and after his election southerners fully expected him to pull the tariff rates down, especially after his passive "defense" of Georgia's rights in the Cherokee affair. But they were mistaken. Jackson did sympathize with southerners, but he also wanted to preside over a debt-free nation, and tariff revenues were an element in his plan. When Congress passed a new tariff in 1832, its rates were more modest than those of the Tariff of Abominations. But they were still considered outrageous and protective, especially in South Carolina. The state was now ready for drastic action. In the state elections of 1832 the "nullies" won a two-thirds majority, and the new state legislature promptly announced that the existing federal tariff was null and void within the borders of South Carolina. It further threatened to withdraw from the Union if the Washington government attempted to collect the duties by force.

Jackson Responds

President Jackson declared that if South Carolinians refused to collect the tariff and send the proceeds to Washington, he would personally lead an army into the state. For a brief moment violence seemed imminent. But again, no states joined South Carolina in their dramatic protest, and Kentucky senator Henry Clay proposed an 1833 compromise tariff that would reduce the tariff's existing rate. Despite bitter debate, the tariff was eventually squeezed through Congress. Neither Jackson nor the "nullies" won a clear victory in this contest, though South Carolina did come away with a lower tariff, which was what it had wanted from the start. After the conflict had subsided, Jackson expressed fears that the next logical step in the assertion of states' rights was secession. His fears proved prophetic in 1860 when South Carolina became the first state to secede from the Union at the outset of the American Civil War (1861-65). While it is true that Jackson may have done more to squash the sentiment of nullification and secession at its roots, it is also probable that the only way he could have accomplished this was through military force. In hindsight, it seems that only the tragedy of the American Civil War could permanently resolve the question of secession. In its far-reaching and disastrous consequences for the United States, the concept of nullification became perhaps the most significant issue of Andrew Jackson's presidency.