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John C. Calhoun's role in the nullification crisis

When the United States Congress passed a protective tax in 1828, then Vice President John C. Calhoun anonymously wrote South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Calhoun claimed under the compact theory that it was a state’s right to declare such a law unconstitutional and nullify it through a special state convention. This position threatened the unity of the United States and the exclusive right of the Supreme Court to decide whether or not an act of Congress was constitutional.

The concept of states’ rights was widely debated in both Washington, DC and South Carolina. South Carolinians split into a States’ Rights Party (Nullifiers) and a Union party (Unionists). In 1832, the Nullifiers won control of the General Assembly. When the United States Congress passed another tariff in 1832, the South Carolina legislature called a meeting to nullify the tariff. John C. Calhoun resigned the vice presidency and entered the United States Senate where he was a strong voice against the tariff and for nullification. President Andrew Jackson condemned the flouting of federal law and urged Congress to pass a Force Bill that would authorize the national government to send troops to collect the tariff in South Carolina.

The crisis ended with a compromise. Congress lowered the tariff and South Carolina repealed its nullification of it. However, South Carolina then nullified the Force Bill, thus asserting a state’s right to declare an act of Congress to be unconstitutional in that state. Since the Force Bill was never put into effect because the tariff controversy was solved, confrontation was avoided and the states’ rights theory continued to be debated. The states’ rights idea would develop and evolve into the theory of secession, that the United States was a mere confederation of states, not a binding union.

The theory of secession, as an alternative to the nullification of laws, allowed states to leave the United States if they believed that their rights were being infringed upon. Under this compact (between states) theory, the states were more powerful than the federal union that was the United States. The states’ rights theories of both nullification and secession would eventually be tested and disproven by civil war.

Effects of the Compromise of 1850

The Compromise of 1850 allowed California to be a free state but also outlawed the slave trade in Washington DC. It provided that the rest of the Mexican Cession would decide whether or not the residents wanted to be a slave or free states through the vote, a concept called popular sovereignty. Southerners also got a new Fugitive Slave Law that gave them more opportunity to capture and return to the South slaves that had escaped. This last provision caused much controversy as northern states passed laws attempting to protect escaped slaves.

Impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin

Sympathy for fugitive slaves intensified with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in protest against the Fugitive Slave Act while southerners decried the ‘misconceptions’ about slavery that the book portrayed.

Effects of the Kansas-Nebraska Act

The Kansas-Nebraska Act was also the result of westward expansion and north/south economic competition. The Kansas Territory was in the northern part of the Louisiana Territory so according to the Missouri Compromise it could not be a slave state. However, some politicians wanted to build a railroad across the country through Kansas and they needed to get southern support. Southerners, especially Jefferson Davis, wanted to build a transcontinental railroad on a southern route from New Orleans. The Kansas-Nebraska Act repealed the 36◦ 30’ line of the Missouri Compromise.

It allowed people in these territories to decide for themselves whether or not to allow slavery within their borders through ‘popular sovereignty.’ In order to affect that vote (not the way the concept of popular sovereignty was supposed to have worked!), northern abolitionists and southern slave owners temporarily moved into the Kansas Territory. Soon their fighting led people to call the area “Bleeding Kansas.” Some northern Whigs and northern Democrats who were appalled at the violence joined with the Free Soil Party (those opposed to the expansion of slavery) and the Liberty Party (abolitionists) to form a new political party: the Republicans

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