The Nullification Crisis: Foreshadow of Civil War

Part 3 of a Series
Mike Scruggs

In 1832, another tariff bill was introduced, supposedly to correct some of the injustices of the 1828 Tariff of Abominations and to give some relief to the South. The 1828 Tariff had also produced a surplus of government income that many wanted to correct. However, the Northern beneficiaries of high tariffs succeeded in a bill that did not diminish their profit margins. Some of the abominations of the 1828 Tariff were relieved, but the reduction of the average dutiable rate to about 33 percent was scant relief to the South.

Passage of the 1832 Tariff was viewed by South Carolina and other major cotton-producing states as an unequivocal message that Southern suffering and Southern rights were of no concern to most Northern political leaders. Protectionist tariffs were political bargains in which powerful political and commercial interests united to enrich themselves at the expense of less powerful regions and commercial interests. Given no relief, the growth of Northern population and political power would mean that outrageous tax burdens would be continually laid upon the South to enrich the North.

President Jackson signed the 1832 Tariff on July 14, 1832, and John C. .Calhoun made plans to seek the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Robert Hayne, who was running for Governor of South Carolina. Meanwhile, Calhoun was engaged in the movement in South Carolina to nullify the 1828 and 1832 tariffs. Calhoun officially resigned as Vice President on December 28, 1832, to fill the Senate seat to which the South Carolina Legislature had elected him on December 12.

In South Carolina, agitation over the 1828 Tariff had begun in the summer after its signing. State Representative Robert Barnwell Rhett called on the Governor to convene the State Legislature. Appealing to both honor and justice, he called for South Carolina’s leaders to have the courage to resist Federal protectionist tariffs and other unconstitutional acts:

“But if you are so doubtful of yourselves—if you are not prepared to follow up your principles wherever they may lead, to their very last consequence—if you love life better than honor; prefer ease to perilous liberty, awake not! Stir not! —Impotent resistance will add vengeance to your ruin. Live in smiling peace with your insatiable Oppressors, and die with the noble consolation that your submissive patience will survive triumphant your beggary and despair.”

Meanwhile Calhoun’s writings had popularized Thomas Jefferson’s concept of nullification—the right of states to reject unconstitutional Federal laws. By the winter of 1831, South Carolina’s Governor James Hamilton was conducting rallies and meetings around the state in support of nullification. The South Carolina Legislature elections of 1832 confirmed that a substantial majority of voters favored nullification, and on October 20, 1832, Governor Hamilton called the legislature to a special session to consider and authorize a Nullification Convention. Thus authorized, the Convention met on November 24.

Citing Calhoun’s view that imposing unequal tax burdens for the benefit of special regional or commercial interests was unconstitutional, the Ordinance of Nullification declared that the 1828 and 1832 tariff acts:

“…are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens;…and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void…That it shall not be lawful for any of the constituted authorities, whether of this state or of the United States, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the said acts within the limits of this State from and after the 1st day of February next…”

President Jackson’s rhetoric made it clear that he intended to prevent Nullification by force of arms, telling a visitor from South Carolina that:

“…if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.”

On December 10, Jackson issued a Proclamation to the People of South Carolina stating:

“I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”

Robert Hayne, who had resigned from the United States Senate on his election to the office of Governor of South Carolina in December 1832 and who had been a member of the Nullification Convention, gave an answer to the people of South Carolina and to President Jackson in his inaugural address:

“If the sacred soil of Carolina should be polluted by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her citizens, shed in defense, I trust in Almighty God that no son of hers…who has been nourished at her bosom…will be found raising a parricidal arm against our common mother. And even should she stand alone in this great struggle for constitutional liberty…that there will not be found, in the wider limits of the state, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue, and be ready to lay down his life in her defense.”

Reacting to the threat to their sovereignty, South Carolina mobilized 27,000 men ready to defend their territory and rights in the event of military attack.
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The Nullification Crisis: Foreshadow of Civil War