The crisis over the Tariff of 1828 continued into the 1830s and highlighted one of the currents of democracy in the Age of Jackson: namely, that many southerners believed a democratic majority could be harmful to their interests. These southerners saw themselves as an embattled minority and claimed the right of states to nullify federal laws that appeared to threaten state sovereignty. The relationship between the north and south was tenuous when Andrew Jackson came to office in 1828. Ever since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, northerners and southerners ad fought over slavery and tariffs.
Each region wanted to make sure their economies were protected in the new Union. Several times states threatened to leave the Constitutional Convention and abandon the writing of the Constitution. By the end of the Convention, both sides had made significant compromises to the Constitution such as the three-fifths clause, the fugitive slave clause, and Article 1, Section 8, which allowed Congress to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises (Wilson). These compromises were shaky; therefore, neither side was truly pleased with the results.
Forty-one years later, in 1828, the issue of tariffs surfaced again. Congress passed a high protective tariff on imported, primarily manufactured goods. The south, being predominantly agricultural and reliant on the north and foreign countries for manufactured goods, saw this tariff as an affront to their economy (Wilson). Many southerners blamed their economic problems squarely on the tariff for raising the prices they had to pay for imported goods while their own income shrank.
Vice President John C. Calhoun called it a “tariff of abominations” that was meant to favor the north and this tariff led him to pen is “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” in which he argued that if a national majority acted against the the interest of a regional minority, then individual states could void-or nullify- federal law (Corbett). The theory of nullification, or the voiding of unwelcome federal laws, provided wealthy slaveholders, who were a minority in the United States, with an argument for resisting the national government if it acted contrary to their interests.
South Carolina declared that Congress was overstepping its power by offering such support of the north’s manufacturing industries. The confrontation quickly spun into a debate over the power of the federal government to decide the rights of states, in which Governor James Hamilton of South Carolina denounced the “despotic majority that oppresses us. ” President Jackson did not make the repeal of the 1828 tariff a priority and denied the nullifiers’ arguments (Corbett).
He and others, including former President Madison, argued that Article 1, Section 8 of the Constitution gave Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises. ” Jackson pledged to protect the Union against those who would ty to tear it apart ver the tariff issue: “The Union shall be preserved. ” To deal with the crisis, Jackson advocated a reduction in tariff rates. The Tariff of 1832, passed in the summer, lowered the rates on imported goods, a move designed to calm southerners.
However, it did not have the desired effect, and Calhoun’s nullifiers still claimed their right to override federal law. After the passage of the 1832 tariff, South Carolina declared the tariffs null and void in the Palmetto State, and threatened to leave the Union in the Ordinance of Nullification. Jackson responded swiftly, calling the action treasonous. He responded by declaring in the December 1832 Nullification Proclamation that a state did not have the power to void a federal law. Jackson also asked Congress for the power to use military force to ensure that states adhered to federal law (Corbett).
While Congress debated the resulting Force Bill-which would grant the president his wish-Kentucky’s Henry Clay introduced the Compromise Tariff of 1833 (Wilson). In the end, the north and south compromised, but not without revealing how fragile the relationship was. The Nullification Crisis foreshadowed the eventual secession of the outh in 1860-1861. The main effect of the Nullification Crisis was to establish the supremacy of the federal government over state governments. It also eventually became a factor in causing the southern states to nullify the Union itself, bringing about their secession and the creation of the Confederacy.
Although the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was passed, which mollified the South Carolina and caused them to withdraw the Ordinance of Nullification, gislature unrest in the southern states continued, eventually leading to the outbreak of the Civil War in 1861. It also had a tremendous ffect on the framers of the Confederate Constitution that they thought it was necessary to write into their Constitution a clause that forever settled the issue of protective tariffs within their new country.
Unlike the Federal Constitution, which requires a supermajority of states to call for an amendment, the Confederate Constitution only requires three states to call for an amendment to be brought up before a national convention (El-Sahn). I side with South Carolina and believe that the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and therefore can be nullified ithin the sovereign boundaries of the state, because they favored one sector of the economy over another.
The tariffs were harmful and unjust towards the southern states, because they favored manufacturing over commerce and agriculture, in states where agriculture dominated and little manufacturing existed. Not only did the southern states have to pay higher prices on manufactured goods that they did not produce themselves, but it also affected their trade with Great Britain, limiting the importation of British goods and elevating prices on cotton exports, therefore reducing British demand for cotton.
This is also my opinion, because the tariffs powers should be used to generate revenue and not to provide protection from foreign competition for American industries. I believe that people of a state or several states, acting in a democratically elected convention, have the retained power to veto any act of the federal government which violates the Constitution.
This veto, the core of the doctrine of nullification, is explained by Calhoun in the Exposition: “If it be conceded, as it must be by everyone who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that the latter hold their portion by the same tenure as the former, it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction.
The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself, and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. ” Also, this is my reasoning due to the fact that the Constitution doesn’t lay out hat the federal government can’t do-in fact, it is the enumeration of the powers it has, meaning that if it’s not in the Constitution, then the federal government can’t do it.
The states believed in sovereignty, so they felt that if Congress were to do something they felt was unjust, they could rule it “unconstitutional” and ignore it. There is not a reference specifically in the Constitution that says the federal government can’t try to manipulate the economy by stemming competition between American and European countries. However, it should not have the power to lay unequal and unjust taxation, and if he states do disagree with it, then the states should be allowed to declare it null and void.
The Nullification Crisis illustrated the growing tensions in American democracy: an aggrieved minority of elite, wealthy slaveholders taking a stand against the will of a democratic majority; an emerging sectional divide between south and north over slavery; and a clash between those who believed in free trade and those who believed in protective tariffs to encourage the nation’s economic growth (Corbett). These tensions would color the next three decades of politics in the United States.