The Nullification Crisis of 1832 - Coursework Example

The Nullification Crisis of 1832 This essay will primarily investigate the Nullification Crisis of 1832, which took place during the presidency of Andrew Jackson. This difficult phase can be considered an essential period of American history, for it served as one of the main factors that contributed to beginning of the American Civil War, which would take place three decades later in 1861. Nullification is a legal theory that a U.S. State has a right not to enforce the laws created by Congress, if they deem them unconstitutional. It is this idea that will be addressed in the subsequent discussion, but more specifically, it will concern the Southern and South-western States, most notably South Carolina, who felt that the Tariff of 1828 was unjust. It is interesting to question precisely how this crisis came about and how it affected these Southern states, exploring the events lending up to 1832, and reflecting upon the results of the compromising measures that attempted to solve the crisis. Moreover, my purpose in what follows is to explore how South Carolina was involved in the Nullification Crisis more than her sister Southern states. Nullification was first introduced in 1789 by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions, in which both states defied the Alien and Sedition Act, claiming they should have the right to nullify the law. However, regarding the issues surrounding South Carolina, it was John Calhoun who again brought up idea of nullification in 1832, as an alternative to the state’s threat to secede. The reason for South Carolina to call a state convention to nullify certain laws was due to the issue of a protection tariff, and the fact that the federal government ignored their protest and continued to collect these tariff duties. As maintained by John G. Van Deusen; ‘in 1832, the tariff question was most prominent in the minds of South Carolinians,’ but they also ‘complained of sectional discrimination in federal appropriations.’1 To understand how the tariff bill came to be a leading problem in the Nullification Crisis, what accounted for the gradual build of opposition between the North and the South, and how it involved the former Vice-President, Calhoun, the events leading up 1832 must be explored. The protective tariff was a tax on imports, a high duty that was advocated on all goods that could be produced in sufficient quantity in the United States. In the tariff bill of 1816, protection was admitted as an incidental feature only, and the raising of revenue made the predominant principle in calculating duties.2 This policy of 1916 had been established precisely because the statesmen of South Carolina ‘saw in the success of American cotton manufactures a new market for the staple of the South.’3 However, throughout the following years, it soon came apparent that the rise of revenue was a major problem for the Southern states, who were becoming decidedly in favor of the low tariff. While the South were receiving most of the imported goods, they were burdened the most with the tariff, for they had barely enough revenue to support themselves. In their view, all the benefits of protection were going to Northern manufacturers, who grew richer whilst the South grew poorer, with their planters bearing the burden of higher prices. As a result, the North and South slowly became divided on this measure. By 1824, the South was nearly a unit in opposition to the tariff, and Senator Hayne led the opposition in a speech declaring that ‘the bill could not be a revenue measure since there was a surplus of six million in the Treasury.’4 One of the reasons for the enactment of the law of 1824 was to establish the general principle of protection as the policy of the country, and it is true that some branches of manufactures thrived, as machinery improved and the price of fabric fell. However, the problem was that no manufactures had been established in the South; ‘the vast quantities of new and fertile land opened in the west of Georgia, in Alabama, and Mississippi, injured the value of the old and partly exhausted lands of the Atlantic States.5 Although almost the whole of the South was united against the tariff and voted against the bill, it was South Carolina that had suffered the most by the inability of her lands to sustain against competition. Despite the oppositions of this measure by the plantation States, in 1828 a new revision of the tariff was made in favor of protection, to the horror of the Southern business and farming circles, who had hoped that President Andrew Jackson would modify the tariff laws in answer to their resistance.6 Therefore, it was in protest against this new amendment, that the theory of nullification was raised in the South Carolina Exposition Protest, which deemed the tariff of 1828 to be unconstitutional. On behalf of the South Carolina governing body, Vice-president John C. Calhoun prepared the report on the tariff situation. Although Calhoun did not officially assert his authorship of the South Carolina Exposition Protest, historian William W. Freehling affirms that it was known; the document stated Calhoun’s Doctrine of Nullification, which proposed South Carolina had the right to reject the federal law because it favored manufacturing over commerce and agriculture.7 However, President Jackson wished not to attend to this issue, and so the legislature took no action and any inquiries into this matter were generally rejected by large votes, creating the impression that the majority in Congress would not recede from its position.8 It was to be in 1832, four years later that Calhoun resigned as Vice-president and took Hayne’s seat in the Senate, in a public retaliation to Jackson’s continuing support the 1828 tariff, and it was during these four years that the tension between Jackson and Calhoun, between North and South, grew and exacerbated the need for nullification. It appeared as though things were about to improve in 1830, when the approaching payment of the national debt made it necessary for the tax to be reduced, as the revenue was far in excess of the ordinary needs of government, and accordingly the tariff was modified. In this year, the revenue was reduced ‘by nearly three and a half millions,’ nevertheless, this measure still proved to be ineffective for the South for; the articles on which duties were reduced or removed, tea, coffee, cocoa, molasses and salt, were those of which the North, like the South, were a consumer, and so ‘as far as manufactures were concerned, the policy of the government was still one of protection.’9 Thus, the radicals declared the tariff of 1930 to be worse than that of 1828, as nearly the entire amount of the reductions were taken from these unprotected articles of coffees and spices, and consequently the burden remained on the plantation states. Evidently, the situation has become most severe in South Carolina, not only due to the State’s economic depression, their soil erosion, and the fact that they failed to keep up with the competition from the newer cotton-producing areas, but also because ‘this section had the highest percentage of slave population.’10 Indeed, Freehling notes that there was a definite connection between those who supported nullification and the areas in which slaves vastly outnumbered the whites; in these large areas of South Carolina, there was a general unease and a considerable fear of a slave rebellion and this, in turn, exacerbated the way some people in this state reacted to the tariff situation.11 It was no surprise, henceforth, that from 1831, the public sentiment in South Carolina had reached a point where the ‘nullifiers’ felt they needed to hasten their organization, and at the close of 1832 the Ordinance of Nullification was adopted by a State convention. The assembly declared that the tariff of 1832 failed to moderate the protective barriers founded in the earlier measures, and as a result from ignoring desperate pleas from Southern representatives, the convention nullified the tariffs of both 1828 and 1832 within their borders. It was observed ‘that perseverance in the tariff policy must lead to dissolution of the Union,’ and thus South Carolina’s threat of secession was made if the federal government attempted to continue collecting the tariff duties.12 It is interesting to note at this point, that one of the crucial reasons why Calhoun went public in 1832, and resigned as Vice-president in support of nullification, was due to the fact that it was in reaction to South Carolina’s genuine threat of secession. Indeed, it seemed Calhoun was to remain divided with President Jackson over this issue, for in response to the State’s threat, Jackson sent seven small naval vessels and a war-force to Charleston, where the radicals had formed the State’s Rights. The President believed nullification to be treasonous and disloyal to the founders of the Union, and on 11th December 1832, he expressed his opinions by issuing a proclamation that declared South Carolina ‘stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason," and he appealed to the people of the state to reassert their allegiance to that Union’ for which their ancestors had fought.13 In addition, Jackson asserted his rejection of secession, deeming it as a ‘revolutionary act’ rather than a ‘constitutional right,’ and made it clear that he would go to any extreme to uphold the Union, for ‘disunion by armed-force was treason.’14 After being met by a counter-proclamation by Governor Hayne, which maintained South Carolina’s right to pass laws as they were forced into a position to carry on war with the Federal government, President Jackson laid the matter before Congress. As a result of his meeting with Congress, in which Calhoun was a member of at this time, on 16th January 1833, President Jackson introduced into the Senate the Force Bill, which further provided for the collection of duties on imports, and it authorized the President to use soldiers to enforce the tariff measures if necessary. For Harold Syrett, ‘Jackson was defending not only the Union but also his own concept of the President’s duties and functions as the representative of the people.’15 He could not, and would not, avoid performing his duty, and under no circumstances should the laws ever be repelled. However, combating Jackson’s methods, the following month saw Calhoun speak against this bill in support of his resolutions, and on this occasion, the doctrine of nullification was actually sustained in relation to this Force Bill. Nonetheless, despite this small victory for the nullifiers of Jackson’s bill, the tariff situation was still prominent, and Calhoun had so far not been successful in finding any other state to support him on nullification. Therefore, in 1833, a ‘Compromise Bill’ was offered by Henry Clay, who condemned Jackson’s Proclamation to South Carolina as inflammatory and commended the new Bill that had the ability to stop secession, in a final act to restore balance among the opposing sides.16 The bill provided for the gradual reduction of tariff until 1843, with the intention of bringing it down to the level that had existed in 1816.17 More specifically, this compromise indicated that all taxes in excess of 20 percent of the value of the actual imports were to be gradually reduced. Consequently, Calhoun accepted the bill and South Carolina repealed its nullification measure, obtaining many of the demands the state sought. Although this negotiation adhered most noticeably to the tariff issues of the Southern States, it seemed that both sides believed it to be a decided victory; according to Van Deusen, despite the fact that the tariff had been revised, the settlement of 1833 was a relative success for the general government as well, as ‘the revenue under the act of 1832 was too large for their needs after the public debt had been paid,’ thus regardless of South Carolina’s action, reduction must have taken place.18 Furthermore, even though the Force Act was ‘nullified’ and South Carolina had demonstrated how a single State could force its demands on the legislative body, it must not be forgotten that Jackson had, nevertheless, achieved his major objective and successfully upheld the Union. Reflecting upon the events leading up to 1832 and the eventual Crisis of Nullification, it is evident that much emphasis has been placed on South Carolina in the opposition of the Federal laws. For Donald J. Ratcliffe, however, there has been ‘too much emphasis’ on this particular State in conjunction with the proceedings of the Nullification Crisis: he maintains that in the 1820s, it was the whole South (except the Border States) that turned against Federal authority in the 1820s, for they were driven by economic discontents and anxieties about maintaining control of their racial minorities.19 Nevertheless, it was in 1828 that South Carolina broke away from her sister Southern States due to the fact that they were affected far more severely by the election of President Jackson that year. After he took control in Washington and proceeded to redress most of the South’s criticisms, including the subject of the protective tariff, it was at this time that South Carolina emerged from the South and obstructed Federal revenue laws.20 It is fair to say that Jackson’s policies on tariffs were not the sole reason for the State’s nullification and their threats of secession; instead they appeared to intensify all the problems South Carolina faced, and seemed to ignore the reality that they had barely enough revenue to support themselves. What was particularly significant about the Nullification Crisis was the fact that it also exacerbated the divide between the North and South, which would climax three decades later with the launch of the American Civil War. Indeed, historian William Freehling believes that the Nullification Crisis was a key event in the pre-history of the Civil War; he highlights the fact that the inter-related issues of slavery, State’s Rights, and economic interests boiled over when, in 1832, South Carolina ‘nullified’ the tariff law, which they perceived to be burdensome and designed to undermine them.21 Although Henry Clay’s Compromise Bill secured the passage of the Tariff of 1833, and both Jackson and Calhoun accepted the results, Freehling still sees these events as a precursor of the problems the Civil War brought about. It is interesting to note that South Carolina’s threat of secession, which caused such a scandal in 1832, was intensified to such an extent, decades later in 1860, that by February 1861, South Carolina’s threat became a reality and along with six other Southern States, she seceded from the Union. During the period between the Nullification Crisis and the arrival of the Civil War, it seemed that the division between North and South deepened, and this time, no Compromise Bill could have resolved the situation. South Carolina once again argued for States’ Rights, this time concerning Slave Owners in the South, and claimed the Northern States were not executing their Federal responsibilities. However, unlike the events of 1832, now South Carolina was supported by six other Deep South Cotton States in the secession. All things considered, it has come to my attention that the Nullification Crisis of 1832 was paramount in establishing America’s history, particularly in contributing to the causation of the Civil War. It was clear that the Compromise Bill, although an effective short-term solution to the crisis of 1832, did not help to ease the worries of the people of the South, who began to query whether Federal authority truly embodied and represented Southern interests. However, what it did establish and strengthen, was the conviction that the interests of the North and South were opposed to each other, and served to transform a great part of the population of South Carolina, from their loyalty to the general government.22 It is fair to say that the events of 1832 actually helped unite the Southern state of South Carolina, and in the years ahead, it assisted in the joining of other Southern lands. Eventually, the State’s disdain of Federal Union would spread among the people of the South, and finally convince them of the necessity of ultimate secession. Bibliography Bancroft, Hubert H. ed. “The Financial Panics of 1837” in the Great Republic by the Master Historians, Vol. III, 1902. Barnwell, John. Love of Order: South Carolinas First Secession Crisis. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1982. Freehling, William W., Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Crisis in South Carolina 1816-1836, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965. Houston, David F., A Critical Study of Nullification in South Carolina. Longmans, Green& Co., New York, 1896 Mills, John. A Critical History of Economics: Missed Opportunities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. Ratcliffe, Donald J. “The Nullification Crisis, Southern Discontents, and the American Political Process” in American Nineteenth Century History, Vol. 1, Issue 2, 2000 Syrett, Harold C. Andrew Jackson: His Contribution to the American Tradition. 1st ed. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1953. http://www.questia.com/PM.qst?a=o&d=978541. Van Deusen, John G. Economic Bases of Disunion in South Carolina. New York: Columbia University Press, 1928. Read More