Nullification crisis facts for kids
The nullification crisis was a United States sectional political crisis in 1832–33, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, which involved a confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government. It ensued after South Carolina declared the federal Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 unconstitutional and therefore null and void within the sovereign boundaries of the state. However, courts at the state and federal level, including the U.S. Supreme Court, repeatedly have rejected the theory of nullification by states.
The controversial and highly protective Tariff of 1828 was enacted into law during the presidency of John Quincy Adams. The tariff was strongly opposed in the South, since it was perceived to put an unfair tax burden on the Southern agrarian states that imported most manufactured goods. The tariff's opponents expected that Jackson's election as president would result in a significant reduction of it. When the Jackson administration failed to take any action to address their concerns, South Carolina's most radical faction began to advocate that the state declare the tariff null and void within the state. In Washington, an open split on the issue occurred between Jackson and Vice President John C. Calhoun, a native South Carolinian and the most effective proponent of the constitutional theory of state nullification; the legal theory that if a state believed a federal law unconstitutional, it could declare the law null and void in the state. This legal theory has been rejected at state and federal level.
On July 1, 1832, before Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to run for the Senate, where he could more effectively defend nullification, Jackson signed into law the Tariff of 1832. This compromise tariff received the support of most Northerners and half the Southerners in Congress. But it did not satisfy South Carolina, and on November 24, 1832, a state convention adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared that the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina after February 1, 1833. South Carolina initiated military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement, but on March 1, 1833, Congress passed both the Force Bill—authorizing the president to use military forces against South Carolina—and a new negotiated tariff, the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which was satisfactory to South Carolina. The South Carolina convention reconvened and repealed its Nullification Ordinance on March 15, 1833, but three days later, nullified the Force Bill as a symbolic gesture of principle.
The crisis was over, and both sides found reasons to claim victory. The tariff rates were reduced and stayed low to the satisfaction of the South, but the states' rights doctrine of nullification remained controversial. By the 1850s, the issues of the expansion of slavery into the western territories and the threat of the Slave Power became the central issues in the nation.
Aftermath
People reflected on the meaning of the nullification crisis and its outcome for the country. On May 1, 1833, Jackson predicted, "the tariff was only a pretext, and disunion and Southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question."
The final resolution of the crisis and Jackson's leadership had appeal throughout the North and South.
In the political vacuum created by this alienation, the Southern wing of the Whig Party was formed. The party was a coalition of interests united by the common thread of opposition to Jackson, and more specifically to his "definition of federal and executive power." The party included former National Republicans with an "urban, commercial, and nationalist outlook", as well as former nullifiers. Emphasizing that "they were more southern than the Democrats," the party grew within the South by going "after the abolition issue with unabashed vigor and glee." With both parties arguing who could best defend Southern institutions, the nuances of the differences between free soil and abolitionism, which became an issue in the late 1840s with the Mexican War and territorial expansion, never became part of the political dialogue. This failure increased the slavery issue's volatility.
By the 1850s, states' rights had become a call for state equality under the Constitution.
Madison reacted to this incipient tendency by writing two paragraphs of "Advice to My Country," found among his papers. It said that the Union "should be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her box opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise." Richard Rush published this "Advice" in 1850, by which time Southern spirit was so high that it was denounced as a forgery.
The first test for the South over slavery began during the final congressional session of 1835. In what became known as the Gag Rule Debates, abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions to end slavery in the District of Columbia, where states' rights was not an issue. The debate was reopened each session as Southerners, led by South Carolinians Henry Pinckney and John Hammond, prevented the petitions from even being officially received by Congress. Led by John Quincy Adams, the slavery debate remained on the national stage until late 1844, when Congress lifted all restrictions on processing the petitions.
For South Carolina, the legacy of the crisis involved both the divisions within the state during the crisis and the apparent isolation of the state as the crisis was resolved. By 1860, when it became the first state to secede, it was more internally united than any other Southern state.
