Dramatic Moment – November 4, 1832 Nullification Act
Charleston, South Carolina
The state legislature has met and just decided to pass a state law that nullifies the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 passed by the US Congress. The tariffs were protectionist taxes on foreign imports that helped protect Northern businesses against foreign imports. Protectionist means that they caused prices for foreign goods to increase so that people would buy goods made in the factories of the North. This helped those northern factories to make more profit. The tariffs greatly benefited the North with its manufacturing while the agrarian South was hurt by it because it had little manufacturing. Below is an excerpt of the text of the law:
Whereas the Congress of the United States by various acts … intended for the protection of domestic manufactures … at the expense and to the injury and oppression of other classes and individuals … hath exceeded its just powers under the constitution, which confers on it no authority to afford such protection, and hath violated the true meaning and intent of the constitution, which provides for equality in imposing the burdens of taxation upon the several States and portions of the confederacy…
We… the people of the State of South Carolina … do declare and ordain … that the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities … 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…
1. Reread this and code the text. Recall your coding symbols.
2. What right did the South Carolina legislature refer to when it deiced to void or nullify the federal
tariffs?
3. Why did South Carolina object to the taxation imposed by the tariffs?
4. What might happen if South Carolina was successful in getting these federal laws voided?
Document #B: Proclamation Against the Ordinance of Nullification
by Andrew JacksonDeclaration in response to South Carolina's Ordinance of NullificationDecember 10, 1832
…If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy…
…I consider … 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….
…A league between independent nations generally has no sanction other than a moral one; or if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior it can not be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied… An attempt, by force of arms, to destroy a government is an offense, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such government has the right by the law of self-defense to pass acts for punishing the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed by the constitutional act…
Questions:
1. What was the doctrine about which President Jackson was speaking?
2. Why did Pres. Jackson think that “the power to annul a law of the United States…incompatible with the existence of the Union”?
3. How is a government different than a league of independent nations according to Pres. Jackson?
4. How did Pres. Jackson feel about South Carolina’s Nullification Act? Why?
Document #C: Against the Force Bill
by John C. CalhounExcepts of a speech given in the Senate over the course of two daysFebruary 15, 1833
The Force Bill was being debated by the US Congress to give President Jackson permission to use troops to enforce the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 as a response to the Nullification Act by South Carolina:
…The Federal Government has, by an express provision of the Constitution, the right to lay on imposts (tariffs/taxes). The State has never denied or resisted this right, nor even thought of so doing. The Government has, however, not been contented with exercising this power as she had a right to do, but has gone a step beyond it, by laying imposts, not for revenue, but protection. This the State considers as an unconstitutional exercise of power - highly injurious and oppressive to her and the other staple States…
…All must admit that there are delegated and reserved powers, and that the powers reserved are reserved to the States respectively. The powers, then, of the system are divided between the General and the State governments; and the point immediately under consideration is, whether a State has any right to judge as to the extent of its reserved powers, and to defend them against the encroachments of the General Government…
1. Why does Mr. Calhoun consider that the tariffs imposed by the US Congress “…as an unconstitutional exercise of power…?”
2. Does Calhoun think that an individual state has the right to interpret or judge any law made by the federal (general) government? Why?
3. How might Patriots such as Sam Adams or Thomas Paine have reacted to John Calhoun’s statement? Why?
Document D: US Constitution, 1789.
Article VI, Paragraph 2
This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.1. What is the most important sentence or phrase in this clause?
2. How does this clause explain the relationship between the federal, state, and local
government in the United States?