By Scott A. Grant
mail@floridanewsline.com
The Nullification Crisis of 1832 is considered to be the greatest crisis faced by our Republic prior to 1860 and a precursor of our Civil War.
The Tariff Act of 1828 was known as the “Tariff of Abominations” and with good reason. The Act was written by future Vice-President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina and future President Martin Van Buren of New York to be so reprehensible that it would go down to defeat and end tariffs for good. Shockingly, the bill passed and was signed into law by President John Quincy Adams. The bill passed because people were rabidly angry with England. Fourteen years earlier, British soldiers had captured Washington and sacked and burned both the US Capitol and the White House. (Dolley Madison famously rescued a portrait of George Washington as she fled before the invaders.)
The tariff was unpopular everywhere, but especially in the agrarian South. Factions in South Carolina began to lobby for “nullification,” declaring the act unconstitutional and therefore null and void in the state. The concept of nullification had first been advanced by Thomas Jefferson. In 1828, Andrew Jackson was elected president. John C. Calhoun was his VP. Calhoun began to lobby hard for repeal of the “Tariff of Abominations.” Jackson liked tariffs and he had as good a reason as anyone to hate the British. Less than a year after the sack of our Capitol, “Old Hickory” had defeated a British invasion of Louisiana at the Battle of New Orleans. The invaders were Napoleonic War veterans who expected to annihilate the rag tag army of volunteers and pirates assembled by Jackson. Jackson and his troops shocked the world.
In 1832, Andy Jackson signed the Tariff Act of 1832 into law. The new tariff was not as objectionable as the Act of 1828, but still went too far for Southerners who imported most of their finished goods from England. John C. Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to return to South Carolina, run for the Senate, and fight the tariff. In November 1832, Calhoun drafted an Ordinance of Nullification declaring the tariff acts void in South Carolina. The Palmetto State began preparations for a Civil War. They hoped other southern states would join. They did not.
Andrew Jackson responded by issuing the Nullification Proclamation. The proclamation was written by Secretary of State Edward Livingston. Livingston was a Princeton graduate who has been called “the first legal genius of modern times.” The proclamation declared nullification to be “incompatible with the existence of the Union.” The document went on to declare that “Disunion by armed force is TREASON.” South Carolina continued plans to oppose the collection of tariffs by armed force. Congress passed the “Force Bill” giving Jackson the power to use the army to collect the tax.
At this point, with South Carolina standing alone, cooler heads prevailed. Senators Henry Clay of Kentucky, Daniel Webster of New Hampshire, and the aforementioned John C Calhoun pushed through a new tariff act that was less objectionable to the South. For this and other compromises that postponed the Civil War, Henry Clay earned the appellation “the Great Compromiser.” The South was not ready to go to war over taxes in 1832. Jackson never forgave Clay and Calhoun for their part in the crisis. He is purported to have said that he only had two regrets: that he never shot Henry Clay or hanged John C. Calhoun.
Scott A. Grant is a local author and historian. He writes sometimes esoteric columns monthly for Ponte Vedra NewsLine and welcomes your comments at scottg@standfastic.com.
