OK - first the Nullification crises was not the first time states had decided that the Federal government had the right to make laws that affected the individual states. This started actually with the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1789 when these states decided the Alien and Sedition acts were illegal and "resolved" that they did not affect or were enforceable in their states.
In 1832 South CArolina did the same thing regarding the Tariff of 1828 (this tariff was unconstitutional based on the article in the Constitution stating that the Federal government had no authority to impose tariffs on the individual states but that is a topic for another thread). With the exception of Louisiana (and a few hotheads in Virginia) the entire south was opposed to the Tariff of 1832 (a revision of the Tariff of Abominations, passed in 1828. The Tariff of 1832 did lower some of the rates).
South Carolina had suffered most by the inability of her worn lands to sustain the competition with the lands of the Yazoo and the Red River, and to her the most active opposition, under the lead of Mr. Calhoun, was confined. The modern doctrine of nullification was broached by her accomplished statesmen, and an unsuccessful attempt made to deduce it from the Virginia resolutions of 1798. Mr. Madison, in a letter addressed to the writer of these pages in August, 1830, firmly resisted this attempt; and, as a theory, the whole doctrine of nullification was overthrown by Mr. Webster in his speech of the 26th of January, 1830. But public sentiment had gone too far in South Carolina to be checked; party leaders were too deeply committed to retreat; and at the close of 1832 the ordinance of nullification was adopted by a State convention.
This decisive act roused the hero of New Orleans from the vigilant repose with which he had watched the coming storm. Confidential orders to hold themselves in readiness for active service were sent in every direction to the officers of the army and the navy. Prudent and resolute men were quietly stationed at the proper posts. Arms and munitions in abundance were held in readiness, and a chain of expresses in advance of the mail was established from the Capitol to Charleston. These preparations made, the Presidential proclamation of the 11th of December, 1832, was issued. It was written by Mr. Edward Livingston, then Secretary of State, from notes furnished by General Jackson himself; but there is not an idea of importance in it which may not be found in Mr. Webster's speech on Foot's resolution [the oration in reply to Hayne].
The proclamation of the President was met by the counter-proclamation of Governor Hayne; and the State of South Carolina proceeded to pass laws for carrying the ordinance of nullification into effect, and for putting the State into a condition to carry on war with the general government. In this posture of affairs the President of the United States laid the matter before Congress, in his message of the 16th of January, 1833, and the bill "further to provide for the collection of duties on imports" was introduced into the Senate, in pursuance of his recommendations. Mr. Calhoun was at this time a member of that body, having been chosen to succeed Governor Hayne, and having of course resigned the office of Vice-President. Thus called, for the first time, to sustain in person before the Senate and the country the policy of nullification, which had been adopted by South Carolina mainly under his influence, and which was now threatening the Union, it hardly need be said that he exerted all his ability and put forth all his resources in defence of the doctrine which had brought his State to the verge of revolution. It is but justice to add that he met the occasion with equal courage and vigor. The bill "to make further provision for the collection of the revenue," or "Force Bill," as it was called, was reported by Mr. Wilkins from the Committee on the Judiciary on the 21st of January, and on the following day Mr. Calhoun moved a series of resolutions affirming the right of a State to annual, as far as her citizens are concerned, any act of Congress which she may deem oppressive and unconstitutional. On the 15th and 16th of February he spoke at length in opposition to the bill, and in development and support of his resolutions. On this occasion the doctrine of nullification was sustained by him with far greater ability than it had been by General Hayne, and in a speech which we believe is regarded as Mr. Calhoun's most powerful effort. In closing his speech Mr. Calhoun challenged the opponents of his doctrines to disprove them, and warned them, in the concluding sentence, that the principles they might advance would be subjected to the revision of posterity.
His speech was answered by Mr. Webster in a vigorous constitutional argument, concerning whose power and effect we may quote from Mr. Madison: "It crushes `nullification,' and must hasten an abandonment of `secession.'" It will suffice to say here, in conclusion of this subject, that the passage of the Force Bill, and the energetic preparations of the President, deterred the nullifiers. The President had declared in his proclamation that as chief magistrate of the country he could not, if he would, avoid performing his duty; that the laws must be executed; that all opposition to their execution must be repelled, and by force, if necessary. That Jackson meant all that he said no one for a moment questioned, and South Carolina hastened to "nullify" her hostile action, though still loudly advocating her favorite doctrine of "State rights."
John C. Calhoun was Vice-President of the United States when nullification was first brought up and in fact, Calhoun wrote the first Nullification resolution. He would become its greatest proponent. Andrew Jackson privately vowed to hang Calhoun, his Vice-President. Because the Nullification crises was raised by an individual state as a resolution, it was not presented to the other states, although each Southern State was seriously injured financially by the Tariffs of 1832. Had Jackson not threatened force against South Carolina, there is the possibility that the Southern States might have seceded in 1833.
In a dinner at the white house in 1832, President Jackson raised his glass in a toast. “To our federal union. It must be preserved.” Vice-President Calhoun followed with his toast. “To the union, next to our liberty, most dear. May we always remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the states.”
Calhoun had made his decision. State's Rights first. And about 30 years BEFORE the start of the War for Southern Independence.
Did Mississippi support the Resolution for Nullification?
The position of Mississippi in the controversy over the protective tariff is especially interesting because, in the long and bitter struggle over slavery, Mississippi came to accept the doctrine of complete State sovereignty and the consequent rights of nullification and secession laid down by South Carolina in this crisis, and was hardly second to that State in the final movement that carried the doctrine of State sovereignty to its logical conclusion,--secession.
In 1828, at the time of the passage of "the tariff of abominations ," Mississippi was a young frontier community, the experiences and interests of which had made it national in sentiment and a supporter of the party in control of the general government. George Poindexter, delegate of the Mississippi Territory in congress, voiced the sentiments of his constituents, in 1811, when he interrupted the disunion speech of Josiah Quincy, in the house of representatives, on the admission of Louisiana into the Union, and appealed to the speaker "Whether it be competent in any member of this house to invite any portion of the people to insurrection, and of course to dissolution of the Union."
A protective tariff in the United States involves two fundamental questions, i. e., whether protection is for the social and economic good of the country, and whether it is constitutional. The tariff of 1816 was considered from the point of view of expediency and had been passed because it was thought to be for the good of all. When the South was faced with the tariff of 1828, it well knew that to attack it with economic arguments was useless for its adherents of the manufacturing States of the East and the wool and hemp growing States of the West and Southwest were too firmly persuaded of its advantages. There fore the arguments against the tariff during this period are based on its constitutionality. As early as 1825, the legislature of South Carolina had declared that "to lay duties to protect domestic manufactures" was "an unconstitutional exercise of power on the part of Congress." The passage of the "tariff of abominations" aroused the agricultural South to a high pitch of indignation, and governors and legislatures of the Southern States condemned the act as unconstitutional and unjust. South Carolina, already the acknowledged leader of her section in its opposition to a protective tariff, protested through her legislature against it as destructive to the interests of South Carolina and "unconstitutional, oppressive, and unjust," and adopted as a report "The South Carolina Exposition" written by John C. Calhoun. The constitutional arguments in "The Exposition" are those of the Kentucky and the Virginia resolutions and Madison's report to the Virginia legislature in 1800; but Calhoun goes ****her than Jefferson and Madison and definitely sets forth the "modes and measures of redress" by which a State may "interpose" to protect its rights against the encroachments of the Federal government. It belongs to a State in convention assembled, according to "The Exposition," "to determine, authoritatively, whether the acts of which we complain be unconstitutional ; and, if so, whether they constitute a violation so deliberate, palpable, and dangerous, as to justify the interposition of the State to protect its rights. If this question be decided in the affirmative, the convention will then determine in what manner they ought to be declared null and void within the limits of the State; which solemn declaration, based on her rights as a member of the Union, would be obligatory, not only on her own citizens, but on the general government itself; and thus place the violated rights of the State under the shield of the Constitution." The only recourse of the Federal government, in such a case, is an appeal to all the States. If three-fourths of these sustain the contention of the Federal government, the powers in dispute becomes a granted power, and the State must submit or secede. But the legislature of South Carolina was "restrained from the assertion of the sovereign rights of the State by the hope that the magnanimity and justice of the good people of the Union will effect the abandonment of a system, partial in its nature, unjust in its operation, and not within the powers delegated to Congress"; and, to ascertain the opinion of the other States and to invite their co-operation, sent copies of its resolution to the governors of the other States, to be laid before the several legislatures.
The protests of South Carolina were followed by resolutions of the legislatures of Georgia and Virginia declaring the tariff unconstitutional, partial in its operation, impolitic, and oppressive to a large portion of the people of the Union, and urging its repeal.
The interests of Mississippi identified her with South Carolina in opposing a protective system, but restrained her from accepting the "modes and measures of redress" proposed by Calhoun.
The legislature of Mississippi passed resolutions declaring "that the tariff of 1828 is contrary to the spirit of the Constitution of the United States; impolitic and oppressive in its operation in the Southern States, and ought to be resisted by all constitutional means," and "instructed" their senators in congress and "requested" their representatives "to use their best exertions to effect a revision or repeal of the present Tariff."
A year later, February 5, 1830, the legislature again expressed the opposition of the State to the policy of protection, by passing a resolution concurring with the States of Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia in the soundness of the policy expressed in the different resolutions on the tariff, the colonization society, and internal improvements.
However opposed Mississippi might be to the policy of protection, the devotion of its people to Andrew Jackson was sufficient to insure the support of the State to the national government while it was under his direction. Partly because of his influence and partly because of interests and inclinations attaching her to the Union, Mississippi was unwilling to break with the Federal government, and only a small minority of the people of the State actually supported South Carolina in the assertion of the right to nullify an act of congress and the defiance of the president in the exercise of that right. Many were in this small minority not primarily because they favored nullification, but rather because they were hostile to Jackson. For the constitutionality and the expediency of the tariff and nullification became confused with the great personal antagonism between Jackson and Calhoun and the lesser antagonisms between Jackson and those who had dared oppose him.
Governor Scott, of Mississippi, was more sympathetic towards South Carolina than the legislature he addressed. January 8, 1833, in his message to the legislature, he asserts that a large majority of the people of the State think the tariff "contrary to the spirit of the constitution of the United States, impolitic, and oppressive in its operation upon the Southern States, and should be resisted by all constitutional means," and that there is little difference of opinion on this subject among the people of the South generally. "Yet, strange as it may appear," he continues, "the general government has persisted in this most unjust and oppressive system until one of the States, affording the purest patriots and most talented statesmen, has been induced to believe that no relief was to be expected, and has entered upon a course which seems to threaten a dissolution of the Union." He hopes, however, "that Congress will at their present session so modify the obnoxious law as to restore harmony and good feeling once more, between the different sections of our beloved country."
This part of the governor's message, and the resolutions from the States of Maine, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania on the same subject, were referred to a select committee of the house of representatives of which Adam L. Bingaman, an influential Whig, of Natchez, was chairman. This committee, in its report, declared their belief that the sentiments of the majority of the people of the States towards a protective tariff were still in accord with those expressed by the general assembly in 1829. But the committee expressed themselves as opposed to nullification and as regarding it as a heresy fatal to the existence of the Union, and expressed the opinion that the State of South Carolina had acted with a reckless precipitancy. The committee reported for adoption three resolutions. The first condemned secession by declaring "that, in the language of the father of his country, we will indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the ties which link together its various parts'" The doctrine of nullification was condemned in the second resolution as "contrary to the letter and spirit of the Constitution, and in direct conflict with the welfare, safety and independence of every State in the Union." "To no one of them," it was added, "would its consequences be more deeply disastrous, more ruinous, than to the State of Mississippi." In the last resolution, the legislature declared that, "We will, with heart and hand, sustain the president of the United States in the full exercise of his legitimate powers, to restore peace and harmony to oyr distracted country, and to maintain, unsullied and unimpaired, the honor, the independence and integrity of the Union." These resolutions passed the house by a vote of 30 to 3 and were in due time passed by the senate and transmitted to the other States.
I could write pages on this issue. This treatise only knocks the top of the politics at the time of the Nullification Crises as it stood in Mississippi, the South and the Union in General.
Only by request will I post all of the research I have on this.
Thank you Neil for asking, and I hope I have not dismayed the forum by this terribly long posting.
My best, my friends
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