- Joined
- Oct 22, 2014
"[Madison] lived to see the rebirth of sectionalism in 1820, and the rebirth of nullification and secession threats in 1828 and 1832. During the latter crisis he claimed that his famous Resolutions of 1798 gave no support to the doctrines of Calhoun. This was not a claim that could be defended in logic."*"The resolutions written by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison and passed by the Virginia and Kentucky legislatures in 1798-99, in opposition to the federal government's recently enacted Alien and Sedition Acts, claimed each state's right to "interpose" itself against such allegedly unconstitutional federal laws. But neither state put "interposition" into action, explained how the remedy would work, or defined when interposition could be used thereafter. South Carolina's nullifiers in 1832 and secessionists in 1860 nevertheless claimed Jefferson and Madison's concept of interposition as justification for the latter-day remedies. Madison, still alive in the 1830s, denied that his precedent would justify South Carolina's nullification of the tariff."
Source: Showdown in Virginia: The 1861 Convention and the Fate of the Union, edited by William W. Freehling and Craig M. Simpson, part 2, pg. 13, note 2.
* Herbert Agar, The Price of Union, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1950), 185