Nullification crisis

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The nullification crisis was a sectional political crisis in the United States in 1832 and 1833, 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.^[1][2]

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.^[3] 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 nullify the tariff. They subscribed to the legal theory that if a state believed a federal law unconstitutional, it could declare the law null and void in 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.^[4]

On July 1, 1832, before Calhoun resigned the vice presidency to run for the Senate, where he could more effectively defend nullification,^[5] Jackson signed into law the Tariff of 1832. This compromise tariff received the support of most Northerners and half the Southerners in Congress.^[6] South Carolina remained unsatisfied, 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.^[7] South Carolina initiated military preparations to resist anticipated federal enforcement,^[8] 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.^[9]