It is notable among other reasons because the President used it as the occasion to identify American patriotism with supporting the Constitution and the Constitutional government. The US by the standards of 1832 was very much a liberal democracy that was in the process of expanding voting rights, i.e., allowing white men without a minimum amount of property to vote. By today’s standards, of course, it wouldn’t qualify as a liberal democracy at all. But European liberals like Alexis de Tocqueville worried that it was veering dangerously close to mob rule. (This is why it requires a bit of imagination to imagine the significance of past political trends. Times change. Sometimes for the better.)
Andrew Jackson was President at that time, having been elected in 1828 after a contested election in 1824 between himself and John Quincy Adams, in which the House of Representatives decided the Presidential election under the procedures established by the 12th Amendment that passed in 1804 for cases in which the Electoral College was unable to decide by a majority on the President. (1)
In 1828, Jackson was the clear winner. But the system at that time still made the runner-up Vice President. Which meant that the President and the Vice President were likely to be intense political rivals or even bitter enemies. The latter was the case after the election of 1828, when John C. Calhoun became Jackson’s Vice President. Though both were part of what became known in this period as the Democratic Party (previously the Democratic-Republican Party), Calhoun was focused on developing a practice of state power that would protect the institution of slavery from any interference from the free states.
He worked behind the scenes with the South Carolina legislature to pass a law in which South Carolina declared a federal tariff law null and void for the state of South Carolina. Though the nominal issue was a tariff not directly related to slavery, it was widely understood that this Nullification Controversy was a dry run for a confrontation of laws on slavery.
When it came to South Carolina directly attempting to nullify a federal law on the basis of “states rights” interpreted to mean that a state’s sovereignty overrode federal sovereignty.
Jackson called out the federal government’s authority to enforce federal law against state defiance in a sophisticated argument phrased in what was nevertheless accessible language at the time.
And whereas the said ordinance prescribes to the people of South Carolina a course of conduct in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the instruction of the Union-that Union, which, coeval with our political existence, led our fathers, without any other ties to unite them than those of patriotism and common cause, through the sanguinary struggle to a glorious independence-that sacred Union, hitherto inviolate, which, perfected by our happy Constitution, has brought us, by the favor of Heaven, to a state of prosperity at home, and high consideration abroad, rarely, if ever, equaled in the history of nations; to preserve this bond of our political existence from destruction, to maintain inviolate this state of national honor and prosperity, and to justify the confidence my fellow-citizens have reposed in me, I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, have thought proper to issue this my PROCLAMATION, stating my views of the Constitution and laws applicable to the measures adopted by the Convention of South Carolina, and to the reasons they have put forth to sustain them, declaring the course which duty will require me to pursue, and, appealing to the understanding and patriotism of the people, warn them of the consequences that must inevitably result from an observance of the dictates of the Convention. (2)And he called out the fundamental absurdity of John Calhoun’s admittedly novel theory that “sovereignty” cannot be divided between levels of government. That was and is ridiculous. People in the 1930s were very much aware that an Imperial government could have sovereignty over national governments and kingdoms, while subsidiary units of government could have sovereignty within the framework of national sovereignty, and so on.
The later government of the treasonous Confederate States of America also had a provision, for instance, that no single state of the Confederacy could abolish slavery within its borders without the agreement of all other slave states in the Confederacy. In the Calhounian system, the sovereignty of the slavery system was always paramount.
Jackson’s proclamation also stated the practical argument against Calhoun’s notion:
[O]ur social compact in express terms declares, that the laws of the United States, its Constitution, and treaties made under it, are the supreme law of the land; and for greater caution adds, "that the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." And it may be asserted, without fear of refutation, that no federative government could exist without a similar provision. Look, for a moment, to the consequence. If South Carolina considers the revenue laws unconstitutional, and has a right to prevent their execution in the port of Charleston, there would be a clear constitutional objection to their collection in every other port, and no revenue could be collected anywhere; for all imposts must be equal. It is no answer to repeat that an unconstitutional law is no law, so long as the question of its legality is to be decided by the State itself, for every law operating injuriously upon any local interest will be perhaps thought, and certainly represented, as unconstitutional, and, as has been shown, there is no appeal. [my emphasis]
The argument embraced by Nikki Haley and all other Republican defenders of the neo-Confederate view is that slavery was not the cause or main issue in the Civil War.
Ironically, of all the notable political controversies that were obvious preliminary political skirmishes that led to the Civil War – including the Missouri Compromise of 1820, the Congressional debates in the 1830s over the “gag rule,” (3) the Mexican-American War (aka, la Guerra de Estados Unidos-México), the Compromise of 1850, the Kansas-Nebraska Act and the subsequent local civil war between pro-and anti-slavery forces, John Brown’s raid on Harper’s Ferry – the 1932 Nullification Controversy was the only one that wasn’t nominally about slavery.
It was in reality a test run for a secessionist movement over slavery.It was officially about tariffs. But this is an inconvenient example for today’s “states rights” advocates like Texas anti-immigrant Gov. Greg Abbott to invoke, because anyone looking at it in any detail will encounter the emphatic Jacksonian arguments against Calhoun’s states-rights claims.
Notes:
(1) Kratz, Jessie (2020): The 1824 Presidential Election and the “Corrupt Bargain”. Pieces of History-US National Archives 10/22/2020. <https://prologue.blogs.archives.gov/2020/10/22/the-1824-presidential-election-and-the-corrupt-bargain/> (Accessed: 2024-18-03).
(2) President Jackson's Proclamation Regarding Nullification, December 10, 1832. Yale Law School Avalon Project. <https://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/jack01.asp#b1> (Accessed: 2024-30-03).
(3) Struggles over Slavery: The “Gag” rule. National Archives.
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