the South Carolina Nullification Crisis was a sectional confrontation between the state of South Carolina and the federal government between 1828 and 1832. in it the Palmetto State ended up challenging the supremacy of the federal government's authority to impose High tariffs on Foreign imports by declaring two Federal tariffs Nolan void within its borders and threatened to prevent their physical collection now this action by the state of South Carolina was predicated on the ideas of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison's compact Theory which proposed the idea that the individual states had the right to nullify actions of the federal government that they believed or contended violated the quote compact between the states or in other words the United States Constitution and the crisis that ensued brought the nation to the very brink of armed conflict when President Andrew Jackson mobilized the military and threatened to enforce the tariffs that were nullified by South Carolina who in turned threatened to secede from the union if the federal tariffs were enforced and the battle that unfolded between President Andrew Jackson and South Carolina would ReSound through the politics of slavery and anti-slavery for decades to come the crisis it turns out exposed the growing concern that southern slaveholders had about the increasingly hostile hostility of the North to the institution of slavery in other words the crisis over Federal tariffs was only a pretext an excuse to force back the increasing political majority in the North in order to protect something more critical to the southern way of life than simply customs duties in many ways the South Carolina Nullification Crisis was a Prelude to the American Civil War the way I want to approach the Nullification Crisis is I want to spend some time talking about the background to it I want to talk about something known as the Jacksonian era of American history and then we'll get into some of the particulars of the Nullification Crisis by looking at the Tariff of Abominations something called the exposition of protest and the Webster Hayne debates after that we can get into a discussion about the actual crisis Itself by talking about another protective tariff this one In 1832 something known as the force Bill and ultimately what calmed the whole situation down something called the compromise Tariff of 1833 and of course we will finish this discussion over the crisis by talking about its significant effect on the development of the country but I want to start by talking briefly about something known as the Jacksonian era of American history the Jacksonian era of American History was a period of time roughly between 1825 and 1849 and it was an era of American history that was dominated by of course its central figure Andrew Jackson um he was the one that really shaped this time of American History he had a transformative effect on the political development of the country the societal development of the country and even in the economic development of the country in many ways and so it's within this Jacksonian era of American history that this Nullification Crisis took place and so I think it's a worthwhile effort to kind of talk about this Jacksonian era how it began and what this era of American History was like so let's do that now the administration of John Quincy Adams was mired in political scandal from its very inauguration and of course I'm referring to the to the idea to the fact that members of the democratic Republican party that had supported Andrew Jackson's bid for the presidency in 1824 were still reeling from what they believed was a corrupt bargain and the apparent corruption that had resulted when the United States Speaker the house Henry Clay had swung a contingent election in favor of John Quincy Adams uh in exchange for being appointed later to the position of Secretary of State which was seen by most people in the country as a position that was the springboard to the presidency and so this corrupt bargain became kind of the rallying cry for members of the democratic Republican party committed to uh Jackson's bid for the presidency in 1824 and now that Henry Clay was the Secretary of State for John Quincy Adams it appeared as to many as though the power Brokers in the in the Democratic Republican party were attempting to close off Jackson from the the presidency in the future and so it was amid these allegations that the Democratic Republican party of course split into two factions uh one faction took on the name briefly the national Republicans and these were uh the member this was the faction of the democratic Republican party that was led by people like President John Quincy Adams Henry Clay and also Daniel Webster now later on they changed their name to the Whig party and that was because they saw president or Andrew Jackson as kind of a monarchical kind of figure they believed that his uh exertion of force and and and executive power was akin to a monarch like a king of England and so it changed their name to the Whig party uh because the Whig party was uh party that existed in England that had traditionally opposed the power of the king and so it was all very political and all very political theater uh but the other faction that developed in the aftermath of the 1824 election uh referred to themselves briefly as the Democratic Republican party but they ended up dropping the name Republican and began referring to themselves simply as Democrats and they were of course led by President Andrew Jackson um they took on the mascot of the donkey because people sometimes referred to Andrew Jackson as a jackass and rather than allow them to get under his skin Jackson made it the official mascot of the party now Jackson himself was the leader of this Democratic party that emerged in the aftermath of the 1824 election um and of course in 1828 four years later Jacksonian Democrats and these National Republicans are Whig parties they waged an absolutely Savage campaign against one another for the presidency both sides engage in vicious personal attacks on one another Andrew Jackson supporters for example accused John Quincy Adams of being a pimp uh and Adam's supporters accused Jackson and his wife Rachel of having committed adultery before they were married so this was a very nasty and vicious personal uh campaign in 1828 but it was Jackson's party that really held the advantages in that 1828 campaign Jackson was of course a national hero as a result of the battles of Horseshoe Bend and later the Battle of New Orleans those two battles of course secured the Western half of the United States at that time and it secured the Region's vote for Andrew Jackson in the future uh Jackson was also a slave holder right so uh he had the trust and the support of Southern Elites and additionally Jackson benefited uh from the growing Spirit of democracy uh that was emerging during John Quincy Adams's Administration which was emerging in reaction to the perceived elitist control over National Affairs since the founding of the Republic and Jackson himself very much was a common man he was born in the poverty he had to work hard for everything he obtained and he appealed then to the common voter many of whom were able to now vote in presidential elections for the first time because in Most states had removed uh property ownership as a requirement for voting and so when the election returns ended up coming in in 1828 Jackson had won this election handedly in fact he had secured every single State's electoral vote south and west of the state of Pennsylvania an equally impressive was the surge in voter turnout in 1828 which was more than double what it had been in 1824. now Jackson himself was a transformative figure of American history in a transforming a formative personality and a transformational leader uh he was the first president from a western state he was the first to have been born in a log cabin but more importantly he was first the first president not to have come from a prominent Colonial Family uh and Jackson was determined to launch a new Democratic era of American history that would silence his critics restore government to quote the people and take power from away from the political Elites who had controlled National Affairs since the nation's Inception today we would call these people the the political establishment and in doing so Andrew Jackson would become the emblem of this new Democratic era and he fundamentally transformed the United States political landscape for good or for bad as it turned out now additionally Andrew Jackson as president wielded power in the executive branch like no other president before him he routinely exercised the presidential veto over Congressional legislation in fact he vetoed more Congressional bills than all previous presidents combined up to that point he was a firm believer that a strong executive branch would ultimately produce a strong nation and a strong union and in a sense he was a committed nationalist at the time in American history when sectionalism appeared to be on the rise and it was his commitment to nationalism over that of sectionalism well that was no more apparent than his handling of the Nullification Crisis created by the state of South Carolina and so it's within the Jacksonian era that this Nullification Crisis unfolds and our story really begins with a brief discussion of Andrew Jackson's vice president a gentleman by the name of John C Calhoun John C Calhoun was a career politician from the state of South Carolina who had risen to prominence in the lead-up to the War of 1812 as part of the Warhawk faction of the democratic Republican party they were the ones that pushed the James Madison into declaring war as a matter of national pride and after the war he served as Secretary of War in the James Monroe Administration if you remember our previous discussion when he had urged Jackson uh and ordered him into the State of Florida or into the territory of Florida if you remember that and he was at the time a committed nationalist much like Andrew Jackson was but as the nation began to experience a decline in that nationalist sentiment in favor of a more sectionalist Outlook Calhoun began to literally morph into the form that he is most remembered for today the staunch defender of southern rights now in 1824 he had been elected to the vice presidency under John Quincy Adams and he was again elected to that post in 1828 only this time under President Andrew Jackson and initially he was a committed Ally of Andrew Jackson but as we're about to discover his home state of South Carolina ultimately destroyed that relationship in the 1830s now the story of the condolification crisis also involves something known as a protective tariff and so I want to talk about a specific protective tariff called the Tariff of 1828 or as Southerners referred to it the Tariff of Abominations now by the end of Jackson's first term in office Vice President John C Calhoun had ended up becoming one of Jackson's most vocal critics and that was because in 1819 the country experienced the financial Panic that had created a national depression and South Carolina had suffered horribly as a result of that depression cotton prices collapsed over 70 thousand residents were lost when they moved through the West looking for cheaper and better land and in the 1830s twice as many would move to to the West during that decade and most South Carolinians had blamed the protective Tariff of 1828 as the source of all of their economic problems and that's why they labeled it the Tariff of Abominations and the reason they labeled it is and the reason they blamed this tariff for all of their economic troubles was that this was a really high tariff on Foreign imports that were coming into the country and these high tariffs on Foreign imports had resulted in high tariffs being placed on Southern cotton in most of the markets of Europe it also resulted in Southerners having to pay more for the foreign imports that they traditionally bought now this graph shows you just how high of a tariff this was right there between 1820 and 1830 you see the 1828 Tariff of Abominations this Tariff was up to this point in American history the highest tariff we'd ever imposed on Foreign imports now tariffs we've talked about tariffs already but just to review tariffs are a way to generate revenue for a government you place a customs duty on a foreign product coming into the country it forces the foreign company to raise the cost of their products and most countries impose these tariffs is just a way to generate a little cash for the government but when you impose a really high tariff like the one in 1828 you're really trying to just cut off all purchasing of foreign products here in the United States and the reason we did that in 1828 is it was part of our American System our economic development after the war of 1812. and during that America that uh Era of Good Feeling Southerners generally supported a protective tariff but with a decline of nationalism and the rise of sectionalism Southerners are now turning their anger uh over their economic troubles towards the federal government's implementation of these high tariffs and there was no tariff higher than the uh Tariff of Abominations now one more aspect about the Tariff of Abominations the the Tariff had been passed by Congress on nearly a sectional vote um there were only four Southern votes for the Tariff of Abominations the overwhelming majority of Southern representatives in the U.S Congress voted against this law and yet the law became a law which signified that Southerners were beginning to lose their political power they had uh enjoyed uh for so many decades as a result of that three-fist compromise it was clear that with the expansion of slavery no longer taking place as a result of the Missouri Compromise that more uh free states were coming into the union and this was having the effect of watering down then uh the political power of the South and so while Southerners oppose this staunchly they were unable to stop the passage of this tariff in 1828. now keep that in mind as we come to the end of our lecture and one more graph to illustrate this point you can see there that between 1800 and 1820 we're seeing a ramping up of uh political power for southern slave holding States and that's largely because we are seeing Southern States expand new states that allow slavery are coming into the union and because of the Three-Fifths Clause of the U.S Constitution these southern slave holding states are getting some additional representation but if you notice there between 1820 and 1830 everything pretty much stagnated there and this is all going to come into play uh as a result in this crisis it's going to cause a lot of anxiety among Southern uh Elites among southern slave owners and particularly those in South Carolina and they're going to take their anger out of course on the Tariff of Abominations in the federal government as a result of this now how does John C Calhoun fit into this well Calhoun fits into this equation reason because while he used to be an ally of Andrew Jackson as it became clear the Tariff was despised by Southerners and particularly those in South Carolina Calhoun ends up becoming a pretty vocal critic of Andrew Jackson and lending his abilities as an academic as a constitutionalist and as an intellectual he was a very intelligent person he ends up leading lending his abilities uh to this his home state of South Carolina by writing a fairly lengthy political pamphlet called the South Carolina exposition and protest now just just just to set this up Calhoun believed he needed to do something uh because of South Carolina's anger over the Tariff of Abominations there were a lot of people in South Carolina that were beginning to uh propose some very radical ideas about how to handle the Tariff uptune including people talking about potentially just seceding from the union and becoming an independent republic again that would not be affected by the Tariff of Abominations and Calhoun desperately wanted to prevent that from happening so he devised a plan of action that he believed could preserve the union prevent secession but allow States kind of a a a motive redress against things they believe the federal government are doing that are borderline unconstitutional and that's what he wrote this Exposition and protest to describe and to and to argue now he wrote this anonymously because he would be challenging the supremacy of the government here with this and that would be challenging Andrew Jackson and that was a very dangerous thing to do sometimes but in this Exposition in protest which was written secretly by Calhoun he claimed a few things that I think are worth noting for example he claimed that the 1828 Tariff of Abominations favored the New England textile industry over Southern Agriculture now he's not necessarily wrong in that regard of really high protective tariff means that Americans aren't likely to buy foreign made products and they're going to buy American-made products which were chiefly produced in the New England textile mills um but he also claimed that the Tariff then violated the agreement between the states the compact between the states that all legislation needed to be equally applied and this meant that the constitution then did not allow the federal government to Levy such unequitable tariffs uh and one that did not appear to be about raising revenue and he claimed then in the exposition in protest that us individuals state in order to protect themselves from legislation like this could nullify the actions or laws of the federal government that a state believed to be unconstitutional now of course this claim wasn't breaking any new ground rather he was simply regurgitating the compact theory that was produced in 1798-99 by Thomas Jefferson's Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions here's The Kentucky Resolution and the language reads very similar to what John C Calhoun was writing in the exposition in protest alleging that states were the supreme authority of whether the federal government had overstepped its bounds and if the federal government had done that uh States could then nullify those actions right and again this was the same idea found in James Madison's Virginia resolution uh here's a copy or an excerpt from the Virginia resolution so essentially what Calhoun was arguing here was just simply dusting off the old arguments of the Kentucky Virginia resolutions dusting off the old arguments of the compact Theory now uh South Carolina seemed to be placated by the exposition and protest there were a lot of very angry people in the state over the terror of people that wanted the Tariff to go away and there were even some radical elements in the state that were uh prepared to go ahead and just secede from the union anyway they were known as fire eaters right because they're playing with fire um but the controversy over the Tariff and ultimately the controversy over the exposition of protest uh didn't die down in fact it simmered in the country for the next couple of years and it finally reared its ugly head in the National Congress when in 1830 it became the central issue in one of the most famous debates this country has ever seen um probably the most famous debates in American history are either the Kennedy Nixon debates the Lincoln Douglas debates but these probably are one of the most important in American history they were known as the Webster pain debates of 1830. now these debates in Congress really sharpened the lines between Federal Authority and states rights and the most famous of them were of course between uh Webster and Hey Now who were these people well Hayne is uh Senator Robert Young Haynes he was a senator from South Carolina um and in these debates he claimed that the union was the creation of the states that the constitution was the creation of the states and therefore the states had the right to nullify actions that were unconstitutional by the federal government and in his arguments he was saying that the protective tariff disproportionately affected Southerners negatively and that all legislation was supposed to affect the states equally and that this then was a violation of the compact um so he was claiming that the union then since it was the creation of the States states had the right to nullify it and in the independence of the States state sovereignty in other words uh was more important to him than preserving the compact preserving the Union and you can see some of the quotations some of the rhetoric hanging used in these debates which really emphasizes how dangerous the situation was becoming in the country when he famously said that the North had crossed the border was invading the state of South Carolina and making War upon her severe citizens and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and her institutions and he says that I I am one of those who believe that the very life of our system is the independence of the states and that there is no evil to be more depreciated or deprecated than the consolidation of the government now at the time these were very heady words they were very dangerous words uh but Haynes didn't go uh you know unchallenged he was of course challenged by another U.S senator from Massachusetts named Daniel Webster now if you don't know much about Daniel Webster he is a fascinating figure from American history he was blessed with a thunderous voice and a theatrical Flair and he was an Unapologetic unionist he claimed the Constitution was not the creation of the states that the constitution was the creation of the people and he argued in these debates that if the states could nullify uh the actions of the federal government then the union was nothing more than a rope of sand Liberty in Union he claimed now and forever won an inseparable nothing he said more or less than resistance by force was nullification and that nullification was disunion by force it is secession by force he claimed it was Civil War now Webster's powerful debates and Powerful statements in these debates appeared almost in every newspaper across the country even Abraham Lincoln later called Webster's uh final speech in these debates one of the best ever delivered in the U.S Senate and even uh uh even Robert Hayne the guy he was debating had to admit that he was awestruck at the end of these debates uh famously saying quote uh a man who can make make such speeches as ought never to die so the the Hayne Webster Hayne debates these were just kind of a harbinger of what was to come that these issues of nullification and the arguments of the South Carolina exposition and protests and the threats of nullification and the threats of secession they didn't go away with each passing month in each passing year they just were just under the surface and they were simmering and they were ready to boil over so let's talk now about the actual crisis and how it unfolded and to do that we need to talk about Jackson and Calhoun's relationship now I mentioned earlier Jackson was a southern slave owner he was a southern cotton planter just like Calhoun which led many in the South to assume that Andrew Jackson would be supportive of their resistance to the Tariff of Abominations and it is true that initially Jackson was sympathetic but once uh Southerners and especially South Carolina started to threaten to nullify federal laws and even rumors of threats of secession and all bets were off at that point because the threat in the supremacy of the federal government was to threaten Andrew Jackson himself and he would turn on the nullifiers of South Carolina with the same Fury that he had directed towards the advancing British Army at New Orleans in 1815. and the deteriorating and the relationship then between Jackson and his vice president uh started to very quickly deteriorate to the point that John C Calhoun ended up resigning now the deteriorating relationship became public in April of 1830 there's Calhoun again uh the deteriorating relationship became public to the country in April of 1830 at the Jefferson Day dinner which is a uh a day that the Democratic party holds to honor Thomas Jefferson they claim that Jefferson was the founder of the party but it's today it's known as the Jefferson Day dinner uh but at the Jefferson Day dinner uh the relationships falling out became public when Jackson glaring at Calhoun stood up and gave a toast in front of a dozen a couple of dozen people and his toast was very simple but it was very pointed while the glaring right at Calhoun uh Jackson says quote our Union it must be preserved now Calhoun uh trembling with emotion counter-toasted Andrew Jackson and famously said quote the Union next to our Liberty most deer and these two short toasts just laid bare the fundamental differences between the two men as well as the fundamental differences between the nation's sections this was clear-cut Federal Authority versus states rights so what happened next well Jackson in an attempt to defuse the growing situation with South Carolina through his support behind a new federal tariff In 1832 that ended up lowering customs duties on imported items that were favored by Southerners and this new Tariff was called the protective Tariff of 1832. it was seen by Jackson it was seen by most as kind of a compromise with South Carolina with Southerners by reducing uh customs duties on the items that Southerners preferred to buy from foreign Nations but this ended up not being enough to calm down the state of South Carolina or John C Calhoun who both seethed with resentment towards Jackson and the federal government Calhoun even called the federal government quote a foul monster and in reaction to this the state of South Carolina called for a State Convention to be organized in order for the state to consider to uh on whether or not to approve an ordinance of nullification and this uh convention to consider whether or not to nullify the 1828 and 1832 tariffs convened in November of 1832. when it convened it did resolve that the 1828 and 1832 tariffs were unconstitutional on the grounds that it violated the compact between the states and this convention on November 24th 1832 approved an ordinance of nullification declaring the 1828 and 1832 Federal tariffs to be null and void within their borders they also in this nullification ordinance warned president Jackson that if he attempted to enforce these tariffs the state of South Carolina would probably secede from the union meaning withdrawal from the country and become an independent nation now realizing now that his home state had pretty much ended the relationship between himself and president Jackson Calhoun ended up resigning the vice presidency and was appointed to be a U.S senator from his home state and sent back to Washington D.C to defend nullification in the Congress okay so the story is picking up steam now stay with me because it's gonna get really good let's talk for a second about how Jackson responded to a state nullifying a federal law but before I do that I want to make one thing clear in this nullification ordinance the state of South Carolina said that the Nullification of these laws would not take effect until a later date they built in a little bit of time to try to convince Andrew Jackson and try to uh urge Andrew Jackson uh to do something about these tariffs uh so let's talk about how Jackson responded to all of this um ins to put it mildly it was not well uh one of the first things he did uh is he issued a proclamation to the people of the United States but if you read this Proclamation it's more of a proclamation to the people of South Carolina now in nullification South Carolina was pretty isolated a lot of Southern States expressed sympathy for what they were doing but none of them were willing to take the step of actually endorsing nullification themselves and this was in large part due to the expected reaction that Andrew Jackson had to what South Carolina had done and so Jackson issued a proclamation to the people of the United States but it was really a proclamation to the people of South Carolina now in it he warned them that they were engaging in treasonous activity and that he considered the power to Enola law of the United States to nullify it to be uh against the spirit and inconsistent with every principle on which the U.S Constitution was founded he also told the people of South Carolina that the laws of the United States were going to be enforced and that he was going to enforce them and that anyone in that state that told them that they might be peaceably prevent their execution deceive them and that they could not have been deceived themselves you see the quotation here they know that a forcible opposition alone prevent the execution of the laws and they know that such opposition must be repealed their object Jackson said is this Union but be not deceived by names disunion by Armed Force was treason and he wondered did they really want to incur its guilt Jackson responded to South Carolina by declaring nullification to be treason he of course is bound by his oath of office to enforce laws if a state is refusing to obey them he is now mobilizing the military he puts a call out to the states to send him volunteers for the creation of an army that he intended to March directly into the state of South Carolina and hang every treasonous person there on the first tree he could find uh he dispatched federal troops as well as Naval warships the Charleston Harbor their job is to uh enforce the law to to collect the tariffs and in EX in reaction the governor of South Carolina ends up mobilizing the militia for defense of the state and with all this talk of Jackson leading an army and hanging people it caused a lot of alarm in South Carolina to the point that the governor of South Carolina sent a letter to an ally of Jackson in the U.S Senate asking was the president serious about coming down here and hanging people who were involved in the Nullification of these federal laws and that senator who was an ally of Jackson by the his name was Thomas Hart Benton famously wrote back to the governor of the South Carolina quote I have known the general a great many years governor and when the man speaks of hanging it is time to get a rope the next thing Jackson did is that he requested that the U.S Congress authorized him to use the military to enforce Federal tariffs he didn't really need this because of his oath of office but he just wanted some cover he just wanted some Congressional cover in the event that he needed to use the military to actually enforce these laws and when this uh law which became known as the force bill was enacted in March of 1833. you remember Calhoun is back in the Senate now he exploded uh when this bill passed and was famously saying that quote Jackson is to have our throats cut and those of our wives and those of our children he claimed nullification was less of a threat than presidential despotism that Jackson wasn't enacting now the Congress handily passed the force bill passed by the past the Senate 32-1 and it passed the house 149-47 and the reason I think those numbers are important is that it's a clear indication that the other southern states are not coming to South Carolina's Aid and that means that South Carolina is in a very bad situation it has delayed it has decided to delay its implementation of nullification in the hopes that a compromise could be reached uh and now it's having to pin all of its hopes on a compromise because the doubt that Andrew Jackson means what he says is to invite nothing but death and that's when we got it we did end up getting a compromise here to cut calm the situation down now the architect of this compromise was a another U.S senator from the state of Kentucky but a gentleman we're already familiar with he used to be the U.S speaker of the house and was the architect of the American system and the architect of the Missouri Compromise and I'm of course referring to our old friend Henry Clay clay began circulating a plan to gradually reduce the 1828 tariff over a period of time and it was less of course than what South Carolina wanted they wanted the Tariff gone immediately but this offer and this plan by Clay was an opportunity for South Carolina to get out of the predicament that they had created for themselves and so Calhoun ended up supporting this compromise effort to famously saying quote he who loved the union must desire to see this agitating question meaning the Tariff brought to a termination and there it was the Compromise Tariff of 1833 was enacted on March 1st of that year South Carolina could choose which they wanted either support and accept the compromised tariff which was going to gradually reduce the 1828 tariff over time or face the wrath of Andrew Jackson Calhoun for his credit did rush home to South Carolina to convince the nullifiers in his home state to back down and ultimately the convention in South Carolina rescinded its nullification of the federal tariffs but just the safe face they nullified the force bill which didn't really matter anyway but it allowed both sides to claim victory South Carolina said in the end all they really wanted was a reduced tariff which you can see on this graph when it hits that high point of the Tariff of Abominations you can see a slow but steady decline in the uh customs duties on Foreign imports South Carolina claimed that's all they ever really wanted so they claimed the victory Jackson of course claimed Victory because he had prevented nullification and preserved the union and in the end it all came to nothing so it begs the question what the heck just happened What's significant about this Nullification Crisis uh and it's true it can be difficult to discern any significant effect that the crisis had on the development of the nation during the antebellum era but a couple of things are worth noting here the first is that the idea that a state had to had the right to secede from the union if the compact between the states was ever broken became during this crisis a fundamental belief for most white Southerners um and this was the result that if Southern States could not muster enough votes to prevent the passage of hostile legislation in the Congress um and that legislation was hostile to their interest and how were they supposed to protect themselves from a northern political majority now of course nullification was an option and it was the idea of Jefferson and Madison and later but Calhoun as that option but it appeared now that the federal government would simply enforce any nullified legislation over the objections of that state that nullified it and so it leaves then the only option available for states that believe a law is a violation of the compact is either to accept it which could run very counter to their interest or to just remove themselves from the equation altogether meaning secede from the union and this is where the idea of secession comes into play and it was during this crisis that the idea that states had the right to do that to withdraw from the union this is where that became a fundamental belief for white Southerners because if nullification was going to cause the militarily enforcement of the law than withdrawing from the union seemed to be the only recourse available to a state or so they thought and it was this newfound belief in the right of secession that would become ingrained as a legitimate form of resistance for southern slave owners and Southern politicians and ultimately formed the basis of Southern resistance for the next 30 years of American history this is Jefferson Davis who before he was the president of the Confederate States of America um the states that seceded in the lead-up to the Civil War he had been a career politician in the federal government and in his farewell address before his uh before leaving the U.S Senate and joining his home state of Mississippi in secession from the union in 1860 uh he said in that speech that a great man advocated the doctrine of nullification because it preserved the union and it was because of his deep-seated attachment to the union that John C Calhoun advocated the doctrine of nullification but secession he claimed belonged to a different class of Remedies it is to be justified upon the basis that the states were sovereign and so you see in Jefferson Davis's farewell address in 1861 that this idea that the states could withdraw from the union was a basic fundamental right Justified on the grounds that states had that right and it was here during the Nullification Crisis that this became a fundamental belief among white Southerners and even Andrew Jackson saw this all very clearly when he famously said that the Tariff was not the pretext here it was or was not the issue the Tariff was only a pretext and that there were those in the South that wanted this Union that wanted a southern Confederacy and that that was their real object and that the neap the next pretext uh he predicted would be over the slavery question so this newfound belief ended up becoming the basis of Southern resistance over the next 30 Years and we'll see over the the course of uh these lectures that uh of how that plays out uh Calhoun famously wrote also to speaking about this the quote the struggle so far from being over is not more than fairly commenced so see this is not an issue that's going away so that leads us then to the second reason that the crisis is noteworthy and that's that the crisis really wasn't about a protective tariff now you may be asking yourself well we just spent all this time talking about tariffs how could it not be about tariffs well it's not about Terrors well it is but it's not see see how we do that there um this crisis really wasn't about a tariff the real reason this whole crisis happened was that white Southerners were growing increasingly concerned about a nor about what Northern representatives in Congress uh were capable of with enough political power in their hands and of course what they were capable of was passing two Federal tariffs in 1828 and 1832 against Southern objections and against Southern votes the southern states were not simply powerful enough in the U.S Congress to uh prevent the passage of these Federal tariffs which were hostile out of Southern interest which means then as early as the 18th now what they weren't really concerned about tariffs they were concerned about something bigger and you can see Calhoun's uh quotation here he says that the truth can no longer be disguised that the peculiar domestic institutions and that's code word y'all for slavery peculiar domestic institutions of the southern states there's only one peculiar domestic institution of the southern states and that was slavery and he says that those institutions have placed them in opposite relation to the majority of the union and against the danger of which if there be no protective power in the reserve the rights of the states they must in the end be forced to Rebel this quotation shows you very clearly this wasn't about tariffs this was about southern anxieties over slavery and what I mean by that is that as early as the 1830s white Southerners were now increasingly worried that slavery was vulnerable and was under attack and why would they think this way now in the late 1820s early 1830s well one reason is as I mentioned earlier they had lost a lot of political power to stop hostile legislation because slavery was now restricted as a result of the terms of the Missouri Compromise because if slavery is pinned in there's no more slave states to be added to the union and this meant that we're only going to be adding free state to the union which is going to increase the North's political control over National Affairs which of course is causing Southern States even more stress and anxiety as we're going to see later slavery's expansion is going to become inextricably linked to the southern State's ability to protect itself from the North and the north will become more and more resistant to allow slavery to expand anyway but the other reason white Southerners were increasingly paranoid about slavery's demise in the 1830s is that because in the 1830s we actually saw the rise of a small but vocal and radical abolitionist movement in the North in other words the reason Southerners wearing or were paranoid about slavery being under attack is because people were actually attacking it now and of course we're referring to the radical abolitionists which started to emerge in the 1830s in the North and the radical abolitionists were Radical in the sense because they were not willing to even entertain the idea of slavery's continued existence in this country for example one of the more prominent abolitionists from this time period boyan Lloyd Garrison famously said that there must be no compromise with slavery none whatever nothing is gained and everything is lost by subordinating principle to expedience so why were Southerners increasingly concerned about slavery and willing to take the nation to the brink of Civil War at least on the part of South Carolina in the 1830s why did this Nullification Crisis happen well because there was now a group of Americans calling for the immediate destruction of slavery and its destruction by any means necessary