Nullification Crisis 1832-1833

Supremacy Clause

Article VI of the Constitution, which makes the Constitution, national laws, and treaties supreme over state laws when the national government is acting within its constitutional limits.

Nullifcation Crisis

(1832-1833) was the showdown between President Andrew Jackson and the South Carolina legislature, which declared the 1832 tariff null and void in the state and threatened secession if the federal government tried to collect duties. It was resolved by a compromise negotiated by Henry Clay in 1833.

Tariff

A government tax on imports or exports

Compromise Tariff of 1833

A new tariff proposed by Henry Clay & John Calhoun that gradually lowered the tariff to the level of the tariff of 1816; avoided civil war & prolonged the union for another 30 years.

The seeds for what war were planted by the Nullification Crisis?

American Civil War

Federal Government System

Form of government based on the sharing of powers between levels of government; in the U.S. it is between the national and state governments

John C. Calhoun

In 1828, he lead the fight against protective tariffs which hurt the south economically. Created the doctrine of nullification which said that a state could decide if a law was constitutional. This situation became known as the Nullification Crisis.

Jackson's Proclamation Regarding Nullification

Proclamation from Jackson stating that the tariff of 1828 in South Carolina is no null and void and that closing ports/using the military to make SC obey the law would just make SC leave the union

Andrew Jackson

The seventh President of the United States (1829-1837), who as a general in the War of 1812 defeated the British at New Orleans (1815). As president he opposed the Bank of America, objected to the right of individual states to nullify disagreeable federal laws, and increased the presidential powers.

South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification

When faced with the protective Tariff of 1828, John Calhoun presented a theory in the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828) that federal tariffs could be declared null and void by individual states and that they could refuse to enforce them, SC passed an ordinance forbidding collection of tariff duties in the state