TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION
It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate chamber
the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the great
debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and
permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction
of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his
State--and, for aught one could tell, his section--was about to put
into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming
controversy.
South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In
the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly
Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the
Virginian's leadership was never fully accepted, and even before the
Republican party had elsewhere submitted to the inevitable
nationalization the South Carolina membership was openly arrayed on the
side of a protective tariff, the National Bank, and internal
improvements. Calhoun and Cheves were for years among the most ardent
exponents of broad constitutional construction; Hayne himself was
elected to the Senate in 1822 as a nationalist, and over another
candidate whose chief handicap was that he had proposed that his State
secede rather than submit to the Missouri Compromise.
After 1824 sentiment rapidly shifted. The cause appeared to be the
tariff; but in reality deeper forces were at work. South Carolina was
an agricultural State devoted almost exclusively to the raising of
cotton and rice. Soil and climate made her such, and the "peculiar
institution" confirmed what Nature already had decreed. But the
planters were now beginning to feel keenly the competition of the new
cotton lands of the Gulf plains. As production increased, the price of
cotton fell. "In 1816," writes Professor Turner, "the average price of
middling uplands . . . was nearly thirty cents, and South Carolina's
leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the
South saw in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was fourteen
and three-quarters cents, and the South Carolinians denounced the
tariff as unconstitutional." π
π Turner, The Rise of the New West, p. 325.
Men of the Clay-Adams school argued that the tariff stimulated
industry, doubled the profits of agriculture, augmented wealth, and
hence promoted the well-being of the nation as a whole. The Southern
planter was never able to discover in the protective system any real
advantage for himself, but as long as the tariffs were moderate he was
influenced by nationalistic sentiment to accept them. The demand for
protection on the part of the Northern manufacturers seemed, however,
insatiable. An act of 1824 raised the duties on cotton and woolen
goods. A measure of 1827 which applied to woolens the ruinous principle
already applied to cottons was passed by the House and was laid on the
table in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice President Calhoun.
The climax was reached in the Tariff Act of 1828, which the Southerners
themselves loaded with objectionable provisions in the vain hope of
making it so abominable that even New England congressmen would vote
against it.
A few years of such legislation sufficed to rouse the South to a deep
feeling of grievance. It was no longer a question of reasonable
concession to the general national good. A vast artificial economic
system had been set up, whose benefits accrued to the North and whose
burdens fell disproportionately upon the South. The tone and temper of
the manufacturing sections and of the agricultural West gave no promise
of a change of policy. The obvious conclusion was that the planting
interests must find some means of bringing pressure to bear for their
own relief.
The means which they found was nullification; and it fell to South
Carolina, whose people were most ardent in their resentment of anything
that looked like discrimination, to put the remedy to the test. The
Legislature of this State had made an early beginning by denouncing the
tariff of 1824 as unconstitutional. In 1827 Robert J. Turnbull, one of
the abler political leaders, published under the title of The Crisis a
series of essays in which he boldly proclaimed nullification as the
remedy. In the following summer Calhoun put the nullification doctrine
into its first systematic form in a paper--the so-called
Exposition--which for some time was known to the public only as the
report of a committee of the Legislature.
By 1829 the State was sharply divided into two parties, the
nationalists and the nullifiers. All were agreed that the protective
system was iniquitous and that it must be broken down. The difference
was merely as to method. The nationalists favored working through the
customary channels of legislative reform; the nullifiers urged that the
State interpose its authority to prevent the enforcement of the
objectionable laws. For a time the leaders wavered. But the swing of
public sentiment in the direction of nullification was rapid and
overwhelming, and one by one the representatives in Congress and other
men of prominence fell into line. Hayne and McDuffie were among the
first to give it their support; and Calhoun, while he was for a time
held back by his political aspirations and by his obligations as Vice
President, came gradually to feel that his political future would be
worth little unless he had the support of his own State.
As the election of 1828 approached, the hope of the discontented forces
centered in Jackson. They did not overlook the fact that his record was
that of a moderate protectionist. But the same was true of many South
Carolinians and Georgians, and it seemed not at all impossible that, as
a Southern man and a cotton planter, he should undergo a change of
heart no less decisive than that which Hayne and Calhoun had
experienced. Efforts to draw him out, however, proved not very
successful. Lewis saw to it that Jackson's utterances while yet he was
a candidate were safely colorless; and the single mention of the tariff
contained in the inaugural address was susceptible of the most varied
interpretations. The annual message of 1829 indicated opposition to
protection; on the other hand, the presidential message of the next
year not only asserted the full power of Congress to levy protective
duties but declared the abandonment of protection "neither to be
expected or desired." Gradually the antiprotectionist leaders were made
to see that the tariff was not a subject upon which the President felt
keenly, and that therefore it was useless to look to him for effective
support.
Even the adroit efforts which were made to get from the incoming
executive expressions that could be interpreted as endorsements of
nullification were successfully fended off. For some months the
President gave no outward sign of his disapproval. With more than his
usual deliberateness, Jackson studied the situation, awaiting the right
moment to speak out with the maximum of effect.
The occasion finally came on April 13, 1830, at a banquet held in
Washington in celebration of Jefferson's birthday. The Virginia patron
of democracy had been dead four years, and Jackson had become, more
truly than any other man, his successor. Jacksonian democracy was,
however, something very different from Jeffersonian, and never was the
contrast more evident than on this fateful evening. During the earlier
part of the festivities a series of prearranged toasts, accompanied by
short speeches, put before the assemblage the Jeffersonian teachings in
a light highly favorable--doubtless unwarrantably so--to the ultra
state rights theory. Then followed a number of volunteer toasts. The
President was, of course, accorded the honor of proposing the
first--and this gave Jackson his chance. Rising in his place and
drawing himself up to his full height, he raised his right hand, looked
straight at Calhoun and, amid breathless silence, exclaimed in that
crisp, harsh tone that had so often been heard above the crashing of
many rifles: "Our Union! It must be preserved!"
An account of the scene which is given by Isaac Hill, a member of the
Kitchen Cabinet and an eyewitness, is interesting:
A proclamation of martial law in South Carolina and an order to arrest
Calhoun where he sat could not have come with more blinding, staggering
force. All hilarity ceased. The President, without adding one word in
the way of speech, lifted up his glass as a notice that the toast was
to be quaffed standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. His glass so
trembled in his hand that a little of the amber fluid trickled down the
side. Jackson stood silent and impassive. There was no response to the
toast. Calhoun waited until all sat down. Then he slowly and with
hesitating accent offered the second volunteer toast: "The Union! Next
to Our Liberty Most Dear!" Then, after a minute's hesitation, and in a
way that left doubt as to whether he intended it for part of the toast
or for the preface to a speech, he added: "May we all remember that it
can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and by
distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union."
The nullifiers had carefully planned the evening's proceedings with a
purpose to strengthen their cause with the country. They had not
reckoned on the President, and the dash of cold water which he had
administered caused them more anguish than any opposition that they had
yet encountered. The banquet broke up earlier than had been expected,
and the diners went off by twos and threes in eager discussion of the
scene that they had witnessed. Some were livid with rage; some shook
their heads in fear of civil war; but most rejoiced in the splendid
exhibition of executive dignity and patriotic fervor which the
President had given. Subsequently it transpired that Jackson had acted
on no mere impulse and that his course had been carefully planned in
consultation with Van Buren and other advisers.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1830 both the State Rights and
Union parties in South Carolina worked feverishly to perfect their
organizations. The issue that both were making ready to meet was
nothing less than the election of a convention to nullify the tariff
laws. Those upholding nullification lost no opportunity to consolidate
their forces, and by the close of the year these were clearly in the
majority, although the unionist element contained many of the ablest
and most respected men in the State. Calhoun directed the nullifier
campaign, though he did not throw off all disguises until the summer of
the following year.
Though Jackson made no further public declarations, the views which he
expressed in private were usually not slow to reach the public ear. In
a letter to a committee of the Union party in response to an invitation
to attend a Fourth of July dinner the President intimated that force
might properly be employed if nullification should be attempted. And to
a South Carolina Congressman who was setting off on a trip home he
said: "Tell them [the nullifiers] from me that they can talk and write
resolutions and print threats to their hearts' content. But if one drop
of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I
will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree
I can find." When Hayne heard of this threat he expressed in Benton's
hearing a doubt as to whether the President would really hang anybody.
"I tell you, Hayne," the Missourian replied, "when Jackson begins to
talk about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes."
Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice
President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become
its avowed leader. Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make.
Above all things he wanted to be President. He was not the author of
nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late how
much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was
shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be bettered
by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy.
Circumstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually into
the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement. The tide
of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the breach with
Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western democracy;
and his resentment of Van Buren's rise to favor prompted words and acts
which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian. His party's
enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for reÎlection in
1832 and of "Little Van" as a candidate for the vice presidency--and,
by all tokens, for the presidency four years later--was the last straw.
Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back into the rÙle of an extremist,
sectional leader. There was no need of further concealment; and in
midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous Address to the People of South
Carolina, and this restatement of the Exposition of 1828 now became the
avowed platform of the nullification party. The Fort Hill Letter of
August 28, 1832, addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and
clearer presentation of the same body of doctrine.
Matters were at last brought to a head by a new piece of tariff
legislation which was passed in 1832 not to appease South Carolina but
to take advantage of a comfortable state of affairs that had arisen in
the national treasury. The public lands were again selling well, and
the late tariff laws were yielding lavishly. The national debt was
dwindling to the point of disappearance, and the country had more money
than it could use. Jackson therefore called upon Congress to revise the
tariff system so as to reduce the revenue, and in the session of
1831-32 several bills to that end were brought forward. The scale of
duties finally embodied in the Act of July 14, 1832, corrected many of
the anomalies of the Act of 1828, but it cut off some millions of
revenue without making any substantial change in the protective system.
Virginia and North Carolina voted heavily for the bill, but South
Carolina and Georgia as vigorously opposed it; and the nullifiers
refused to see in it any concession to the tariff principles for which
they stood. "I no longer consider the question one of free trade,"
wrote Calhoun when the passage of the bill was assured, "but of
consolidation." In an address to their constituents the South Carolina
delegation in Congress declared that "protection must now be regarded
as the settled policy of the country," that "all hope from Congress is
irrevocably gone," and that it was for the people to decide "whether
the rights and liberties which you received as a precious inheritance
from an illustrious ancestry shall be tamely surrendered without a
struggle, or transmitted undiminished to your posterity."
In the disaffected State events now moved rapidly. The elections of the
early autumn were carried by the nullifiers, and the new Legislature,
acting on the recommendation of Governor Hamilton, promptly called a
state convention to consider whether the "federal compact" had been
violated and what remedy should be adopted. The 162 delegates who
gathered at Columbia on the 19th of November were, socially and
politically, the Èlite of the State: Hamiltons, Haynes, Pinckneys,
Butlers--almost all of the great families of a State of great families
were represented. From the outset the convention was practically of one
mind; and an ordinance of nullification drawn up by a committee of
twenty-one was adopted within five days by a vote of 136 to 26.
The tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were declared "null, void, and no law,
nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens." None of the
duties in question were to be permitted to be collected in the State
after February 1, 1833. Appeals to the federal courts for enforcement
of the invalidated acts were forbidden, and all officeholders, except
members of the Legislature, were required to take an oath to uphold the
ordinance. Calhoun had laboriously argued that nullification did not
mean disunion. But his contention was not sustained by the words of the
ordinance, which stated unequivocally that the people of the State
would not "submit to the application of force on the part of the
federal Government to reduce this State to obedience." Should force be
used, the ordinance boldly declared--indeed, should any action contrary
to the will of the people be taken to execute the measures declared
void--such efforts would be regarded as "inconsistent with the longer
continuance of South Carolina in the Union," and "the people of this
State" would "thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further
obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the
people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a
separate Government, and to do all other acts and things which
sovereign and independent States may of right do."
In accordance with the instructions of the convention, the Legislature
forthwith reassembled to pass the measures deemed necessary to enforce
the ordinance. A replevin act provided for the recovery of goods seized
or detained for payment of duty; the use of military force, including
volunteers, to "repel invasion" was authorized; and provision was made
for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Throughout the State a martial
tone resounded. Threats of secession and war were heard on every side.
Nightly meetings were held and demonstrations were organized. Blue
cockades with a palmetto button in the center became the most popular
of ornaments. Medals were struck bearing the inscription: "John C.
Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy." The Legislature,
reassembling in December, elected Hayne as Governor and chose
Calhoun--who now resigned the vice presidency--to take the vacant seat
in the Senate. In his first message to the Legislature Webster's former
antagonist declared his purpose to carry into full effect the
nullification ordinance and the legislation supplementary to it, and
expressed confidence that, if the sacred soil of the State should be
"polluted by the footsteps of an invader," no one of her sons would be
found "raising a parricidal arm against our common mother."
Thus the proud commonwealth was panoplied for a contest of wits, and
perchance of arms, with the nation. Could it hope to win? South
Carolina had a case which had been forcibly and plausibly presented. It
could count on a deep reluctance of men in every part of the country to
see the nation fall into actual domestic combat. There were, however, a
dozen reasons why victory could not reasonably be looked for. One would
have been enough--the presence of Andrew Jackson in the White House.
Through federal officers and the leaders of the Union party Jackson
kept himself fully informed upon the situation, and six weeks before
the nullification convention was called he began preparations to meet
all eventualities. The naval authorities at Norfolk were directed to be
in readiness to dispatch a squadron to Charleston; the commanders of
the forts in Charleston Harbor were ordered to double their vigilance
and to defend their posts against any persons whatsoever; troops were
ordered from Fortress Monroe; and General Scott was sent to take full
command and to strengthen the defenses as he found necessary. The South
Carolinians were to be allowed to talk, and even to adopt "ordinances,"
to their hearts' content. But the moment they stepped across the line
of disobedience to the laws of the United States they were to be made
to feel the weight of the nation's restraining hand.
"The duty of the Executive is a plain one," wrote the President to Joel
R. Poinsett, a prominent South Carolina unionist; "the laws will be
executed and the United States preserved by all the constitutional and
legal means he is invested with." When the situation bore its most
serious aspect Jackson received a call from Sam Dale, who had been one
of his dispatch bearers at the Battle of New Orleans. "General Dale,"
exclaimed the President during the conversation, "if this thing goes
on, our country will be like a bag of meal with both ends open. Pick it
up in the middle or endwise, and it will run out. I must tie the bag
and save the country." "Dale," he exclaimed again later, "they are
trying me here; you will witness it; but, by the God of heaven, I will
uphold the laws." "I understood him to be referring to nullification
again," related Dale in his account of the interview, "and I expressed
the hope that things would go right." "They shall go right, sir," the
President fairly shouted, shattering his pipe on the table by way of
further emphasis.
When Jackson heard that the convention at Columbia had taken the step
expected of it, he made the following entry in his diary: "South
Carolina has passed her ordinance of nullification and secession. As
soon as it can be had in authentic form, meet it with a proclamation."
The proclamation was issued December 10, 1832. Parton relates that the
President wrote the first draft of this proclamation under such a glow
of feeling that he was obliged "to scatter the written pages all over
the table to let them dry," and that the document was afterwards
revised by his scholarly Secretary of State, Edward Livingston. With
Jackson supplying the ideas and spirit and Livingston the literary
form, the result was the ablest and most impressive state paper of the
period. It categorically denied the right of a State either to annul a
federal law or to secede from the Union. It admitted that the laws
complained of operated unequally but took the position that this must
be true of all revenue measures. It expressed the inflexible
determination of the Administration to repress and punish every form of
resistance to federal authority. Deep argument, solemn warning, and
fervent entreaty were skillfully combined. But the most powerful effect
was likely to be that produced by the President's flaming denial--set
in bold type in the contemporary prints--of the Hayne-Calhoun creed: "I
consider the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one
State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted
expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its
spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and
destructive of the great object for which it was formed."
Throughout the North this vindication of national dignity and power
struck a responsive chord, and for once even the Adams and Clay men
found themselves in hearty agreement with the President. Bostonians
gathered in Faneuil Hall and New Yorkers in a great meeting in the Park
to shower encomiums upon the proclamation and upon its author. The
nullifiers did not at once recoil from the blow. The South Carolina
Legislature called upon Governor Hayne officially to warn "the good
people of this State against the attempt of the President of the United
States to seduce them from their allegiance"; and the resulting
counterblast, in the form of a proclamation made public on the 20th of
December, was as vigorous as the liveliest "fire-eater" could have
wished. The Governor declared that the State would maintain its
sovereignty or be "buried beneath its ruins."
The date of the expected crisis--February 1, 1833, when the
nullification ordinance was to take effect--was now near at hand, and
on both sides preparations were pushed. During the interval, however,
the tide turned decidedly against the nullifiers. A call for a general
convention of the States "to determine and consider . . . questions of
disputed power" served only to draw out strong expressions of
disapproval of the South Carolina program, showing that it could not
expect even moral support from outside. On the 16th of January Jackson
asked Congress for authority to alter or abolish certain ports of
entry, to use force to execute the revenue laws, and to try in the
federal courts cases that might arise from the present emergency. Five
days later a bill on these lines--popularly denominated the "Force
Bill"--was introduced; and while many men who had no sympathy with
nullification drew back from a plan involving the coercion of a State,
it was soon settled that some sort of measure for strengthening the
President's hand would be passed.
Meanwhile a way of escape from the whole difficulty was unexpectedly
opened. The friends of Van Buren began to fear that the disagreement of
North and South upon the tariff question would cost their favorite the
united support of the party in 1836. Accordingly they set on foot a
movement in Congress to bring about a moderate reduction of the
prevailing rates; and it was of course their hope that the nullifiers
would be induced to recede altogether from the position which they had
taken. Through Verplanck of New York, the Ways and Means Committee of
the House brought in a measure reducing the duties, within two years,
to about half the existing rates. Jackson approved the plan, although
personally he had little to do with it.
But though the Verplanck Bill could not muster sufficient support to
become law, it revived tariff discussion on promising lines, and it
brought nullification proceedings to a halt in the very nick of time.
Shortly before February 1, 1833, the leading nullifiers came together
in Charleston and entered into an extralegal agreement to postpone the
enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the new
tariff debates should be known. The failure of the Verplanck measure,
however, left matters where they were, and civil war in South Carolina
again loomed ominously.
In this juncture patriots of all parties turned to the one man whose
leadership seemed indispensable in tariff legislation--the "great
pacificator," Henry Clay, who after two years in private life had just
taken his seat in the Senate. Clay was no friend of Jackson or of Van
Buren, and it required much sacrifice of personal feeling to lend his
services to a program whose political benefits would almost certainly
accrue to his rivals. Finally, however, he yielded and on the 12th of
February he rose in the Senate and offered a compromise measure
proposing that on all articles which paid more than twenty per cent the
amount in excess of that rate should be reduced by stages until in 1842
it would entirely disappear.
Stormy debates followed on both the Compromise Tariff and the Force
Bill, but before the session closed on the 4th of March both were on
the statute book. When, therefore, the South Carolina convention, in
accordance with an earlier proclamation of Governor Hamilton,
reassembled on the 11th of March, the wind had been taken out of the
nullifiers' sails; the laws which they had "nullified" had been
repealed, and there was nothing for the convention to do but to rescind
the late ordinance and the legislative measures supplementary to it.
There was a chance, however, for one final fling. By a vote of 132 to
19 the convention soberly adopted an ordinance nullifying the Force
Bill and calling on the Legislature to pass laws to prevent the
execution of that measure--which, indeed, nobody was now proposing to
execute.
So the tempest passed. Both sides claimed victory, and with some show
of reason. So far as was possible without an actual test of strength,
the authority of the Federal Government had been vindicated and its
dignity maintained; the constitutional doctrines of Webster acquired a
new sanction; the fundamental point was enforced that a law--that every
law--enacted by Congress must be obeyed until repealed or until set
aside by the courts as unconstitutional. On the other hand, the
nullifiers had brought about the repeal of the laws to which they
objected and had been largely instrumental in turning the tariff policy
of the country for some decades into a new channel. Moreover they
expressed no regret for their acts and in no degree renounced the views
upon which those acts had been based. They submitted to the authority
of the United States, but on terms fixed by themselves. And, what is
more, they supplied practically every constitutional and political
argument to be used by their sons in 1860 to justify secession.