The convention authorized under this act assembled on November 19,
1832. An ordinance was passed to provide for arresting the operations
of certain acts of Congress of the United States, purporting to be
taxes laying duties and imposts on the importation of foreign
commodities. On its final passage the word "arresting" was stricken
out and the word "nullifying" substituted in its place.
The substance of this ordinance was to interdict the action of the
courts, and to require all officers to take an oath to obey the
ordinance and the laws passed to give it effect. It also declared that
the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were null, void, and not binding on
the State, its officers or citizens. It further declared it to be
unlawful for any of the constituted authorities of the State or of the
United States to enforce the payment of the duties imposed by the act
within the limits of the State of South Carolina. Other provisions
were that no case of law or equity decided in South Carolina, in which
was involved the question of the validity of the ordinance of the
South Carolina convention, or any act of its Legislature to give it
effect, should be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States,
or be regarded if appealed; and that, if the General Government should
employ force to carry these acts into effect, or endeavor to coerce
the State by closing its ports, South Carolina would consider the
Union dissolved, and would proceed to organize a separate government.
A union convention was called in South Carolina to endeavor to
suppress the movement inaugurated by the ordinance of the recent
convention.
The States of Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia--the first through its
Governor, Gayle, and the latter by resolutions of their
Legislatures--took strong anti-nullification grounds. On December 10th
President Andrew Jackson issued his famous proclamation exhorting all
persons to obey the laws, and denouncing the South Carolina ordinance.
He said in this proclamation: "I consider, then, 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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