The Reign of Andrew Jackson: A Chronicle of the Frontier in PoliticsOgg, Frederic Austin
History
The Reign of Andrew Jackson: A Chronicle of the Frontier in Politics
Ogg, Frederic Austin
Jackson, Andrew, 1767-1845; United States -- Politics and government -- 1829-1837
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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