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Chapter VII - South Carolina Strikes Out
South Carolina Strikes Out
In October of 1832, South Carolina crossed the line drawn by Jackson. At a special state convention, South Carolina's political leaders adopted a nullification ordinance which renounced the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 as unconstitutional and forbade the collection of federal duties in the state after February 1833, Calhoun promptly resigned as vice-president in order to defend nullification on the Senate floor. To South Carolina's great surprise, none of the other Southern states joined them. Georgia's legislature dismissed as "rash and revolutionary." Alabama pronounced it "unsound in theory and dangerous in practice," and even Mississippi stood "firmly resolved" to put down nullification.
Jackson was infuriated. Initially he threatened to hang Calhoun and all the other "traitors." Instead, on December 10 he issued his Nullification Proclamation which calmly appealed to the people of South Carolina not to follow "false leaders":
The laws of the United States must be executed . . . Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you . . . their object is disunion. But be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason.
To back up his implied threat, Jackson sent federal troops to Charleston Harbor. "In forty days," confidently boasted the president, "I can have within the limits of South Carolina fifty-thousand men." In response, South Carolina activated its state militia. Avoiding armed conflict, in January 1833 Jackson offered South Carolina both the carrot and the stick. The reward? An offer to lower import duties if nullification was called off. The punishment? Congress enacted the Force Bill which authorized the use of military force to make South Carolina comply with federal laws.
The possibility of bloodshed motivated a worried Congress to draw up a compromise tariff which increased the number of duty-free items and reduced import tariffs in general for South Carolina. Calhoun and his resentful followers grudgingly accepted the compromise tariff and rescinded the state's Nullification Ordinance. In a final act of mulish defiance, South Carolina's legislature attempted to embarrass Jackson by nullifying his Force Bill as unconstitutional and illegal in their state. Even so, Jackson had successfully upheld the supremacy of the Union. Calhoun, angry and exasperated over the enforced compromise, wrote in a threatening tone, "The struggle, so far from being over, is not more than fairly commenced."
Truly, the disquieting events of 1833 were a sort of dress rehearsal for a conflict that would result in the deaths of six hundred thousand Americans thirty years later. Sore spots not healed by the Constitution in 1789 continued to chafe as the United States looked west toward vast stretches of unsettled territory past the Mississippi River.
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