Nullification Crisis

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Nullification Crisis
In 1828, John C. Calhoun had began the protracted Nullification Crisis by asserting the constitutional right of states to “nullify” national laws that were harmful to their interests. The Nullification Crisis had a major impact on the United States.
Congress passed a tariff to protect the northern manufacturers and businessmen. Southerners thought that the industrialization of the north would lead to the downfall of the southern economy. They named the tariff the “Tariff of Abominations.” Vice-president John C. Calhoun of South Carolina led the movement of people who thought that “ a combined geographical interest should not be able to disregard the general welfare and turn an important local interest should not be able to disregard the general welfare and turn an important local interest to its own profit” (Coit 12). Calhoun did not agree the secession of South Carolina so he tried to think of a substitute. His idea was nullification. Calhoun viewed nullification as the right of a “single state to veto, within its own borders, a federal law that it deemed unconstitutional subject to the later approval of at least one fourth of the states. If such approval was not forthcoming, the state should, if it wished, be allowed to secede from the Union” (Coit 12). The South knew that nowhere in the constitution did it give Congress the right to simply protect industry.
President Andrew Jackson was forced to confront the state of South Carolina on the issue of the protective tariff. Business and farming interest in the state had hoped that Jackson would use his presidential power to modify tariff laws that they had disagreed with. To the South, all the benefits of protection were going to Northern manufacturers, and while the country as a whole grew richer, South Carolina grew poorer because the planters at to pay higher prices. The president asked Congress to lower the tariffs, to make th...