Examples Of Nullification Crisis

Words: 1631
Pages: 7

SUBJECT Nullification Crisis

GRADE: D+

COMMENTS:

When the delegates approved the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared that the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 were null and void and that it would be illegal to enforce the taxes within the borders of South Carolina, they warned that any use of force would give cause for secession. Jackson who thought the idea of nullification to be destructive to the constitution and the Union, sent equipment to the loyal Unionists in the state, readied the army and navy, and promised prompt federal military intervention if nullifiers resisted federal laws. Even though moderates in Congress wanted to end the conflict by supporting a lower tariff bill, Jackson believed the situation remained critical, and
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Jackson argued, “The Constitution of the United States…forms a government, not a league. The power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, [is] 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.” The unconstitutionality of the nullification was supported by another, the Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, who believed that the ideas of the South Carolinians made a complete mockery of the Constitution. Webster pointed to the Constitution, which plainly states: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof…shall be the supreme Law of the Land.” He also directed attention to the words: “The judicial Power shall extend to all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this Constitution, [and] the Laws of the United States.” Using the Constitution’s text as evidence for his assertions, he argued that “No State law is to be valid which comes in conflict with the Constitution or any law of the United States”. He added that if the nation were to accept nullification as a state right, it would reduce the federal government to the ineffectual state it had been in through the period of the Articles of