Form: Quote Commentary

–“the tariff thesis for southern secession point to the nullification crisis that grew out of a protective tariff of 1828, known by the South as the “Tariff of Abominations.” As I discussed in the podcast, John C. Calhoun secretly wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, which argued that individual states have the right to nullify federal laws that they deemed unconstitutional. In 1832, after a new tariff bill was passed (which actually lowered duties, but was still criticized for being protectionist), South Carolina passed a nullification act and started mobilizing troops to defend against the threatened aggression by the Andrew Jackson administration, which came in the form of a “Force Bill” passed by Congress to empower the president to use the military against the nullifying state.

The crisis was averted after Henry Clay stepped up with a compromise tariff that offered to lower duties gradually over a period of years (the new bill, interestingly, never addressed the conflict between a “protectionist” and a “revenue” tariff, the latter of which was considered to be constitutional by southerners).

In the early 1830s, it is fair to say that tariffs were a legitimate cause of controversy between the North and the South (or, at least, South Carolina, which was the only state that took real action in response to the tariff). But even in these years, there is reason to question whether tariffs were the sole reason for the dispute.”— Calton