Why did many Southerners believe protective tariffs were unconstitutional?

Image courtesy of the Library of Congress John C. Calhoun of South Carolina served as Representative, Senator, and Vice President. Calhoun resigned his position as Vice President to return to the Senate in 1832.

On this date, the Tariff of 1828—better known as the Tariff of Abominations—passed the House of Representatives, 105 to 94. The tariff sought to protect northern and western agricultural products from competition with foreign imports; however, the resulting tax on foreign goods would raise the cost of living in the South and would cut into the profits of New England's industrialists. Nevertheless, President John Quincy Adams approved the bill on May 19, 1828, helping to seal his loss to Andrew Jackson in the 1828 presidential election. Later that year in response to the tariff, Vice President John C. Calhoun of South Carolina anonymously penned the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, articulating the doctrine of nullification. The doctrine emphasized a state’s right to reject federal laws within its borders and questioned the constitutionality of taxing imports without the explicit goal of raising revenue. Calhoun later took credit for the doctrine in 1832 to the detriment of his presidential ambitions. Following their statesman’s lead, the South Carolina legislature used Calhoun's reasoning to nullify the Tariff of 1832, which had earlier replaced the Tariff of Abominations. While other southern states disagreed with the tariff, South Carolina was the only state to invoke nullification. Following a few tense months, South Carolina eventually accepted a compromise tariff in the winter of 1833. The constitutional crisis was only temporarily averted, as tensions remained throughout the Union.

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Andrew Jackson’s approach to governing met its test in an issue that threatened to break up the United States. In 1828, Congress passed a law raising tariffs, or taxes on imported goods such as cloth and glass. The idea was to encourage the growth of manufacturing in the United States. Higher tariffs meant higher prices for imported factory goods. American manufacturers could then outsell their foreign competitors.

Northern states, humming with new factories, favored the new tariff law. But southerners opposed tariffs for several reasons. Tariffs raised the prices they paid for factory goods. High tariffs also discouraged trade among nations, and planters in the South worried that tariffs would hurt cotton sales to other countries. In addition, many southerners believed that a law favoring one region—in this case, the North—was unconstitutional. Based on this belief, John C. Calhoun, Jackson’s vice president, called on southern states to declare the tariff “null and void,” or illegal and not to be honored.

Jackson understood southerners’ concerns. In 1832, he signed a new law that lowered tariffs—but not enough to satisfy the most extreme supporters of states’ rights in South Carolina. Led by Calhoun, they proclaimed South Carolina’s right to nullify, or reject, both the 1828 and 1832 tariff laws. Such an action was called nullification.

South Carolina took the idea of states’ rights even further. The state threatened to secede if the national government tried to enforce the tariff laws.

Even though he was from South Carolina, Jackson was outraged. “If one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States,” he raged, “I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.” He called on Congress to pass the Force Bill, which would allow him to use the federal army to collect tariffs if needed. At the same time, Congress passed a compromise bill that lowered tariffs still further.

Faced with such firm opposition, South Carolina backed down and the nullification crisis ended. However, the tensions between the North and the South would increase in the years ahead.

The Tariff of 1828, also called the Tariff of Abominations, was a protective tariff passed in the early 19th century to support growing domestic industries by raising the costs of imported goods, a view that came to be known as protectionism. Many people in Southern states, especially South Carolina, opposed the tariff. They opposed protective tariffs on the grounds that hurt their state financially. Instead, they supported the free-trade of goods and threatened to nullify the Tariff of 1828 in a major challenge to national authority. The controversy over the Tariff of 1828 dragged on until 1833 and nearly sparked armed conflict, although the debate between protectionists and free-traders never really ended.

Background

Congress began using protective tariffs after the War of 1812. The tariffs during this period were  designed to shield young American manufacturers from a flood of cheap British goods and to help pay off wartime debt. Another tariff bill in 1824 increased and expanded those rates. Over time, Southerners began to see these as being punitive to their region. Not only did they end up paying more for imported goods, they often found themselves blocked from foreign markets or stuck with retaliatory tariffs on cotton and other raw agricultural products.

By 1828, the economy was slowing, and Congress turned again to the tariff as a remedy. Because 1828 was an election year, there was a considerable amount of political gamesmanship involved in the debate over the final bill. Free trade Southerners ended up supporting much higher tariffs rates, ranging from 30-60 percent on over 90 percent of all imports, in the belief that the defeat of the bill would hurt incumbent president John Quincy Adams. The plan backfired when the House of Representatives passed the bill on May 11, 1828 by a vote of 105-94. Adams, believing the bill would do some good despite its unpopularity, signed it into law.

South Carolina’s congressional delegation met shortly after the bill was signed to debate their next steps, a discussion which included talk of seceding from the Union. They could not come to a consensus, and finally deferred to the suggestion of fellow South Carolinian, vice president John C. Calhoun to wait until after the election. Calhoun would soon join the ticket of Adams’ opponent, Andrew Jackson, and had some reason to believe Jackson might reduce or eliminate the tariff.

Jackson won the election but gave little indication he was ready to abandon what South Carolinians had termed the Tariff of Abominations when he assumed office in the spring of 1829. In the interim, vice president-elect John Calhoun anonymously wrote and published the “South Carolina Exposition and Protest,” also known as “Calhoun’s Exposition.” Calhoun’s main argument was that the tariff bill, which favored manufacturers in the North while hurting Southern agriculturalists, was unconstitutional, and that states retained the sovereign right to reject, or nullify, unjust federal laws. In December 1828, South Carolina legislature ordered 5,000 copies of “Calhoun’s Exposition” be printed and distributed.

The Nullification Crisis

Despite Calhoun’s hopes, Andrew Jackson seemed reluctant to deal with the tariff issue when he took office. The issue might have died away but for a Senate debate between Daniel Webster of Massachusetts and Robert Hayne of South Carolina over the Tariff of 1828 in January 1830. Hayne argued that the states were sovereign and had the right to strike down unfair laws in the name of state and personal liberty — to which Webster famously responded: “liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

The ideological split divided the Congress, and eventually, the Jackson Administration. Calhoun announced that he had been the author of the incendiary “Exposition and Protest,” solidifying his position as the leader of the states’ rights movement. Jackson, while not completely opposed to states’ rights, was nevertheless firm that he would “rather die in the last ditch” then see the Union ripped apart. The division came into full view at a Jefferson Day Dinner in the spring of 1830 during the traditional toasts. Looking right at Calhoun, Jackson toasted “The Union, it must be preserved.” Calhoun responded: “The Union, next to our liberty, most dear.” Never close, the two men found their professional relationship irrevocably damaged and remained at odds until Calhoun resigned his office to take the place of Robert Hayne in the Senate in late 1832.

Abolishing the Tariff of 1828

Tensions between South Carolina and the federal authorities continued to rise for the next two years, and a war started to look like a real possibility. To try to defuse the situation, Congress took up the issue of the tariff again in 1832, passing a new bill that marginally lowered the rates set by the Tariff of 1828. South Carolina found the changes to be insufficient and formally adopted an Ordinance of Nullification on November 24, 1832, declaring the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void as of February 1, 1833. On December 10, 1832, Andrew Jackson issued the Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, declaring nullification incompatible with the Constitution and the idea of the Union. He also ordered his Secretary of War to prepare for possible military action.

To avert open war, Congress quickly passed the Compromise Tariff of 1833, which set a timetable to reduce the tariff rates back to their 1816 levels over a period of years. The South Carolina legislature accepted this as a victory and withdrew their threat to nullify, ending the immediate crisis. However, the ideological divide would continue to grow for the next thirty years, contributing to the secession of Southern states and the start of the American Civil War.

Further Reading

Bartlett, Irving H.. John C. Calhoun: A Biography. W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Ellis, Richard E.. The Union at Risk: Jacksonian Democracy, States’ Rights, and the Nullification Crisis. Oxford University Press, 1989.

Freehling, William W.. Prelude to Civil War: The Nullification Controversy in South Carolina. Harper & Row, 1966.

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