I searched for other posts like this but the one that I found had commenters making fun of the OP for “not doing his own APUSH homework”. In case anyone wanted to say the same thing to me, I’m only asking because I didn’t pay attention when I was learning about it in high school and I don’t understand all the legal and political jargon on the Wikipedia page.
In: Other
Basically one state (South Carolina) tried to declare a federal law (the Tariff of 1828, and later the Tariff of 1832) nullified with respect to that one state. In other words, SC asserted that it could declare the tariff law invalid and unenforceable in SC only, and would not have to bother establishing it was unconstitutional generally (as to other states). There were supporters of this approach at the highest levels of the federal government, and SC was preparing to take military action to support its view (recall that military power resided in the state militias at the time), and the federal government passed a law allowing the use of force against SC, all of which which would have led to an armed conflict between SC and the federal government 20 years before the Civil War. The crisis was resolved before shots were fired when a new tariff bill was passed that was acceptable to SC, and the state withdrew its declaration of nullification. The issue is important because it involves the balance of power between the states and the federal government, which looked very different in the early 1800’s as it does now.
The US federal government created a tariff that primarily harmed southern states while protecting northern states.
Southern states complained, but nothing was done about it even by the southern friendly President Jackson.
South Carolina finally got so fed up they declared the tariff unconstitutional in the state, which ‘nullified’ the tariffs in the state giving birth to the crisis’ name.
Whether or not it was constitutional for South Carolina was up for debate, but never got argued outside theoreticals as the federal government lowered the tariff in a deal with South Carolina shortly after.
This represented the first major state government vs federal government crisis before the Civil War, where slavery/secessionist states would eventually make similar arguments that South Carolina used in their nullification.
If the crisis occurred today, South Carolina would be entirely in the wrong as states cannot nullify federal laws, but back then it was heavily debated whether or not states could nullify federal laws.
Latest Answers