The Reign of Andrew Jackson: A Chronicle of the Frontier in Politics

by Frederic Austin Ogg

Throughout the summer and autumn of 1830 both the State Rights and Union parties in South Carolina worked feverishly to perfect their organizations. The issue that both were making ready to meet was nothing less than the election of a convention to nullify the tariff laws. Those upholding nullification lost no opportunity to consolidate their forces, and by the close of the year these were clearly in the majority, although the unionist element contained many of the ablest and most respected men in the State. Calhoun directed the nullifier campaign, though he did not throw off all disguises until the summer of the following year.

Though Jackson made no further public declarations, the views which he expressed in private were usually not slow to reach the public ear. In a letter to a committee of the Union party in response to an invitation to attend a Fourth of July dinner the President intimated that force might properly be employed if nullification should be attempted. And to a South Carolina Congressman who was setting off on a trip home he said: “Tell them [the nullifiers] from me that they can talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts’ content. But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.” When Hayne heard of this threat he expressed in Benton’s hearing a doubt as to whether the President would really hang anybody. “I tell you, Hayne,” the Missourian replied, “when Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes.”

Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become its avowed leader. Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make. Above all things he wanted to be President. He was not the author of nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late how much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be bettered by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy. Circumstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually into the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement. The tide of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the breach with Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western democracy; and his resentment of Van Buren’s rise to favor prompted words and acts which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian. His party’s enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for reëlection in 1832 and of “Little Van” as a candidate for the vice presidency—and, by all tokens, for the presidency four years later—was the last straw. Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back into the rôle of an extremist, sectional leader. There was no need of further concealment; and in midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous Address to the People of South Carolina, and this restatement of the Exposition of 1828 now became the avowed platform of the nullification party. The Fort Hill Letter of August 28, 1832, addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and clearer presentation of the same body of doctrine.

Matters were at last brought to a head by a new piece of tariff legislation which was passed in 1832 not to appease South Carolina but to take advantage of a comfortable state of affairs that had arisen in the national treasury. The public lands were again selling well, and the late tariff laws were yielding lavishly. The national debt was dwindling to the point of disappearance, and the country had more money than it could use. Jackson therefore called upon Congress to revise the tariff system so as to reduce the revenue, and in the session of 1831-32 several bills to that end were brought forward. The scale of duties finally embodied in the Act of July 14, 1832, corrected many of the anomalies of the Act of 1828, but it cut off some millions of revenue without making any substantial change in the protective system. Virginia and North Carolina voted heavily for the bill, but South Carolina and Georgia as vigorously opposed it; and the nullifiers refused to see in it any concession to the tariff principles for which they stood. “I no longer consider the question one of free trade,” wrote Calhoun when the passage of the bill was assured, “but of consolidation.” In an address to their constituents the South Carolina delegation in Congress declared that “protection must now be regarded as the settled policy of the country,” that “all hope from Congress is irrevocably gone,” and that it was for the people to decide “whether the rights and liberties which you received as a precious inheritance from an illustrious ancestry shall be tamely surrendered without a struggle, or transmitted undiminished to your posterity.”

In the disaffected State events now moved rapidly. The elections of the early autumn were carried by the nullifiers, and the new Legislature, acting on the recommendation of Governor Hamilton, promptly called a state convention to consider whether the “federal compact” had been violated and what remedy should be adopted. The 162 delegates who gathered at Columbia on the 19th of November were, socially and politically, the élite of the State: Hamiltons, Haynes, Pinckneys, Butlers—almost all of the great families of a State of great families were represented. From the outset the convention was practically of one mind; and an ordinance of nullification drawn up by a committee of twenty-one was adopted within five days by a vote of 136 to 26.

The tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were declared “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.” None of the duties in question were to be permitted to be collected in the State after February 1, 1833. Appeals to the federal courts for enforcement of the invalidated acts were forbidden, and all officeholders, except members of the Legislature, were required to take an oath to uphold the ordinance. Calhoun had laboriously argued that nullification did not mean disunion. But his contention was not sustained by the words of the ordinance, which stated unequivocally that the people of the State would not “submit to the application of force on the part of the federal Government to reduce this State to obedience.” Should force be used, the ordinance boldly declared—indeed, should any action contrary to the will of the people be taken to execute the measures declared void—such efforts would be regarded as “inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union,” and “the people of this State” would “thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and to do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”

In accordance with the instructions of the convention, the Legislature forthwith reassembled to pass the measures deemed necessary to enforce the ordinance. A replevin act provided for the recovery of goods seized or detained for payment of duty; the use of military force, including volunteers, to “repel invasion” was authorized; and provision was made for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Throughout the State a martial tone resounded. Threats of secession and war were heard on every side. Nightly meetings were held and demonstrations were organized. Blue cockades with a palmetto button in the center became the most popular of ornaments. Medals were struck bearing the inscription: “John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy.” The Legislature, reassembling in December, elected Hayne as Governor and chose Calhoun—who now resigned the vice presidency—to take the vacant seat in the Senate. In his first message to the Legislature Webster’s former antagonist declared his purpose to carry into full effect the nullification ordinance and the legislation supplementary to it, and expressed confidence that, if the sacred soil of the State should be “polluted by the footsteps of an invader,” no one of her sons would be found “raising a parricidal arm against our common mother.”

Thus the proud commonwealth was panoplied for a contest of wits, and perchance of arms, with the nation. Could it hope to win? South Carolina had a case which had been forcibly and plausibly presented. It could count on a deep reluctance of men in every part of the country to see the nation fall into actual domestic combat. There were, however, a dozen reasons why victory could not reasonably be looked for. One would have been enough—the presence of Andrew Jackson in the White House.

Through federal officers and the leaders of the Union party Jackson kept himself fully informed upon the situation, and six weeks before the nullification convention was called he began preparations to meet all eventualities. The naval authorities at Norfolk were directed to be in readiness to dispatch a squadron to Charleston; the commanders of the forts in Charleston Harbor were ordered to double their vigilance and to defend their posts against any persons whatsoever; troops were ordered from Fortress Monroe; and General Scott was sent to take full command and to strengthen the defenses as he found necessary. The South Carolinians were to be allowed to talk, and even to adopt “ordinances,” to their hearts’ content. But the moment they stepped across the line of disobedience to the laws of the United States they were to be made to feel the weight of the nation’s restraining hand.

“The duty of the Executive is a plain one,” wrote the President to Joel R. Poinsett, a prominent South Carolina unionist; “the laws will be executed and the United States preserved by all the constitutional and legal means he is invested with.” When the situation bore its most serious aspect Jackson received a call from Sam Dale, who had been one of his dispatch bearers at the Battle of New Orleans. “General Dale,” exclaimed the President during the conversation, “if this thing goes on, our country will be like a bag of meal with both ends open. Pick it up in the middle or endwise, and it will run out. I must tie the bag and save the country.” “Dale,” he exclaimed again later, “they are trying me here; you will witness it; but, by the God of heaven, I will uphold the laws.” “I understood him to be referring to nullification again,” related Dale in his account of the interview, “and I expressed the hope that things would go right.” “They shall go right, sir,” the President fairly shouted, shattering his pipe on the table by way of further emphasis.