The question of who created whom — did the states create the nation or did the nation create the states — has led to many a political donnybrook and one Civil War, because, depending on the answer, either the states or the nation would have ultimate political and judicial power. Among the most famous examples of this argument occurred this week (Nov. 24) in 1832, when South Carolina passed the Ordinance of Nullification, which claimed that states had a right to declare federal laws invalid.
South Carolina was responding to a series of high tariffs that Congress had passed on many imported goods, and although northern congressmen claimed the tariffs were designed to raise revenue for the entire nation, many southerners, especially South Carolinians, believed the tariffs favored northern manufacturing interests at the expense of southern agrarian interests. High tariffs, they said, hurt the South’s farmers by raising the prices of manufactured goods, while highly profiting northern industries. Such regional favoritism, South Carolinians argued, was unconstitutional.
Which led to a constitutional question, and crisis. Did a state, any state, have the power to nullify a federal law that it believed infringed on its sovereignty? South Carolina’s politicians, led by its most famous politician, John C. Calhoun — who at the time was the actual sitting vice president of the United States — argued that the states had created the federal government by writing a Constitution that granted that government clearly delineated and limited powers. Thus the states were the ultimate sovereign authority, especially within their own borders. That meant they could decide what federal laws were or were not constitutional.
Not surprisingly, Calhoun’s boss, President Andrew Jackson, vehemently disagreed, believing that such reasoning would ultimately dissolve the Union. So Jackson issued a “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina,” in which he declared that their action was treasonous and should it persist, it would be met with force.
Defiant, South Carolina’s state legislature began taking steps to raise an army, but behind the scenes, both Jackson and Calhoun were looking for a compromise. Calhoun, who in December would resign the vice presidency to serve in the United States Senate, had always insisted that Congress could defuse the situation by lowering the tariffs, and Jackson agreed. And so, after Congress passed a lower tariff in March of 1833, South Carolina repealed its Nullification Ordinance and the crisis was averted.
But not ended. Although South Carolina continued to insist that state sovereignty was supreme, in 1832 it never advocated leaving the Union. That changed in 1860 when, once again claiming state supremacy, South Carolina became the first southern state to secede from the Union, and, in 1861, it fired the first shots of the Civil War.
