A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil WarPart 9: Andrew Jackson (II)

JACKSON’SMAJOR ISSUES

The Indian Removal Act of 1830Resolution of the Nullification CrisisDismantling of the national bank

THE TARIFF OF ABOMINATIONS (1828)

• John Quincy Adams passed a tariff (a tax on imports and exports) which was specifically designed to protect certain industries in the Northern states.

• The tariff harmed the Southern states because it made them pay a higher price on the goods that they imported from the Northern states.

• The tariff also harmed the Southern states because it made countries that purchased essential goods from the North pay higher prices for them, which left the economies of those counties with less disposable money to spend on the luxury goods like cotton and tobacco that were the exports of the South.

• The Southern states, especially South Carolina, suffered great economic hardships in the late 1820s, referring to the tax as ‘the tariff of abominations.’

THE SOUTH CAROLINA EXPOSITION AND PROTEST

• In December 1828, John C. Calhoun, who was John Quincy Adams’ Vice President at the time, presented a document to the South Carolina House of Representatives.

• The document declared that South Carolina would secede from the United States if the tariff was not repealed.

• It argued in favor of nullification, the idea that each state has the right to reject federal laws. This idea followed on directly from Jefferson and Madison’s Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions.

JOHN C. CALHOUN

• Powerful southern Democrat and one member of the ‘Great Triumvirate’ along with Henry Clay and Daniel Webster.

• John Quincy Adams’ Vice President and then Andrew Jackson’s Vice President.

• Worked to undermine both Presidents because he had his own presidential ambitions.

• Raised the possibility of the secession of a state from the Union, which would lead directly to the Civil War in 1861.

DIVIDED STATES

• In May 1832, Jackson’s Democratic Party held its first national convention.

• The purpose of the convention was to select a running mate for Jackson for the presidential election later in the year.

• Jackson and Calhoun were divided on the issue of the tariff.

• The party chose Martin van Buren to run alongside Jackson. This choice effectively meant that Calhoun would lose his job if Jackson won re-election.

THE TARIFF OF 1832

• In July, Jackson put forward plans for a new, lower tariff.

• This tariff reduced the rates of the original tariff and won the support of half the Southerners in the Congress, but South Carolina still felt that the tariff rates were too high.

• In November, South Carolina issued an Ordinance of Nullification which declared that the state would not uphold either of the tariffs. Implicitly, if a state did not agree to uphold federal law, the law would not have federal scope and power.

THE NULLIFICATION CRISIS OF 1833

• In December 1832, Calhoun resigned as Vice President so that he could run for election as Senator for South Carolina.

• Calhoun intended to use a Senatorial position to advance the cause of nullification.

• In February 1833, as South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification came into effect, the state prepared to go to war with the federal government.

THE NULLIFICATION CRISIS OF 1833

• Jackson ordered a naval blockade of South Carolina.He also received permission from the Congress to mobilize federal forces and prepare them for an invasion of the state.

• South Carolina mobilized its own state militia in anticipation of an armed conflict.

• In late February, however, Henry Clay arranged a new, compromise tariff which South Carolina accepted. The state repealed its Ordinance of Nullification in March.

THE REAL OBJECT OF NULLIFICATION

“The tariff was only the pretext, and disunion and southern confederacy the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or slavery question.”

— Andrew Jackson — May 1, 1833

JACKSON AND THE NATIONAL BANK

• Alexander Hamilton, a broad constructionist, successfully advocated the establishment of a national bank in 1791.

• He argued that the various states could be bound together in a tighter political union via the national consolidation of their collective debts and credits.

• Hamilton’s opponents, strict constructionists, believed that this national consolidation invested too much power in the federal government at the expense of the states.

JACKSON AND THE NATIONAL BANK

• The charter of the First Bank lasted twenty years and expired in 1811. A charter for a new bank, the Second Bank of the United States, was issued in 1816. This charter was also scheduled to last twenty years.

• Jackson hated the bank, believing that it infringed on the rights of the states to manage their own financial affairs. He ran for re-election in 1832 on a promise to dissolve the bank by letting the charter expire and making no effort to renew it.

JACKSON AND THE NATIONAL BANK

• Jackson succeeded in dissolving the Second Bank of the United States. In 1836, it became a private corporation.

• The United States went without a national bank for twenty-five years, until the Civil War required greater centralization of financial affairs.

• In an ironic twist, Jackson’s face now appears on the twenty dollar banknote issued by the Federal Reserve, which is essentially the United States’ current national bank.

A SURVEY OF AMERICAN HISTORY

Unit 2: Westward Expansion and Civil WarPart 9: Andrew Jackson (II)