CHAPTER XII

JACKSON AND SOUTH CAROLINA

South

WHILE the problems of the frontier were thus receiving Demands of attention and the voice of the northern politician was grow- Carolina. ing powerful, another section of the Jackson party demanded attention. No state had such high ambitions, none was so united in its desires, as South Carolina. The boon that it expected as a result of Jackson's triumph was the reduction, radical and prompt, of the tariff. All the distress caused by exhaustion of the soil, and the decline in the price of cotton due to the opening of new cotton areas, was attributed to the high tariff. Seldom has an entire population been so united in its understanding of an economic question, and it was equally insistent on relief.

It was the general belief in South Carolina that a protective tariff was unconstitutional. The Constitution gives Congress power "to lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts, and Excises to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defense and general Welfare of the United States; but all Duties, Imposts, and Excises shall be uniform throughout the United States." It was argued that there was no power to lay duties to protect domestic industry, and that such duties, so far from being uniform and providing for the general welfare, were ruining the cotton planter and enriching the cotton manufacturer. McDuffie also argued that an import duty on goods necessary in the production of cotton, by making it more costly, amounted to an export duty on cotton, and the Constitution specifically forbids export duties. Whether these arguments were or were

Constitutionality of a protective tariff.

Talk of secession.

Calhoun's position.

not valid, they at any rate secured no relief from the courts. No tariff bill except that of 1789 contained any formal expression of its object, and it was impossible to prove that any particular duty was levied only for the purpose of protection. The constitutional argument was equally without effect in Congress. McDuffie claimed that the cotton interests were practically unrepresented, because they had a minority representation; subject as they were to the tyrannical rule of the majority, it would be as well to withdraw their representatives from Washington altogether.

The tariff of 1824 had caused men to formulate these views; the tariff of 1828 intensified their belief in them. Some leaders began to "calculate the value of the Union." Incendiary toasts were drunk at public dinners; a congress of the states opposed to the tariff was proposed; some suggested state laws to tax or prevent the importation of “tariffied" articles. Secession was discussed. "Fear nothing," said a correspondent in the Charleston Courier; "foreign nations will protect us. We have commerce and products to tempt them, and they have men and ships to defend us. Congress can do nothing but blockade us, and this may soon be obviated."

To this situation it behooved Calhoun, the political leader of South Carolina, to set his mind. A cotton planter among cotton planters, he naturally sympathized with their views. At the same time he was deeply devoted to the Union. He had entered Congress as one of the enthusiastic young leaders who brought about the War of 1812; he had been active in the Fourteenth Congress, taking part in its discussion on the nationalistic side; for sixteen years he had been in Washington as congressman, cabinet officer, and vice president. In 1829 his prospects for a national career seemed high; he was strong in the cabinet, and had friends and supporters all over the North and West; he was the logical candidate for the succession. He therefore devoted all the

powers of his great mind to make possible the prosperity of his section and the preservation of the Union.

The

current ma

The metaphysical bent of his Scotch ancestry was plainly The doctrine apparent in his views. As he studied the situation in the of "conlight of past history he became convinced that all govern- jorities." ments tend to become tyrannical. The problem is to create a government having sufficient power to be efficient, and yet so limited as to be unable to oppress any portion of the governed. The right to vote is not sufficient, for the tyranny of the majority is far worse than that of a single man. only remedy is to allow each body of citizens of a particular section or special interest to vote separately, and require, to make a law valid, a "concurrent majority" in every section and interest. In this way all legislation for the general welfare could be passed, but nothing offensive to any section; the minority would be absolutely protected. "The concurrent majority . . . tends to unite the most opposite and conflicting interests, and to blend the whole in one common attachment to the country." "Instead of factions, strife, and struggle for party ascendency, there would be patriotism, nationality, harmony, and a struggle only for supremacy in promoting the common good of the whole." This view of the true structure of government Calhoun set forth later in an essay entitled: A Disquisition on Government; and it formed the basis of his political thought throughout the last twenty years of his life.

tion.

Applying these views to the United States, he argued The doctrine that the government had been founded by thirteen inde- of nullificapendent states. These states had united and formed a compact or bargain, the terms of which were set forth in the Constitution. They had not surrendered their independence, they had not divided the sovereignty; because, according to his belief, sovereignty is indivisible, they had merely assigned certain specified functions to the central government. The national government must confine itself to the powers

Calhoun's purpose.

Webster-
Hayne

debate.

specified. If it exercised other powers, it was acting without authority. In such case a decision of the national Supreme Court could not be considered final, for it was a part of the national government. Back of the Court stood the In case of a "deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers not granted by the said compact,” each state was at liberty to "nullify" the law. Thus the government would be prevented from oppressing any one state, and the principle of the concurrent majority would be maintained.

This doctrine of nullification recalled the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of Madison and Jefferson, in the assertion of the right of a state to declare an act unconstitutional. Calhoun, however, went so far beyond them in drawing conclusions as to what action should be taken by the state, that Madison indignantly refused to be held responsible. According to this new view, if a state legislature were fully convinced that the Constitution was being violated and Congress refused to change its action, then a convention should be called, representing the people of the state as a whole, for the express purpose of discussing the question. The sovereign people acting thus in their collective capacity could declare such law null and void within the limits of the state. Thus the state would be relieved of oppression without resorting to the violent remedy of secession. This was undoubtedly the purpose of Calhoun. While he believed in secession as a right, he was, until just before the close of his life, opposed to it in practice. He was not even a strict constructionist in the sense that John Randolph was, for he was willing to see the range of national activity widen, so long as it was in accordance with the will of a concurrent majority and thus oppressed no one section or interest.

In 1828 Calhoun prepared an elaborate account of his views for the use of the South Carolina legislature, which adopted and published it under the title of the South Carolina

Exposition. In 1830, in the debate on the Foote resolution with regard to public lands, Robert Y. Hayne, a senator from South Carolina, speaking under the eye of Calhoun, the Vice President, elaborately explained and defended these views, and sought to win for them the support of the West by recalling the long alliance between that section and the South. Daniel Webster responded, and there followed the most famous debate in American legislative history. Webster asserted that the Union was older than the states. He maintained that the Convention of 1787 effectually framed, not a compact, but a government, which was sovereign within the range of powers specified in the Constitution; that the United States Supreme Court was the only proper arbiter as to the extent of these powers. He attacked Hayne's idea as bad history, bad law, and as utterly impracticable. Webster's speech was far more than a constitutional argument. It was a defense of the Union against the spirit of sectionism. It was filled with praise of the Union and what it had done and was to do for the country. It appealed to all to sink their differences in the struggle for the common good, and not only did it thrill the audience which he held spellbound in the Senate chamber, but its glowing periods carried conviction and enthusiasm to tens of thousands throughout the country. Oratorically the triumph rested with Webster, but in most respects it was a drawn battle. Historically neither view was wholly sound. There can be little doubt that the framers of the Constitution intended, as John Marshall's decisions indicated, to divide the sovereignty. There was nothing in the political thinking of the eighteenth century to cause that to be considered impossible. Here Webster clung nearer to the past than Hayne, for he recognized that the states were sovereign as well as the Union, while the latter utterly denied any sovereignty to Union. Probably, however, as his opponents asserted, Webster's views tended, if carried to their logical conclusion, to exalt the Union almost as much as Hayne's