South Carolina Issues Ordinance of Nullification

There was a Union party in the State, respectable in numbers and character but the Nullifiers commanded an immense, an almost silencing majority.

Continuing The South Carolina Nullification Crisis,
our selection from Life of Andrew Jackson by James Parton published in 1860. The selection is presented in seven easy 5 minute installments. For works benefiting from the latest research see the “More information” section at the bottom of these pages.

Previously in The South Carolina Nullification Crisis.

Time: 1832

Nicholas P. Trist, then of the State Department, in a series of articles in the Richmond Inquirer, fell upon Calhoun’s Reynolds letter, and tore it to shreds. He found that (to use his own language) it contained more errors than it contained words. He copied from the old newspapers column after column of the debates of 1816, in which Calhoun figured as the most active and even enthusiastic of the protectionists. He showed that his name was associated with that of Henry Clay in the defense of the principle, and that both were frequently replied to at the same time by members of the other division of the party. These articles of Trist created what is now termed a “sensation.” The President was greatly pleased with them and had not the least difficulty in accepting Trist’s conclusion, “that Calhoun was totally destitute of all regard for truth.”

Calhoun’s article in the Pendleton Messenger was dated July 26, 1831. Congress met in December following, and debated the tariff all the winter and spring. Late in the month of June, by a majority of thirty-two to sixteen in the Senate, by a majority of one hundred twenty-nine to sixty-five in the House. Clay’s bill, reaffirming the protective principle and abolishing duties on articles not needing protection, was passed. A month afterward Congress adjourned; the Vice-President went home to South Carolina; and that State soon prepared to execute the threats contained in the Vice-President’s Pendleton manifesto.

The Legislature of the State, early in the autumn, passed an act calling a convention of the citizens of South Carolina, for the purpose of taking into consideration the late action of Congress and of suggesting the course to be pursued by South Carolina in relation to it. At Columbia, on November 19th. the convention met. It consisted of about one hundred forty members, the elite of the State. The Hamiltons, the Haynes, the Pinckneys, the Butlers, and, indeed, nearly all the great families of a State of great families were represented in it. It was a body of men as respectable in character and ability as has ever been convened in South Carolina. Courtesy and resolution marked its proceedings and the work undertaken by it was done with commendable thoroughness. A committee of twenty-one was ap pointed to draw up an address to the people of the State or rather a program of the proceedings best calculated to promote the end designed. The chief result of the labors of this committee was the celebrated Ordinance of Nullification, signed by the entire convention, which consisted of five distinct decrees, to the execution of which the members pledged themselves. It was ordained:

1. That the tariff law of 1828, and the amendment to the same of 1832, were “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.”
2. No duties enjoined by that law or its amendment shall be paid, or permitted to be paid, in the State of South Carolina, after February 1, 1833.
3. In no case involving the validity of the expected nullifying act of the Legislature, shall an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States be permitted. No copy of proceedings shall appeal to the Supreme Court “may be dealt with as for a contempt of the court” from which the appeal is taken.
4. Every office-holder in the State, whether of the civil or the military service, and every person hereafter assuming an office, and every juror, shall take an oath to obey this ordinance, and all acts of the Legislature in accordance therewith or suggested thereby.
5. If the Government of the United States shall attempt to enforce the tariff laws, now existing, by means of its army or navy, by closing the ports of the State, or preventing the egress or ingress of vessels, or shall in any way harass or obstruct the foreign commerce of the State, then South Carolina will no longer consider herself a member of the Federal Union: “the people of this State will 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 do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”

The convention issued an address to the people of the other States of the Union, justifying its proceedings, and then adjourned. The people of South Carolina accepted the ordinance with remarkable unanimity. There was a Union party in the State, respectable in numbers and character but the Nullifiers commanded an immense, an almost silencing majority. Robert Y. Hayne, a member of the convention, was elected Governor of the State, and the Legislature that assembled early in December was chiefly composed of Nullifiers. The message of the new Governor approved the acts of the convention in the strongest language possible. “I recognize,” said the Governor,

no allegiance as paramount to that which the citizens of South Carolina owe to the State of their birth or their adoption. I here publicly declare, and wish it to be distinctly understood, that I shall hold myself bound, by the highest of all obligations, to carry into full effect, not only the ordinance of the convention, but every act of the Legislature, and every judgment of our own courts, the enforcement of which may devolve on the executive, I claim no right to revise their acts. It will be my duty to execute them; and that duty I mean, to the utmost of my power, faithfully to perform.”

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