Ch. 4.4. Primary Sources: South Carolina’s Ordinance and Jackson’s Proclamation, 1832
South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification, Nov. 24, 1832
Delegates from across South Carolina, assembled in a special convention, issued a proclamation or “ordinance” that, referring to the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832, declared:
We… the people of… South Carolina… declare and ordain… that the several acts… of the Congress of the United States purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities…, are unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.
The ordinance also threatened that:
We will not submit to the application of force on the part of the federal government, to reduce this State to obedience, but… we will consider the passage by Congress of any act authorizing the employment of a military or naval force against the State of South Carolina… as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union.
Andrew Jackson’s Proclamation on Nullification, Dec. 10, 1832
In his response to South Carolina’s Ordinance, President Jackson categorically rejected that a state had rights either to nullify a federal law or to secede.
Whereas a convention, assembled in the State of South Carolina, have passed an ordinance, by which they declare that the several acts… for the imposing of duties… “are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States, and… are null and void, and no law,” … and;
Whereas, …it is further ordained that… the people of South Carolina… will consider… any… act of the Federal Government to coerce the State…, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and
Whereas the said ordinance prescribes to the people of South Carolina a course of conduct in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the destruction of the Union… I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United States, have thought proper to issue this my PROCLAMATION, stating my views of the Constitution and laws applicable to the measures adopted by the Convention of South Carolina, and to… warn them of the consequences that must inevitably result from an observance of the dictates of the Convention…
The ordinance is founded… on the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution — that they may do this consistently with the Constitution — that the true construction of that instrument permits a State to retain its place in the Union, and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional…
But reasoning on this subject is superfluous, when our social compact in express terms declares, that the laws of the United States, its Constitution, and treaties made under it, are “the supreme law of the land;” and for greater caution adds, “that the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding” [C6.2-3]…
When the terms of our confederation were reduced to form [in the Articles of Confederation, 1777], …in the instrument forming that Union, is found an article which declares that “every State shall abide by the determinations of Congress on all questions which by that Confederation should be submitted to them.” Under the Confederation, then, no state could legally annul a decision of the Congress or refuse to submit to its execution; but no provision was made to enforce these decisions. Congress made requisitions, but they were not complied with…
Now, is it possible that even if there were no express provision giving supremacy to the Constitution and laws of the United States over those of the states — can it be conceived that an instrument made for the purpose of “forming a more perfect union” than that of the Confederation could be so constructed by the assembled wisdom of our country as to substitute for that Confederation a form of government dependent for its existence on the local interest, the party spirit of a state…?
I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.
The next objection is that the laws in question operate unequally. This objection may be made with truth to every law that has been or can be passed. The wisdom of man never yet contrived a system of taxation that would operate with perfect equality…
Our Constitution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws and another power to resist them… Nor did the states, when they severally ratified it, do so under the impression that a veto on the laws of the United States was reserved to them or that they could exercise it by implication…
The ordinance [asserts] not only… the right to annul the laws of which it complains but… a threat of seceding from the Union if any attempt is made to execute them. This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the Constitution, which they say is a compact between sovereign States who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and therefore are subject to no superior; that because they made the compact, they can break it when in their opinion it has been departed from by the other States. Fallacious as this course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on which it rests.
The people of the United States formed the Constitution, acting through the State legislatures, in making the compact, to meet and discuss its provisions, and acting in separate conventions when they ratified those provisions; but the terms used in its construction show it to be a government in which the people of all the States collectively are represented. We are ONE PEOPLE…
The Constitution of the United States, then, forms a government, not a league… It is a government in which all the people are represented, which operates directly on the people individually, not upon the States… Each State having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute jointly with the other States a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation…
The States severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown that in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their essential parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exercise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all functions of sovereign power. The States, then, for all these important purposes, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of their citizens was transferred in the first instance to the government of the United States; they became American citizens, and owed obedience to the Constitution of the United States, and to laws made in conformity with the powers vested in Congress…
This, then, is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State convention; that convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the Union. The governor of that State has recommended to the legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect…
No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended, and it is the intent of this instrument to PROCLAIM, not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution, “to take care that the laws be faithfully executed,” shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me…, but to warn the citizens of South Carolina, who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the convention…
Fellow-citizens of my native State! … Mark under what pretenses you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and treason on which you stand! … Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you… They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion, but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is TREASON. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? …
Fellow citizens, the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves — whether your sacred Union will be preserved and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. …
Sources: Text and introductory comments adapted from those available from the Library of Congress’s website on “Primary Documents in American History,” under the Nullification Proclamation; Yale Law School’s Avalon Project, under President Jackson’s Proclamation Regarding Nullification; and Teaching American History.org’s section on Andrew Jackson, under the Proclamation Regarding Nullification.