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John C. Calhoun and State Interposition in South Carolina, 1816-1833

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John C. Calhoun and State Interposition in South Carolina, 1816-1833 Nullification, A Constitutional History, 1776-1833 Volume Three In Defense of the Republic: John C. Calhoun and State Interposition in South Carolina, 1816-1833 By Prof. W. Kirk Wood Alabama State University Contents Dedication Preface Acknowledgments Introduction In Defense of the Republic: John C. Calhoun and State Interposition in South Carolina, 1776-1833 Chap. One The Union of the States, 1800-1861 Chap. Two No Great Reaction: Republicanism, the South, and the New American System, 1816-1828 Chap. Three The Republic Preserved: Nullification in South Carolina, 1828-1833 Chap. Four Republicanism: The Central Theme of Southern History Chap. Five Myths of Old and Some New Ones Too: Anti-Nullifiers and Other Intentions Epilogue What Happened to Nullification and Republicanism: Myth-Making and Other Original Intentions, 1833- 1893 Appendix A. Nature’s God, Natural Rights, and the Compact of Government Revisited Appendix B. Quotes: Myth-Making and Original Intentions Appendix C. Nullification Historiography Appendix D. Abel Parker Upshur and the Constitution Appendix E. Joseph Story and the Constitution Appendix F. Dr. Wood, Book Reviews in the Montgomery Advertiser Appendix G. “The Permanence of the Union,” from William Rawle, A View of the Constitution of the United States (permission by the Constitution Society) Appendix H. Sovereignty, 1776-1861, Still Indivisible: States’ Rights Versus State Sovereignty Dedicated to the University and the people of South Carolina who may better understand and appreciate the history of the Palmetto State from the Revolution to the Civil War Preface Why was there a third Nullification in America (after the first one in Virginia in the 1790’s and a second one in New England from 1808 to 1815) and why did it originate in South Carolina? Answers to these questions, focusing as they have on slavery and race and Southern sectionalism alone, have made Southerners and South Carolinians feel uncomfortable with this aspect of their past. This reconstruction of a critical event in the early national history, long in the making, began in the 1970’s at the University of South Carolina to whom this volume is dedicated along with the good people of the Palmetto state who made a native Virginian feel very much at home. Different answers to the questions posed above, it is hoped, will help them better understand the important role their state played in American history from the Revolution (the War of Independence was won in the South with the help of those “Fighting Gamecocks,” i.e., the military leaders such as Francis Marion, Thomas Sumter, and Andrew Pickens) to the Civil War (where the memory of ’76 continued to shape the mind and actions of Carolinians and make them not hot-headed Southern disunionists but very much Americans defending liberty and the union as these terms were understood in their 18th century context). The title of volume three of Nullification, A Constitutional History, 1787-1833 speaks for itself. John C. Calhoun and the South Carolina nullifiers were all about defending the republic and the original principles of 1776 and 1787 (as they maintained at the time) rather than preserving slavery and threatening disunion if their “peculiar institution” was not made more safe and secure within the union of the states (as their many opponents claimed). As presented here in fact, the principal figures in the third Nullification movement were the anti-Nullifiers including James Madison and Andrew Jackson who between them denied original intentions and in the process contributed to the beginnings of a myth of democracy (American was born modern, liberal, democratic, and fully unified as a nation) and the myth of a reactionary South (whose central theme was slavery and where the egalitarian beliefs of the founders and framers were rejected in favor of an altogether new states’ rights theory of government the articulation of which philosophy became the life work of John C. Calhoun who switched allegiances from “nationalism” to “sectionalism” mainly to advance his political career). History proves otherwise. What was new in 1828-1833 was not only the rejection by some of states’ rights and Nullification as an essential component of federalism (to which Mr. Madison contributed), but the enunciation especially in the words of Andrew Jackson of the union as absolute and indissoluble (which in turn was based on a reinterpretation of American history from 1607 that underscored the anachronistic notion that the nation was older than the states). Here was the real “prelude to Civil War” (foreshadowing the later language of Abraham Lincoln whose election in 1860 was the immediate cause of Southern secession led by South Carolina no less) that made the Nullification controversy in South Carolina such an important event politically, constitutionally, and above all historically. In 1833, the union was preserved because historical revisionism or myth-making on the part of the anti-Nullifiers failed. Thanks to Calhoun and the South Carolina nullifiers, Americans (North and South) re-gained an understanding of their early history and the principles of republicanism and federalism which made the United States a limited and a federal government and a union of the states rather than an unlimited one and the states united. It was history and especially what the framers of 1787 intended that made the difference. Ironically, the many issues confronting America in the aftermath of the War of 1812 (the tariff, internal improvements, the Bank of the United States, and slavery in the territories), and which renewed the old struggle between Federalists and Republicans, led to the publication first of the Journal of the Federal Convention in 1819 followed by the notes of Robert Yates in 1821 and beginning in 1827 the Debates in the Several State Conventions on the Adoption of the Federal Constitution edited by Jonathan Elliot. The opposing parties, it appears, were very desirous to prove that they alone were the real heirs to the principles of 1776 and 1787. This struggle over history and to claim the mantle of the founders and framers was won by the Republicans-later Democrats (minus Andrew Jackson). Leading the way was John C. Calhoun who began to study the Journal of the Federal Convention after its publication and came to the conclusion that Nullification as a state veto or negative was clearly intended by the framers. It was, in short, inherent in the very federal nature of the government itself. Long before 1828, then, Calhoun had arrived at the conclusion that Nullification was constitutional and could be employed legitimately as a means to keep the government federal and limited. Announced anonymously in the “South Carolina Exposition & Protest” of 1828, Nullification became an actuality in 1832 when the tariff of 1832 was declared “null and void” by the legislature of South Carolina. Adding to the historical legitimacy of Nullification was the public acknowledgment in 1829 that Jefferson and Madison were indeed the authors of the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798-1799. For Calhoun, however, this was just frosting on the cake so to speak. Between 1828 and 1833, he never wavered in his belief that Nullification was constitutional and derived from the Constitution and the intentions of the framers. He was right as James Madison’s Notes of Debates would prove long afterwards. Introduction It is one of the ironies of American history that the Nullifiers, who considered themselves to be defenders of the union and constitution, have nevertheless been portrayed as disunionists for challenging the authority of the national government and risking a civil war in the process. Even more negatively, the Nullifiers bear the additional burden of being labeled as un-American for supposedly turning their backs on the liberal principles of 1776 and inventing a new theory of government and society to protect the South’s peculiar institution from the increasing threat of abolitionism. In fact, a consensus has emerged over the years that views nullification (and secession) as parts of a larger great reaction in the South related to the spread of slavery after 1815. As the region became based more and more upon cotton and slavery, the argument goes, it also became more defensive and reactionary particularly with respect to its peculiar institution which it sought to preserve at all costs.1 Why John C. Calhoun and the Nullifiers should now be believed or, conversely, why the notion of a reactionary South should be rejected, is the central question to be addressed here. This new look at state interposition or nullification (as opponents negatively labeled it) is based first on a better understanding of the federal convention of 1787 and the kind of government that was finally created in 1789. Strange as it may seem, important aspects of this critical period have been ignored especially the central debate over the issue of drawing a dividing line between federal and state powers to achieve a new government that avoided the problems of the Confederation yet still incorporated the states in the structure of the government. (Why this particular debate has been avoided is an interesting question in its own right considering the vast amount of research on the constitution since 1787.)2 The second basis for this reconsideration of state interposition is to be found in the same republican ideology that has been used since the late 1960’s to recover the thought of the founders and to reconstruct (not reinterpret) the events of the republic’s early national history. Not only does republicanism provide the key to understanding the War of Independence and the movement for a new constitution, but it also reminds us that later Southern beliefs in states’ rights, secessionism (or the right of revolution), strict construction, and agrarianism were by no means new ideas but integral components of America’s original republican ideology.
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