7 October 2017
South Carolina established itself as an early proponent of states’ rights, and had in fact threatened to leave the union on multiple occasions, beginning with the Constitutional Convention itself. Differences over trade and tax policy drove the most ardent believers in state supremacy to ignore federal law entirely during Andrew Jackson’s first term, bringing to head a crisis over state versus federal power, and which would truly be the “supreme law of the land.”
Documents
- Fort Hill Address, John C. Calhoun, 1831
- Proclamation Regarding Nullification, Andrew Jackson, 1832
- Letter to Daniel Webster, James Madison, 1833
Scholars