1831

by Louis P. Masur

  Bank supporters were thrilled. McLane’s own annual report unabashedly supported rechartering the Bank, and Jackson seemed amenable to an agreement that would allow the institution to survive. To be sure, McLane’s report outraged opponents of the Bank, who accused the president of vacillating. Jackson defended himself against the accusation that he had changed his views. Two weeks after delivering his annual message, he wrote, “I have uniformly on all proper occasions held the same language in regard to that institution: that it has failed to answer the ends for which it was created, and besides being unconstitutional … it is on the score of mere expediency dangerous to liberty.” The matter might have rested here, with rhetoric flying but a tacit agreement in place to allow, in due course, a discussion of the rechartering of the Bank. But Biddle made a fateful decision that assured the result he most dreaded. Rather than take cover, he decided at year’s end to apply early for recharter.31

  After the fact, Biddle undoubtedly spent many an anxious day reflecting on his decision in December to seek renewal for the Bank’s recharter. As of November, the information before him suggested that he should wait until after the election of 1832. McLane personally told Biddle that forcing the issue of recharter now would be perceived by the president as a political maneuver aimed at derailing his re-election, and for that reason alone he would veto it. Others warned Biddle not to press Jackson into a corner, especially since he seemed to be wavering in his opposition to the Bank. “If you apply now,” McLane warned, “you assuredly will fail,—if you wait, you will as certainly succeed.”32

  Others, however, encouraged Biddle to act. A representative from Virginia predicted that Jackson’s re-election was “as certain as his life” and that his influence over Congress would only increase. Why not apply now, when Calhoun, the vice-president, George McDuffie, the chair of the Ways and Means Committee, and McLane, the secretary of the Treasury, all supported recharter? Henry Clay argued that “if now called upon he would not negative the bill.” And Daniel Webster urged that “it is expedient for the Bank to apply for the renewal of its Charter without delay.” They believed that Jackson would not veto a recharter bill in an election year but he would once re-elected.33

  Biddle should have known better. The men advising him all hated Jackson and were seeking to turn the upcoming election into a contest. McLane had worked hard to gain a compromise and warned repeatedly that the president would take a premature application for recharter “as an act of hostility,” and would veto it “even if certain that he would thereby lose the Election.” But Biddle ignored the warnings and, in January 1832, supporters in the Senate and House moved for the recharter of the Bank of the United States.34

  For six months, anti-Bank Democrats assailed the institution and pro-Bank forces defended it. Supporters of recharter undoubtedly thought they had clinched the argument over constitutionality when they circulated a letter from James Madison, the last of the framers, in which he supported the Bank and declared that a veto from the executive would violate “all the obligations derived from a course of precedents amounting to the requisite evidence of a national judgment and intention.” Opponents, however, held the father of the Constitution to his original opinion, expressed in 1791, when he opposed the Bank of the United States as unauthorized. The oscillating arguments grew familiar and stale, but the passions intensified. Declaring it a “hydra-headed monster,” Jackson told Van Buren, “The Bank … is trying to kill me, but I will kill it.” He was true to his word. In early summer, Congress passed a bill for recharter. Jackson responded with the most powerful weapon in his presidential arsenal: on July 10, 1832, he vetoed the bill.35

  14. “The Downfall of Mother Bank,” 1833 (Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society)

  In killing the bank, Jackson offered justifications that terrified his political opponents. His veto message repudiated the doctrine that the Supreme Court decided issues of constitutionality. Arguing that the executive as well as Congress had as much obligation and right as the judiciary to determine constitutional questions, Jackson declared that the “authority of the Supreme Court must not be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive.” Jackson condemned the Bank not only as unconstitutional, but also as corrupt and antirepublican. Appealing to nationalistic urgings, he denounced the Bank as an instrument of foreign domination. “Every impulse of American feeling admonishes that it should be purely American,” he declared. The powers of the Bank were “dangerous to the Government and country.” They exacerbated inequality and favored the rich over the poor, the powerful over the weak. By adding artificial distinctions of titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges to the natural ones that already existed, the Bank, through the government, made “the rich richer and the potent more powerful,” leaving “the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers”—the victims of governmental injustice. The Bank invaded the rights of common citizens and the rights of states: “In thus attempting to make our General Government strong we make it weak. Its true strength consists in leaving individuals and States as much as possible to themselves—in making itself felt, not in its power, but in its beneficence; not in its control, but in its protection; not in binding the States more closely to the center, but leaving each to move unobstructed in its proper orbit.”36

  For only the tenth time, a president had employed the veto; almost never before had it been used for an issue of national importance, and never was it justified in this way. The framers had envisioned a delicate balance of power between Court, Congress, and executive. If Marshall had earlier in the century bolstered the Court by developing the doctrine of judicial review, Jackson now sought to strengthen the executive, not only by denying the Court an exclusive right to judge constitutional matters but by declaring that the president could freely decide questions of state on any grounds he saw fit. Jackson’s veto breathed the language of equality, yet made the presidency more autocratic; it celebrated the American nation, but seemed to give comfort to those who favored the local over the national, state government over federal government. The veto “has all the fury of a chained panther biting the bars of his cage,” proclaimed Biddle, who pretended to be delighted with the extremism of it because he hoped the act would bring Jackson down: “It is really a manifesto of anarchy—such as Marat or Robespierre might have issued to the mob of the faubourg St. Antoine: and my hope is that it will contribute to relieve the country from the dominion of these people.”37

  Jackson’s veto of the recharter of the Bank, and subsequent removal of government deposits, destroyed the institution and led his opponents to coalesce into a new political organization, the Whig Party. But Biddle’s judgment that Jackson’s actions would cost him re-election proved as faulty as his decision to apply early for rechartering. The Democratic press celebrated the president as a slayer of monsters, and the only votes the veto cost him were those he was not going to receive anyhow. Jackson’s opposition to the national bank, however, inevitably encouraged those opposed to other national policies. In emphasizing the prerogatives of states over the federal government, the veto message further emboldened Southerners, particularly South Carolinians, who felt aggrieved by the tariff policy of the federal government and demanded relief from what they viewed as excessive duties on imports. The conflict over free trade versus protective tariffs was the single most contentious political issue of the day. It divided state against nation and, through the doctrine of nullification, led the country toward the brink of dissolution.

  NULLIFICATION

  “The Tariff is the great subject upon which the eyes of the public are turned,” declared a North Carolina Superior Court judge at the end of the year. Indeed, from the beginning of the republic, the tariff question had generated considerable controversy. The Tariff of 1789, introduced by James Madison, raised concerns over whether the Constitution allowed the government to impose tariffs for any reason other than revenue. If such a tariff were intended, for example, to protect the growth of Amer
ican industries by placing duties on imported items, it might stand outside of congressional authority. In 1790, even before Alexander Hamilton submitted his Report on Manufactures advocating a protective tariff, one proponent of free trade warned that such a tariff would lead to “a dissolution of the Union.”38

  The Tariff of 1789 passed, as did tariffs in 1816 and 1824. Not only were tariff rates increasing, but so too was the variety of products included for protection: woolens, iron, lead, glass, hemp, and salt. Southerners felt particularly aggrieved. The tariff seemed to protect Northern industries at the expense of Southern agriculture. Cotton growers in particular feared that, in retaliation for a tariff, English manufacturers would reduce their imports from the South and develop alternative markets. Furthermore, tariffs meant increased prices for the variety of consumer goods purchased by Southerners. The Tariff of 1828 raised rates even higher, toward 50 percent of the value of imported goods, and Southerners condemned it as an “abomination.” The price of cotton had plummeted from thirty-one cents per pound in 1818 to eight cents in 1831. Ignoring other factors, such as the simultaneous increase in production (from four hundred thousand bales to over a million), Southerners blamed their economic woes on the tariff, which seemed to act as a form of indirect taxation on the South for the benefit of the North. It also seemed to pose an assault upon slavery. After all, the slave economy produced cotton for export, and any measure that affected the price of the staple had an impact upon the stability of the institution. Furthermore, in the context of slave unrest and antislavery activism, Southerners increasingly worried that the power to impose tariffs and the power to attack slavery were one and the same.

  Thomas Hamilton, visiting from England, noted that the Tariff of 1828 “inflicted a deep wound on the stability of the Union. The seeds of dissension among the different States had long been diffused, and now began to exhibit signs of rapid and luxuriant growth.” Doubly odious to Southerners was the lack of respect accorded their position against the tariff. On February 2, the novelist Catherine Sedgwick happened to attend a session of the House in which members debated reducing the duty on salt. “Some Southern members spoke with great vehemence,” she noted, “but nobody on the floor paid any attention to them. They spoke of their oppression, of throwing themselves on the Sovereignty of the States, of being goaded to rebellion, of the time being near when ‘vengeance should stalk about those halls.’ It was melancholy to see such feelings aroused among our countrymen, and more painful to see them quite disregarded.”39

  In opposition to the tariff, Southerners advanced the doctrine of nullification. Godfrey Vigne defined the term for readers of his Six Months in America: “A nullifier is a person who holds that the federal constitution is merely a compact or league between the several states; and that each state has a right to decide for itself concerning the infractions of that league by the federal government, and to nullify and declare void an act of the federal congress within its limits.” With passage of the tariff of abominations in 1828, talk of nullification ignited, and Southern statesmen, especially in South Carolina, kept the fire blazing. Declaring that “the principles of free trade are the principles of human liberty,” James Hamilton, a rice planter who would serve as governor of South Carolina from 1830 to 1832, denounced the tariff for making the Palmetto State a decaying wilderness, whereas once it had been a bustling empire. The only way to offset the political power of “the despotic majority that oppresses us,” Hamilton proclaimed, was to build upon the reserved rights of the states to nullify an act of Congress. No less an authority than Jefferson, in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, proclaimed that, when the federal government assumes “powers that have not been delegated, a nullification of the act is the rightful remedy.” In Hamilton’s hands, Jefferson’s words became an even stronger expression of states’ rights: “That the several States who formed the Constitution being sovereign and independent, have the unquestionable right to judge its infractions; and that NULLIFICATION by those sovereignties of all unauthorized acts, done under colour of that instrument, is the rightful remedy.”40

  The South Carolina legislature adopted an Exposition and Protest against the tariff. Though it was published anonymously, by the following year rumor had it that John C. Calhoun, the newly elected vice-president from South Carolina, had authored the manifesto. In the Exposition and Protest, Calhoun argued that, constitutionally, the power of Congress to pass protective tariffs was neither expressly granted nor necessary and proper for putting its powers into effect. The effect of the tariff was to divide the nation into sections. In any discussion of it, Calhoun announced, “it will be impossible to avoid … the use of sectional language.” Quite simply, he argued, the tariff favored Northern manufacturing interests at the expense of Southern agricultural producers and transferred wealth toward one region and away from another. “We export to import,” explained Calhoun, and tariffs, which raised the prices on imported goods in order to protect nascent Northern industries, cost Southerners dearly. The effect “is to compel us to purchase at a higher price” goods from both domestic and foreign markets “without receiving a corresponding increase of price for what we sell.” “We are not permitted to consume the fruits of our labor,” declared Calhoun, but “through an artful and complex system, in violation of every principle of justice they are transferred to others.”

  Having emphasized the economic effects of the tariff, Calhoun went on to discuss how the protective system acted “to corrupt the government and destroy the liberties of the country.” Government, he thought, must balance the various interests of its constituents regardless of size or strength. If it failed to do so, if it succumbed to the principle of majority rule, it could not preserve liberty. “An unchecked majority, is a despotism—and government is free, and will be permanent in proportion to the number, complexity and efficiency of the checks, by which its powers are controlled.” One such check, the Exposition insisted, was “the constitutional right of the States to interpose in order to protect their powers.” “Interposition” was another word for “nullification,” and South Carolina threatened to use this power to protect itself against the tariff, which it viewed as “unconstitutional, oppressive, and unjust.” “The time is coming,” warned one Southern editor, “when the true theory of this Constitution is to be brought to its test. If it fails, then clouds and darkness rest upon us. The Union itself may pass under one of the deepest Eclipses which has ever obscured it.”41

  “Carolina fever,” as one observer labeled nullification, was infectious and potentially fatal to the survival of the Union. Statesmen such as James Madison labored to find a remedy. Madison, eighty years of age in 1831, was the last surviving oracle of the nation’s founding. Time and again writers solicited his opinion on constitutional questions, and time and again, although describing himself as “decrepit and feeble,” he wrote lengthy letters explicating the meaning of the Constitution. Acknowledging that “doubts and difficulties should occur in expounding” upon the document, Madison defended the constitutionality of the tariff. Article I, Section 8, gave Congress the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises” and “to regulate commerce with foreign nations.” That power was intended not only to raise revenue but also to impose duties so as to encourage the development of American manufactures. Besides, “as a cause of the general sufferings of the country … the tariff … has been vastly overrated.” Increased production led to reduced crop prices just as the availability of inexpensive Western lands depressed property values. The tariff was not to blame.42

  Madison not only defended protective tariffs as constitutional, but also denounced nullification as an “absurdity” and a “heresy.” “Who could, at that day, have foreseen some of the comments on the Constitution advanced at the present,” he lamented. In a published letter, he explained that the United States government was neither a consolidated nor a confederated entity but a mixture “formed by the States—that is, by the people in each o
f the States, acting in their highest sovereign capacity … . It cannot be altered or annulled at the will of the States individually.” The Constitution, he explained, was “adopted as a whole” and could only be altered by the votes of three-fourths of the states. Madison repeatedly sought to “rescue the resolutions of Kentucky in ’98—’99, from the misconstruction of them,” and to defend their author, Jefferson, from being portrayed as the intellectual father of nullification. That Jefferson “ever asserted a right in a single State to arrest the execution of an act of Congress,” shrieked Madison, “is countenanced by nothing known to have been said or done by him.” It bewildered him that South Carolinians argued that the Virginia Resolutions of 1798 furnished a precedent for the idea that a single state could nullify an act of the United States when such a notion was contradicted by proof from the time and never countenanced by the state, then or now. “In every instance in those proceedings,” testified Madison, “where the ultimate right of the States to interpose is alluded to, the plural term States has been used; the term State, as a single party, being invariably avoided.”43