The Nullification Crisis

If you think Andrew Jackson was elected president, then you are correct! Jackson was seen as an "every man". He could relate to the common people, after he won he held a keggar on the White House lawn for all to attend.


Jackson did have some problems in his presidency. A big issue was tariffs. A tariff is a tax on imported goods, in case you were wondering. The issue was coming from the southern states. The south was mostly farms and not a lot of factories. Because of this, the south imported a lot of their goods. They felt this tariff was too much. They thought the federal government had too much power over the states.

Vice President, John C. Calhoun issued a statement on the subject of nullification, or the idea that states could ignore federal laws they didn't agree with. This put Jackson and Calhoun at odds with each other.


South Carolina took this nullification to another level. They declared Federal Tariffs null and void. Calhoun resigned as Vice President and returned to his home state of South Carolina and support nullification.

Jackson was having none of this. He was fully prepared to send an army down to South Carolina and show them what was up.



Jackson believed that nullification went against the whole idea of the Union and it would not be tolerated.

Because Jackson was a scary guy, a compromise was met and their was no need for the army to go to South Carolina. Congress said they would lower tariffs and South Carolina was ok with it, even though, once nullification was in their head, they wouldn't forget about it.