Andrew Jackson, Calhoun, And The Crisis That Nearly Split The Union

A tariff fight doesn’t usually threaten to crack a nation, but the Nullification Crisis came dangerously close. We open with a plain-English primer on nullification—what it is, where it came from, and why Calhoun turned it into a weapon for Southern power—then follow South Carolina as it moves from protest to an ordinance with real teeth. Courts, sheriffs, customs houses: nothing was off-limits once the state decided to block federal law by force. That’s the moment theory met steel.

From there, the episode drops you into one of the era’s defining debates. Daniel Webster argues for the Union’s legal supremacy, Robert Hayne defends a state veto to preserve local sovereignty, and Edward Livingston outlines a constitutional path that honors federal limits without inviting anarchy. It’s not just rhetoric. Indian removal politics, the bank wars, and shifting coalitions set the stage for 1832, when South Carolina dares Washington to respond. Andrew Jackson—famous for states’ rights in other fights—draws the line here, issuing a blistering proclamation and pushing the Force Bill through Congress. With Livingston’s pen and Jackson’s resolve, the message lands: argue in court, not with militias.

The standoff ends with a compromise tariff and a tactical retreat, but the legacy runs deeper. Tocqueville praises Jackson’s handling, and Lincoln later echoes the same logic: protect limited government, but defend the Constitution’s framework so limits actually hold. We connect those dots to Dred Scott and even Wisconsin’s later flirtation with nullification, showing how the tools you normalize in one decade can unravel stability in the next. If you care about federalism, constitutional enforcement, and how close the 1830s came to civil war, this is a gripping, clear-eyed tour through a hinge point of American history.

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Transcript

What Nullification Means

SPEAKER_02 0:47

Welcome back to Civics in the Year. We have Dr. Sean Beyenberg back with us again to talk about Andrew Jackson. But this time we're talking about the nullification crisis. And there's a lot of things within the nullification crisis. So, Dr. Beyenberg, I really do want to start off this podcast episode with asking for our viewers, or not viewers, our listeners, what is nullification to start with?

Origins In Jefferson And Calhoun

SPEAKER_00 1:11

Because it better not be viewers. I have a face for radios, they say. So nullification, again, is a is a thing that we've talked about a few times, but just as a kind of a reminder and a stage setter, nullification is the idea that a state can unilaterally object to and block, specifically on constitutional grounds, something that the federal government is doing within its borders. Again, to be clear, this is not filing a court case. This is not asking your senator to see it repealed. This is basically threatening to use some sort of political and even military force to prevent the execution of a law or an execution of a federal policy within a state's grounds. And flipping back from a few episodes ago, some people say that it comes from James Madison in the Virginia resolutions. I don't think that's right. I think it comes from Thomas Jefferson in the Kentucky Resolution. But that's basically this idea that's been floating around. It gets picked up again by South Carolina in particularly in the 1820s, and by particularly uh Vice President Calhoun, who earlier had been a nationalist, arguably among the most nationalist of the members of sort of the federal government. But he becomes increasingly smitten with this idea as a way to protect Southern economic and then under the hood slavery interests. So nullification is not exclusively, but generally associated with the South for that reason. It gets picked up a little later in the wake of or before Dred Scott or after Dred Scott, excuse me, by Wisconsin. But basically it's primarily used by Southerners. Not federalism, as we've explained, is not a Southern thing, but nullification tends to be more distinctively.

unknown 3:00

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 3:00

So when we're talking about the nullification crisis, what is really happening when all of these debates are happening? And what problem are we trying to address?

SPEAKER_00 3:11

So the basically the backstory is that we have there's sort of two layers. And as much as you've heard me bemoan repeatedly, the civil war is not about economics, it's about slavery. Nullification does actually pull in economics because the South is concerned about tariffs as well as federal interventions on slavery. Particularly, they think that tariffs are what's happening, but there is a slavery undercurrent. And so the backstory is in the 1820s, Congress basically proposes what the Southerners call the tariff of abominations. And South Carolina, with a document ghost-written by Calhoun. Again, I love the idea. Just like imagine JD Vance like writing policy and like feeding it to Ohio to stick it to President Trump. But that's basically what's happening with Calhoun.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

So much drama with these like early 1800s characters. Calhoun really is a character.

Tariffs, Slavery, And Southern Strategy

Webster, Hain, And Livingston Debate

SPEAKER_00 4:07

He is one of the most brilliant people in American politics. Unfortunately, he's also one of the most evil and also one of the most dramatic. So he's really, you could do all kinds of kinds of things with that. So Calhoun basically gets South Carolina to declare that they will block these tariffs. And so they're threatening nullification in 1828. And then they sort of negotiate a modified rate. And so South Carolina says, All right, we win. Like we're declaring victory and going home. Nullification goes back in the box. It pops back up again a couple years later when they're debating in 1830. It's about land sales. It's not really about nullification, but it turns into like a three-way debate between Daniel Webster, who's by this point sort of one of the leading kind of more nationalists, again, he's not as nationalist as people think, but more nationalists, kind of proto-Wigs. Robert Hain, who is the senator from South Carolina, he will become the governor. He is, you know, switching between senator and governor. He is basically a very close ally of Calhoun, we'll say. And then Edward Livingston, who is an old Madison Jefferson ally, who will later become one of Jackson's chief allies, who've joined Jackson's cabinet. We've talked about him before. And so the three of them are debating nullification. Hain basically wants to say, yep, nullification is the only way that we in the South can protect our interests, the only way that the federalism can be protected. Otherwise, the federal government's just going to all basically log roll its power. Webster wants to say no. We are in fact the union is the more important thing than states. Yes, we don't want to expand federal power, but the union is more important. And Livingston takes sort of the very Federalist 39 take. He's clearly read it and thoughtful about it and says, really, it's still a compact of states, but ultimately it doesn't matter whether it's a compact of states or started as a union. What matters is how the powers are actually divided. The federal government is limited, yes, but the dispute resolution is supposed to be in the courts. Like you don't get to add basically a new constitutional rule when you're citing all this strict constructionism. Like there's no nowhere that we see anything like this idea that Hain is talking about and that Calhoun had been talking about, and we'll give a speech about a few months afterward. So that's the sort of the backstory there is the set South Carolina, especially is pushing nullification. There's a political side part though. This is starting in 1832 and 1833. This is also when we see the politics of Indian removal beginning to happen. And Georgia's sort of mouthing off about this kind of stuff. And we talked about in our in the previous podcast, the bank, right? So there's all these federal state issues that are cla that are sort of woven here. And the alliances are shifting. And so in 1832, South Carolina says, we are going to uh nullify basically a new tariff. We're going to nullify this one. And they passed an ordinance that has real teeth in it. They say we will basically punish courts that participate in interacting with federal courts. We will punish, you know, sheriffs and other like law enforcement office. Like this is not just a protest. This is actual, we will do this by force, which as Webster had pointed out, means okay, that's a civil war. Like it's one thing to protest. It's another thing to say, like, we're gonna shoot federal tax agents, which is basically what they're hinting at. Right. So Jackson, again, we just did Maysville and Bank Veto. We know he's someone who cares about states' rights, but he also has a deep respect for the union and the constitution. And he says, federalism, great. He gives a speech, he says, Look, I'm you all think I'm a states' rights lunatic. Like you all think I'm crazy. But this is one place where the states just cannot win. The states are fundamentally not allowed to do this. And he Edward Livingston sort of writes, ghostwrites his memo his memo basically to the South, saying, or to South Carolina, saying, I will invade you, I will kill you. On the side, he says, I will hang John Calhoun, who again is his actual vice president right now. Or like or had been recently. I guess he's he's rolled off by 33. And so Jackson basically threatens to invade South Carolina and he gets Congress to pass a bill. And people are like, whoa, this is weird. He's working with Daniel Webster, who he had just basically been spitting all over on the bank veto stuff. So South Carolina, Calhoun at this point, realizes this is bad. Jackson actually is crazy enough to try to come hang me and shoot all of my South Carolinian compatriots. So they go back there and they negotiate basically a face-saving compromise where they they tweak the tariff rates again and South Carolina backs down again. But this is a really, I think this is a moment that Americans used to study more and I think has sort of fallen away. But this is a really important moment in American constitutional history. It's they come very close to a civil war. And they are this idea of nullification really is a very dangerous idea that even most states' rights people think is crazy. It's why 25 years later, the Confederates, when they're seceding, say, we might be secessionists, but we swear we're not nullificationists. Andrew Jackson is right, nullification is crazy. And even after Dred Scott, one of the dissenters in the Dred Scott case, will protest when Wisconsin says, like, hey, this is a cool tool in the toolbox. He says, no, no, this is not. We do not want nullification. So nullification is important because it really is a moment when, as Tocqueville points out, like the union is a very, very finely balanced constitutional federalism. We don't want it to expand its power beyond the constitution, but we also don't want it to break apart. And the nullification crisis is when it looks very possible that it will could break apart.

SPEAKER_02 9:40

You mentioned Indian removal, and I do want to tell listeners, like that, like all of these episodes that we're doing all kind of mesh together and go together. And we've talked about Tocqueville, and we've talked about, you know, all of these different things. And when we were talking about this, you know, because one of the like biggest things for me with Tocqueville is I feel like he had a crystal ball looking at civil war. And then as you're talking about, you know, the silification in these debates in this proclamation, it really seems like the stage for civil war had been kind of simmering for a while. And I know that we'll get to the civil war later in our podcast episodes. But I mean, is that a fair assessment that it's just not something that one day breaks out that we're really kind of boiling? Because when you're talking about nullification and you're talking about the South, I can start to see kind of embers of that fire.

South Carolina’s Ordinance With Teeth

SPEAKER_00 10:34

Yeah, that's right. I mean, and and Tocqueville, Tocqueville again, is not very positive on Jackson, but he says Jackson handled the nullification crisis magnificently. He does actually, he's very uh praiseworthy on that. And it's not an accident that Lincoln's addresses, he basically says, look, I'm not going to do anything different than Jackson did. I am not seeking to expand federal power where it doesn't belong, but I will protect the integrity of the Union and its institutions as they are actually outlined in the Constitution. So he very much cites Jackson. Again, part of that is a political reason because Jackson is the great Democrat. If you're a Republican, this is smart rhetoric. But, you know, I I think there's a decent case to be made that he's clearly read his Jackson before he he writes that. And so yeah, you're starting to see what will turn into turn into the Civil War, certainly, with nullification. But, you know, the the the difference is, I guess, in some sense, that in the 1830s, again, even Calhoun, as crazy as he was, like, I do not want a civil war. Like I will, I will back down if it comes to it and try to negotiate something. But part of it is that the Dred Scott case increasingly makes it look like that you even if you had sort of brilliant cynical Stephen Douglas types trying to keep buying time, this is partly why the Dred Scott case is so, so dangerous, is because it seemingly indicates that that space is going to disappear and we're going to be forced a national resolution on that. But yeah, I mean it's the the you know, this this is a great, this was a great, great debate for historians for decades. Like, was the civil war inevitable? Like, could basically and you know, I I'm not a I'm not a historian of Congress in this era, so you know, I I've I don't have super strong views on this, but you know, basically the debate could we if we'd had Jackson again in 1850 or like in 18 in 1860, could like we have bought more time off? And I think the consensus increasingly is no, that it was, as you said, sort of the embers were starting to smoke. Because like Dred Scott triggers no Wisconsin playing with nullification. And then when both sides are playing with nullification, then you have the union threatening to collapse on that front as well.

SPEAKER_02 12:47

So it'll be really interesting. I'm looking at our you know show lists, and you know, before we even get to Civil War, we're definitely doing an episode on Dred Scott, but kind of again, just looking at all of these different things happening in the United States prior to the Civil War. So, Dr. Beinberg, thank you so much.