HENRY CLAY’S DEFEAT was disappointing to him and those who hoped to stop the Jackson juggernaut, but at least it left him with a party to fall back on. John Calhoun had no such solace. Cast out of the Democrats by Jackson, unwelcome among the National Republicans, Calhoun was a man without a party. Yet he had friends in the South Carolina legislature, which elected him senator. He resigned the vice presidency and entered the upper chamber as an ordinary member rather than the presiding officer.
The timing was crucial, for the nullification struggle between South Carolina and the Jackson administration had reached the point of explosion. In late November 1832 a special convention in South Carolina approved an ordinance of nullification. The measure denounced the tariff of 1828 and a revised version passed in 1832 that left the principle of protection firmly in place. The ordinance declared the two tariff statutes “unauthorized by the constitution of the United States” and therefore “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.” The ordinance went on to declare unlawful any attempt by officials of South Carolina or the United States to collect the tariffs. Should the government of the United States try to enforce the tariffs, South Carolinians would resist. If the federal Congress passed a law authorizing the use of force against South Carolina, that law would be deemed “inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union.” Should the federal government persist, “the people of this State will henceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other States; and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.”
WITH THIS STATEMENT the nullifiers took the bit in their teeth and galloped headlong toward secession. And they left Andrew Jackson no choice but to respond, which he did with equal vigor. In early December the president issued a proclamation condemning the South Carolinians’ ordinance as being “in direct violation of their duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of their country, subversive of its Constitution, and having for its object the destruction of the Union.” Jackson declared as plainly as he could, “I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”
Jackson had been born in South Carolina, and he appealed to those who had been his neighbors to turn from their perilous course. “Fellow-citizens of my native state, let me not only admonish you, as the First Magistrate of our common country, not to incur the penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a father would over his children whom he saw rushing to certain ruin. In that paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves or wish to deceive you.” The nullifiers weren’t what they purported to be, nor were South Carolinians what the nullifiers claimed. “They are not champions of liberty, emulating the fame of our Revolutionary fathers, nor are you an oppressed people.” The nullifiers spoke as though determination would carry their project through. Once more they misled. “You can not succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed.” Jackson concluded with chilling bluntness: “Be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason.”
JOHN CALHOUN ROSE in the Senate to answer Jackson. In his nearly four years as Jackson’s vice president he had gone from being Jackson’s ally and possible heir to his most dangerous foe. The zealotry of the South Carolina fire-eaters thrilled emotionalists in the Palmetto State, but it was the cold logic of Calhoun that would—or would not—bring other states to South Carolina’s side. Calhoun blamed Jackson for escalating the tension between South Carolina and the national government. The president spoke as though South Carolina were in arms and eager to fight. Nothing could be further from the truth, Calhoun said. “There is not a shadow of foundation for such a statement. There is not a state in the Union less disposed than South Carolina to put herself in such attitude of hostility.” South Carolina had said it would resist aggression, but it was not and would not be the aggressor. The president was trying to intimidate South Carolina. If war came, it would be because the president had initiated it.
“It is obvious that the country has now reached a crisis,” Calhoun continued. The wonder was that it had taken so long. “It has often been said that every thing which lives carries in itself the elements of its own destruction. This principle is no less applicable to political than to physical constructions. The principle of decay is to be found in our institutions, and unless it can be checked and corrected in its course by the wisdom of the federal government, its operation will form no exception to the general course of events.” Americans must choose. “The time has at length come when we are required to decide whether this shall be a confederacy any longer, or whether it shall give way to a consolidated government.”
Calhoun paused to let his fellow senators reflect on this issue. For himself, he knew where he stood. “As I live, I believe that the continuance of any consolidated government is impossible. It must inevitably lead to a military despotism.” This was not what South Carolina had agreed to in ratifying the Constitution. “South Carolina sanctioned no such government. She entered the confederacy with the understanding that a state, in the last resort, has a right to judge of the expediency of resistance to oppression, or secession from the Union. And for so doing, we are threatened to have our throats cut, and those of our wives and children.”
Calhoun caught himself. “No, I go too far. I did not intend to use language so strong. The Chief Magistrate has not yet recommended so desperate a remedy.”
Yet the country was very close to that. “The present is a great question, and the liberties of the American people depend upon the decision of it.” Calhoun spoke from the heart, with fiercer feeling than his colleagues had ever seen in him. “I have been, from my earliest life, deeply attached to the Union,” he said. “In my early youth I cherished a deep and enthusiastic admiration of this Union. I looked on its progress with rapture and encouraged the most sanguine expectations of its endurance. I still believe that if it can be conformed to the principles of 1798, as they were then construed, it might endure forever. Bring back the government to those principles, and I will be the last to abandon it. And South Carolina will be among its warmest advocates. But depart from these principles and in the course of ten years we shall degenerate into a military despotism. The cry has been raised: ‘The Union is in danger.’ I know of no other danger than that of military despotism. I will proclaim it on this floor, that this is the greatest danger with which it is menaced, a danger the greatest which any country has to apprehend.”
Calhoun caught himself again. He begged pardon of the Senate for the warmth with which he had spoken. “Unbecoming as I know that warmth is, I must throw myself on my country and my countrymen for indulgence. Situated as I am, and feeling as I do, I can not have done otherwise.”
THE SENATORS WATCHED in amazement. Few had thought Calhoun harbored such intense emotions. But feelings ran high on all sides. Andrew Jackson made plain he would brook no interference with the laws of the country: no nullification and certainly no secession. He ordered his secretary of war, Lewis Cass, to gird an army to march against South Carolina if necessary. “We must be prepared to act with promptness and crush the monster in its cradle,” he told Cass. To South Carolinian Joel Poinsett, an opponent of the nullifiers, Jackson declared, “The wickedness, madness, and folly of the leaders and the delusion of their followers in the attempt to destroy themselves and our Union has not its parallel in the history of the world. The Union will be preserved.” To John Coffee, a Tennessee friend, he was more adamant still. “The Union must be preserved,” Jackson told Coffee. “I will die with the Union.”
When a South Carolina congressman asked if the president had any message for the people in his district, Jackson replied, “Yes, I have. Please give my compliments to my friends in your state, and say to them that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.”