Which politician articulated the doctrine of nullification

He promised to end the national debt and keep the size of the government small. There was little new in the address, and as Jackson did not speak loudly, not many in the crowd heard it. After the address, when Chief Justice John Marshall administered the oath of office to Jackson, the whole crowd cheered wildly.

The executive mansion had traditionally been kept open for the public to call on the President during inauguration day, but the sheer numbers on the day of Jackson's inauguration surpassed anything seen before.

No one was prepared for it, and people grew impatient as they waited in line to meet Jackson. The lower floor of the White House filled to capacity, and then people began climbing over carpets and furniture in order to get even a glimpse of the new President. Many in the crowd swarmed on waiters when they brought out drinks and ice cream, and the rush to be served resulted in thousands of dollars of broken china.

Washington elites looked on the entire episode as evidence of a new era in American politics, and not necessarily a change for the better. The press of people overwhelmed even Jackson himself, and he escaped the mansion in the late afternoon to return to his hotel.

To read Andrew Jackson's inaugural address, click here. Calhoun suggests that his state of South Carolina annul the federally imposed protective cotton tariff. Jackson threatens to deploy federal troops to occupy the state in the event of nullification.

This discovery generates terse correspondence between the two. Congress passes the Indian Removal Act, sanctioning the forcible relocation of Creek, Chickasaw, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Seminole tribes to land allotments west of the Mississippi river.

Ninety-four removal treaties follow the bill's enactment. From to , Cherokee and Creek are forcibly removed from the Southeast onto reservations. Jackson vetoes the Maysville Road bill, which would have sanctioned the federal government's purchase of stock for the creation of a road entirely within Kentucky, the home state of longtime foe Henry Clay.

Jackson regards the project as a local matter and thinks its funding should come from local sources. Jackson is not entirely opposed to the federal financing of such projects, supporting the allocation of federal monies for the National Road. Nevertheless, his veto of the Maysville Road bill indicates a shift in how the federal government intends to pay for internal improvements.

Meanwhile, opponents interpret the move as an abuse of power. The Indian Removal Act set the stage for the forced removals of the Cherokees, Creeks, and other southern Native American nations that took place during the s. President Jackson's annual message of December contained extensive remarks on the present and future state of American Indians in the United States.

His message contained many observations, assessments, and prejudices about Native Americans that had been widely held by American policy makers since Thomas Jefferson's presidency. Jackson observed that as white settlement in the east expanded, the range for Native American hunters diminished, and that this would gradually lead to their extinction.

For their own good, American Indians needed to be resettled on vacant lands west of the Mississippi River, the President argued. In Congress, debates on a bill that would authorize the removals that Jackson proposed began in late February The debates in both the Senate and the House were quite contentious.

Those opposed to Jackson's plans had many reasons for concern. They felt for the Native American situation, and many pleaded eloquently for the inviolable nature of the Native American nations' sovereignty. They also did not want to alter the established practices of Native American treaty-making, and many did not like Jackson himself. Generally, those opposed to the bill constituted the emerging anti-Jackson party.

Officially, the Indian Removal Act did not directly remove any Native American communities; it simply provided for a government apparatus that made it much easier to do so. The act allowed the President to exchange eastern Native American lands for unsettled western lands and grant the Native American nations involved full title to this new land. Officially, such exchanges would have take place through voluntary treaties with the Native Americans themselves.

To expedite matters, the federal government would pay all the costs involved; it would reimburse the Native Americans for any structures they had built on their lands, and subsidize the new Native American settlements in the West. This Indian Removal Act was Jackson's creature. He worked behind the scenes to get his friends and allies appointed to the proper Congressional committees, in order to produce a bill congruent with his desires. The new law now fully committed the United States government to a policy of Native American removal, a policy that Jackson and his allies would bring to life in the latter years of his presidency.

Members of Jackson's inner circle and their wives feud over accusations about the woman's alleged behavior. Jackson supports the Eatons and is outraged by the charges. The French government agrees to a treaty settling spoliation claims by the United States dating back to the Napoleonic Wars.

When U. It was one of the most definitive acts of his presidency. The Second Bank of the United States was created in the aftermath of the War of and had been controversial throughout its life. Many people blamed the Bank for the Panic of , and Westerners and Southerners felt that the Bank in general, and its lending policies in particular, favored Northern interests over their own.

Although most bankers believed that the Bank of the United States had helped stabilize the national money supply and thus the overall banking and commercial environment during the s, the Bank still had vociferous opponents, President Jackson foremost among them. At the end of , Senators Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, supporters of the Bank, convinced the Bank's president, Nicholas Biddle, to submit an early petition for the renewal of the Bank's charter to Congress.

The Bank of the United States was chartered through They calculated that Jackson would not dare issue a veto on the eve of the election; if he did, they would make an issue of it in the campaign.

The petition to recharter the Bank became an instant source of controversy in Congress. Although Jackson himself despised the Bank of the United States and had been an outspoken opponent since before he became President, many Jacksonians, especially from Eastern and Midwest states, supported the Bank.

The recharter bill passed both houses of Congress. Although the bulk of Jackson's cabinet favored the recharter, Jackson vetoed the bill a week after Congress passed it. Jackson explained his veto in a lengthy message, one of the most important state papers of his presidency.

Attorney General Roger Taney and adviser Amos Kendall composed the bulk of the message, which emphasized a variety of reasons for the veto-some political, some ideological, some constitutional. Jackson's message labeled the Bank elitist and anti-republican. Jackson thus challenged the rulings of the Supreme Court of the United States, which had held consistently that the Bank was constitutional.

Jackson's Bank veto was significant, since it firmly inserted the President into the legislative process. Jackson vetoed the Bank bill not only for constitutional reasons, but also for political reasons. Previous Presidents had used the veto sparingly, only when they felt a law was unconstitutional. Jackson did not acquiesce in the Supreme Court's ruling that the Bank was constitutional; he challenged it head on.

He also pointed to many non-constitutional issues in his message, which was new. Jackson's rhetoric of celebrating the role of the small farmer, the working man, and the middling artisan was also significant, since it has come to define Jacksonian Democracy for many historians.

It was also a source of Jackson's broad-based appeal, which secured his reelection later in Running on the Democratic ticket, Jackson wins reelection to the presidency, soundly defeating Henry Clay and William Wirt. Jackson scores an impressive victory, amassing electoral votes to Clay's The election marks the entrance of third parties onto the national scene, with Wirt running on the Anti-Masonic ticket.

It also features the use of national nominating committees. A South Carolina state convention adopts the Ordinance of Nullification, an decree nullifying congressional acts involving duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities. Calhoun resigns as vice president and immediately takes his elected position as senator. No other states join South Carolina in this action.

On December 10, , President Andrew Jackson issued the Nullification Proclamation, which stated that states and municipalities are forbidden from nullifying federal laws. He also threatened to enforce the proclamation with the use of federal arms.

Although congressional compromise soon defused the situation, Jackson's proclamation made it clear that he believed the federal government was the supreme power in the United States and he was willing to use the military to ensure its supremacy. The debate over the issue of nullification actually began before Andrew Jackson took office. The passage of highly protectionist Tariff of upset many South Carolinians.

They felt that tariffs on foreign manufactured goods, designed to protect the United States' infant manufacturing sector, hurt them disproportionately, since they sold their cotton on the world market and could more profitably buy manufactured goods from abroad. Since only a small number of states in the lower South shared the South Carolina viewpoint, there was little prospect of repealing the offending tariff. Believing the tariff to be unconstitutional, South Carolinians articulated a route by which they themselves could declare a law unconstitutional.

Calhoun, but published anonymously. The essay argued that since the federal Constitution was a compact between the states, the states had the ability to declare laws unconstitutional.

If a state did this, Calhoun argued, then the proper course of action was for the federal government to reconsider the law. Under Calhoun's plan, a nullified law would have to be re-approved by a two-thirds vote in Congress and a three-fourths vote in the state legislatures, then the nullifying state would have the option of acquiescing or seceding. The question lay dormant until Congress passed another tariff, this one also protectionist in nature.

Although Calhoun was vice president, he could not prevent Andrew Jackson from signing the bill into law. When the Democratic Party replaced Calhoun with Martin Van Buren as the vice-presidential candidate for the election, Calhoun felt that he had nothing to lose by challenging the law.

Calhoun resigned as vice president, and the South Carolina legislature promptly chose him to be a senator. The legislature also called for the selection of a state constitutional convention. But the election of President Abraham Lincoln in led eleven southern states to secede from the United States because they believed the new president would challenge the institution of slavery. What was initially a conflict to preserve the Union became a conflict to end slavery when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in , freeing all slaves in the rebellious states.

The defeat of the South had a huge impact on the balance of power between the states and the national government in two important ways. First, the Union victory put an end to the right of states to secede and to challenge legitimate national laws. Second, Congress imposed several conditions for readmitting former Confederate states into the Union; among them was ratification of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendment s.

In sum, after the Civil War the power balance shifted toward the national government, a movement that had begun several decades before with McCulloch v.

Maryland and Gibbons v. Odgen The period between and the s demonstrated that the national government sought to establish its role within the newly created federal design, which in turn often provoked the states to resist as they sought to protect their interests.

With the exception of the Civil War, the Supreme Court settled the power struggles between the states and national government. The late s ushered in a new phase in the evolution of U. Under dual federalism , the states and national government exercise exclusive authority in distinctly delineated spheres of jurisdiction.

Like the layers of a cake, the levels of government do not blend with one another but rather are clearly defined. Two factors contributed to the emergence of this conception of federalism. First, several Supreme Court rulings blocked attempts by both state and federal governments to step outside their jurisdictional boundaries. Second, the prevailing economic philosophy at the time loathed government interference in the process of industrial development.

Industrialization changed the socioeconomic landscape of the United States. One of its adverse effects was the concentration of market power. Because there was no national regulatory supervision to ensure fairness in market practices, collusive behavior among powerful firms emerged in several industries. To curtail widespread anticompetitive practices in the railroad industry, Congress passed the Interstate Commerce Act in , which created the Interstate Commerce Commission. In the early stages of industrial capitalism, federal regulations were focused for the most part on promoting market competition rather than on addressing the social dislocations resulting from market operations, something the government began to tackle in the s.

Puck , a humor magazine published from to , satirized political issues of the day such as federal attempts to regulate commerce and prevent monopolies. The new federal regulatory regime was dealt a legal blow early in its existence. In , in United States v. Knight , the Supreme Court ruled that the national government lacked the authority to regulate manufacturing. In the late s, some states attempted to regulate working conditions.

For example, New York State passed the Bakeshop Act in , which prohibited bakery employees from working more than sixty hours in a week. In Lochner v. New York , the Supreme Court ruled this state regulation that capped work hours unconstitutional, on the grounds that it violated the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The federal government also took up the issue of working conditions, but that case resulted in the same outcome as in the Lochner case.

The Great Depression of the s brought economic hardships the nation had never witnessed before. Between and , the national unemployment rate reached 25 percent, industrial output dropped by half, stock market assets lost more than half their value, thousands of banks went out of business, and the gross domestic product shrunk by one-quarter. Given the magnitude of the economic depression, there was pressure on the national government to coordinate a robust national response along with the states.

A line outside a Chicago soup kitchen in , in the midst of the Great Depression. Cooperative federalism was born of necessity and lasted well into the twentieth century as the national and state governments each found it beneficial. Under this model, both levels of government coordinated their actions to solve national problems, such as the Great Depression and the civil rights struggle of the following decades.

In contrast to dual federalism, it erodes the jurisdictional boundaries between the states and national government, leading to a blending of layers as in a marble cake. Roosevelt proposed as a means to tackle the Great Depression ran afoul of the dual-federalism mindset of the justices on the Supreme Court in the s. The court struck down key pillars of the New Deal—the National Industrial Recovery Act and the Agricultural Adjustment Act , for example—on the grounds that the federal government was operating in matters that were within the purview of the states.

Jones and Laughlin Steel , [16] for instance, the Supreme Court ruled the National Labor Relations Act of constitutional, asserting that Congress can use its authority under the commerce clause to regulate both manufacturing activities and labor-management relations. The New Deal changed the relationship Americans had with the national government.

Before the Great Depression , the government offered little in terms of financial aid, social benefits, and economic rights. Medicaid which provides medical assistance to the indigent , Medicare which provides health insurance to the elderly and disabled , and school nutrition programs were created.

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act , the Higher Education Act , and the Head Start preschool program were established to expand educational opportunities and equality. Finally, laws were passed to promote urban renewal, public housing development, and affordable housing.

In addition to these Great Society programs, the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act gave the federal government effective tools to promote civil rights equality across the country.

While the era of cooperative federalism witnessed a broadening of federal powers in concurrent and state policy domains, it is also the era of a deepening coordination between the states and the federal government in Washington. Nowhere is this clearer than with respect to the social welfare and social insurance programs created during the New Deal and Great Society eras, most of which are administered by both state and federal authorities and are jointly funded.

The Social Security Act of , which created federal subsidies for state-administered programs for the elderly; people with handicaps; dependent mothers; and children, gave state and local officials wide discretion over eligibility and benefit levels.

The unemployment insurance program, also created by the Social Security Act, requires states to provide jobless benefits, but it allows them significant latitude to decide the level of tax to impose on businesses in order to fund the program as well as the duration and replacement rate of unemployment benefits.

Thus, the era of cooperative federalism left two lasting attributes on federalism in the United States. First, a nationalization of politics emerged as a result of federal legislative activism aimed at addressing national problems such as marketplace inefficiencies, social and political inequality, and poverty. The nationalization process expanded the size of the federal administrative apparatus and increased the flow of federal grants to state and local authorities, which have helped offset the financial costs of maintaining a host of New Deal- and Great Society—era programs.

The second lasting attribute is the flexibility that states and local authorities were given in the implementation of federal social welfare programs. One consequence of administrative flexibility, however, is that it has led to cross-state differences in the levels of benefits and coverage. New federalism is premised on the idea that the decentralization of policies enhances administrative efficiency, reduces overall public spending, and improves policy outcomes.

In the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of , congressional leaders together with President Reagan consolidated numerous federal grant programs related to social welfare and reformulated them in order to give state and local administrators greater discretion in using federal funds.

Reagan terminated general revenue sharing in For example, in United States v. Lopez , the court struck down the Gun-Free School Zones Act of , which banned gun possession in school zones. The creation of the Department of Homeland Security federalized disaster response power in Washington, and the Transportation Security Administration was created to federalize airport security. Morton Grodzins coined the cake analogy of federalism in the s while conducting research on the evolution of American federalism.

A far more accurate image is the rainbow or marble cake, characterized by an inseparable mingling of differently colored ingredients, the colors appearing in vertical and diagonal strands and unexpected whirls. As colors are mixed in the marble cake, so functions are mixed in the American federal system.

Figure 5. The leading international journal devoted to the practical and theoretical study of federalism is called Publius: The Journal of Federalism. Find out where its name comes from. Federalism in the United States has gone through several phases of evolution during which the relationship between the federal and state governments has varied. In the era of dual federalism, both levels of government stayed within their own jurisdictional spheres.

During the era of cooperative federalism, the federal government became active in policy areas previously handled by the states.