Tag Archives: Tariffs of Abomination

Andrew JacksonCare – Brute force over asking the Supreme Court

Hi readers.

Probably a good case can be made for Andrew Jackson being the lousiest president the US ever suffered. It might even be said his decision to use brute force against South Carolina in 1837, instead of asking the Supreme Court whether a State is allowed to nullify its agreement to be part of the Union, was the cause of the Civil War.

Certainly President Thomas Jefferson believed States had the right to secede. President James Madison waffled some on the subject, but might also have believed it. Daniel Webster still believed it in 1890.

The reason the answer wasn’t obvious was in the document preceding the US Constitution, the Articles of Confederation. Those 13 entities agreed to a permanent union. But the Articles of Confederation were nullified by the new US Constitution. And the new Constitution didn’t say a damned word about it being permanent.

So when the Tariffs of Abomination were passed by a majority of states, putting several into one hell of a pinch, South Carolina first protested, screamed, begged, stamped its feet, and finally declared itself no longer part of the Union.

That would have been a good time to settle the question. President Andrew Jackson could have asked the US Supreme Court to decide whether a State had the right to withdraw. But Andrew Jackson didn’t give a tinkers damn what was legal nor what was Constitutional. Andrew Jackson was a point-of-the-gun man, proved it when he moved the tribes across the continent at the point of a gun after agreeing they’d be okay if they’d put down their guns.

So President Andrew Jackson, instead of asking the Courts whether South Carolina had to stay in the Union, asked the same states who’d passed the Tariffs of Abomination whether they’d pay to send 100,000 troops to South Carolina to keep them quiet and hungry.

Andrew JacksonCare. Soon to be followed by Abraham LincolnCare.

Or, “How to get your face onto a piece of US currency“.

Old Jules