Page 270 - American Stories, A History of the United States

Jackson reacted with characteristic decisiveness. He alerted the secretary of war to
prepare for military action, denounced nullification as treasonous, and asked Congress 10.1
for authority to use the army to enforce the tariff. He also sought to pacify the nullifiers by
recommending a lower tariff. Congress responded by enacting the Force Bill—which gave
the president the military powers he sought—and the compromise tariff of 1833. The lat- 10.2
ter was primarily the work of Jackson’s enemy Henry Clay, but the president signed it any-
way. Faced with Jackson’s intention to use force and appeased by the lower tariff, South
Carolina suspended the nullification ordinance in January 1833 and rescinded it in March, 10.3
after the new tariff had been enacted. To demonstrate that they had not conceded their
constitutional position, however, the convention delegates also nullified the Force Bill.
The nullification crisis revealed that South Carolinians would not tolerate federal 10.4
acts that seemed contrary to their interests or interfered with slavery. The nullifiers’ phi-
losophy implied the right of secession and the right to declare laws of Congress null and
void. As events would show, a fear of northern meddling with slavery was the main spur
to the growth of a militant doctrine of state sovereignty in the South. At the time of the
nullification crisis, the other slave states were less anxious about the future of the “peculiar
institution” and did not embrace South Carolina’s radical conception of state sovereignty.
Jackson was himself a southerner, a slaveholder, and in general, a proslavery president.
But the Unionist doctrines that Jackson propounded in his proclamation against
nullification alarmed farsighted southern loyalists. More strongly than any previous Quick Check
president, Jackson had asserted that the federal government was supreme over the What was nullification, and why did
states and that the Union was indivisible. He had also justified using force against it emerge in the South? How did
states that denied federal authority. Jackson respond to that crisis?

The Bank War and the
Second-Party System

10.3 What were the arguments for and against the Bank of the United States?
J ackson’s most controversial use of executive power was his successful attack on

the Bank of the United States. After it failed to recharter the original Bank of the
United States in 1811, Congress chartered a second Bank of the United States
in 1816, which became the object of Jackson’s antagonism. The Bank War Bank War Between 1832 and
revealed some of the deepest concerns of Jackson and his supporters and expressed 1836, Andrew Jackson used his
their concept of democracy. It also aroused intense opposition, which crystallized in presidential power to fight and
a new national party—the Whigs. The destruction of the Bank and the ensuing eco- ultimately destroy the second Bank
of the United States.
nomic disruption highlighted the issue of the government’s relationship to the nation’s
financial system. Differences on this question strengthened the new two-party system.

The Bank veto and the election of 1832

Jackson had strong reservations about banking and paper money in general—in part
because of his own brushes with bankruptcy after accepting promissory notes that
depreciated in value. He also harbored suspicions that branches of the Bank of the
United States had illicitly supported Adams in 1828. In 1829 and 1830, Jackson called
on Congress to curb the Bank’s power.
Nicholas Biddle, the president of the Bank, began to worry about its charter, which
was to come up for renewal in 1836. Jackson was also listening to his “Kitchen Cabinet,”
especially Amos Kendall and Francis P. Blair, who thought an attack on the Bank would be
a good party issue for the election of 1832. Biddle then made a fateful blunder. He sought
recharter by Congress in 1832, four years ahead of schedule. Senator Henry Clay, leader of
the anti-administration forces on Capitol Hill, encouraged this move because he was con-
vinced that Jackson had chosen the unpopular side of the issue and that a congressional
237