post war of 1812 disunity
...n the rights of the states. Andrew Jackson was a member of the group which thought that it was the individual state’s job to promote trade, and that for the central government to get involved was unconstitutional. Before the election of 1828 Adams’ Vice President, John Calhoun, became one of the major leaders of Jackson’s renewed movement toward states’ rights.2 The new political party brought about by this controversy, known as Democratic Republicans, were characterized by typically southern views and support for increasing the power of the individual states. Supporters for a stronger national government and large scale federal government involvement in economics, such as Henry Clay and President Adams, became known as National Republicans and later the Whigs.3 These two opposing forces formed what we call today the second American party system. These antagonistic groups demonstrated the large degree of controversy which existed over the appropriate rights and control to be given to the central government, and this controversy raged on in to the succeeding decades. The tariffs of the mid-1820’s not only furthered the rift between North and South, but also advanced the theory of nullification and enflamed the argument for the sovereignty of the individual states. The theory of nullification was a primarily southern principle which declared that a state had the right to deem any federal law as unconstitutional and therefore null and void.4 The Tariff Act of 1824 created high import taxes, often up to 50%, on all overseas goods in order to protect New England’s economy.5 These tariffs were critically received in the south, especially in South Carolina which had been hit particularly hard by the Panic of 1819. When the tariffs were raised still higher in 1828 with the “Tariff of Abominations,” South Carolina issued the South Carolina Doctrine which attempted to exercise the Theory of Nullification and claimed that the state had the right to declare the tariffs as unconstitutional.6 US Vice President John C. Calhoun was the secret author of the nullification theory. The Union, he argued, was a league between sovereign States, with each state having the right to determine when congress had exceeded its rights.7 Many Senators proposed the use of force against South Carolina, but President Andrew Jackson, a strong believer in the power of the states, agreed to the compromise tariff bill of 1833 which lowered tariffs. South Carolina then repealed the ordinance nullifying the tariff acts, and a large scale confrontation was averted.8 The theory of nullification was the forerunner of the doctrine of secession which lead to the Civil War.9 The nullification crisis illustrated the extreme differences in viewpoints which typified the era after the War of 1812. The Missouri Compromise and the surrounding slave controversy presented the most grave danger to the unity of our nation in the early 19th century. By 1818, the Missouri Territory had gained sufficient population to warrant its admission into the Union as a state. Settlers had come largely from the South, and expectations were that Missouri would enter as a slave state.10 James Tallmadge of New York proposed an amendment that forbade the importation of slaves into Missouri and would bring about the ultimate emancipation of a...