Toward the end of his first term in office, Jackson was forced to confront the state of South Carolina, the most important of the emerging Deep South cotton states, on the issue of the protective tariff. Business and farming interests in the state had hoped that the president would use his power to modify the 1828 act that they called the Tariff of Abominations. In their view, all its benefits of protection went to Northern manufacturers, leaving agricultural South Carolina poorer. In 1828, the state's leading politician -- and Jackson's vice president until his resignation in 1832 -- John C. Calhoun had declared in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest that states had the right to nullify oppressive national legislation.

Additional Tags

american history: nullification crisis, force act, nullification crisis, tariff of abominations

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• Knovation Readability Score: 5 (1 low difficulty, 5 high difficulty)

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