Andrew Jackson: The Nullification Crisis

Register to read the introduction… Many of the decisions that Jackson made were based strongly on his different background. We see this in his strong opposition to the national bank and also see how his personal life intermingled itself in this affair. Nicholas Biddle, the wellborn president of the national bank, was everything that Jackson was not and therefore was a strong enemy to Jackson. Due to this, Jackson made it a goal of his presidency to close the national bank. Andrew also felt this system benefited the northern industry more than the southern farmers. Jackson began to do this by starving the bank by moving millions of dollars from the bank to the individual state banks. When Henry Clay accelerated the deadline of the bank’s charter’s renewal, Jackson vetoed it. The effects of this were widespread; America later fell into a depression that lasted six years. Much of this was rooted in that banks lost trust without gold backing in the currency. Jackson attempted to fix the problem by passing the Specie Circular, requiring land purchasers to pay in gold coins or specie. But due to the general lack of gold, many banks were forced to close and thus brought America deeper into depression. Many people lost their money and trade slowed tremendously without the exchange vector the National Bank had served. Andrew Jackson had done this mainly to benefit the southern farmers who couldn’t get loans for land, but ended up hurting the entire economy as well as the rest of the nation, creating problems for many presidents to come. The majority of the north hated Jackson for these reasons. Jackson also passed a tariff or a tax on exports. Southern farmers were aghast at this, as it would make it much harder to sell their goods and would also lower their profit margin, which already was extremely small. Jackson had intended to increase manufacturing and the