Jackson Nullification In The South

Jackson, as a southerner, should be credited for his intolerance toward nullification in the south. The crisis started off with the Tariff of Abominations, also known as the Tariff of 1828. It was a part of a series of tariffs after the War of 1812. Northern businesses were losing money because of the low prices on imported goods, so the Tariff of 1828 taxed imported goods to help business sales. The southerners were unhappy and believed the tariffs favored north but harmed southerners because they were purchasing imported goods which were now being taxed. On November 24, 1832, South Carolina declared these tariffs unconstitutional and therefore they were not required to enforce them in an Ordinance of Nullification. Southerners thought Jackson …show more content…
Jackson had always believed that white men were superior than those of other races. What was not favorable to Jackson was that Native Americans in the South had gotten stronger and emerged to be potential threats to whites. In addition, gold was discovered in Georgia in 1829, setting of a gold rush in territory inhabited by the Cherokee. The event put pressure on Jackson to somehow get Cherokees out of the land. As Native American tribes started to interfere with white society’s interest, Jackson induced the Congress to pass the Indian Removal Act in which empowered him to lay off new Indian homelands west of the Mississippi. The bill was extremely controversial and fired intense debate in the Congress, led by Theodore Frelinghuysen who at one point gave an 6 hour speech in opposition to Jackson’s bill. Despite the controversy, Jackson was stubborn to maintain white supremacy and eventually passed the bill on a vote of 28 to 19 in the Senate on April 26 and a month later passed in the House of Representatives on an even narrower vote of 102 to 97. The Cherokees in Georgia, the Creeks in Mississippi, Chickasaws in Alabama, and the Seminoles in Florida were all affected by the act. The Second Seminole War broke out in 1835, and it lasted for 7 years and resulted in the forced removal of only 3,000 Seminoles. Cherokees did not submit and tried to fight for themselves. In Cherokee Nation v. Georgia in 1831 and more forcefully in Worcester v. Georgia the next year, the Supreme Court upheld the tribe 's ' independence from state authority. However, with Jackson’s support, the state of Georgia ignored the Supreme Court rulings. Finally in 1838 the tribe was forcefully removed by military force, under Van Buren. President Van Buren appointed General Winfield Scott to let 7,000 troops to forcibly remove the Cherokees. The journey was