Editing Concurrent majority (section)

==Calhoun and nullification==
During the first half of the 19th century, [[John C. Calhoun]] of [[South Carolina]] revived and expounded upon the concurrent majority doctrine.  He noted that the [[Northern United States|North]], with its industrial economy, had become far more populous than the [[Southern United States|South]]. As the South's dependence on slavery sharply differentiated its agricultural economy from the North's, the difference in power afforded by population threatened interests that Calhoun considered essential to the South.

His theory of the "concurrent majority," elaborated in his posthumous work of political theory ''[[A Disquisition on Government]]'' (1851),<ref>{{Cite web|title = John C. Calhoun: Disquisition on Government|url = http://www.constitution.org/jcc/disq_gov.htm|access-date = 2015-09-27}}</ref> argued a method for protecting voting minorities from the tyranny of the majority. In life, Calhoun had been a leading proponent of the concept of [[nullification (U.S. Constitution)|nullification]], as he most forcefully articulated in the 1828 ''[[South Carolina Exposition and Protest]]'', which was published anonymously while he was vice president, in response to the protectionist [[Tariff of 1828]], also called the "Tariff of Abominations."

Nullification, an outgrowth of Jeffersonian [[compact theory]], held that any state, as part of its rights as sovereign parties to the Constitution, had the power to declare specific federal laws void within its borders if it considered the law to be unconstitutional. Therefore, under Calhoun's schema, a law required two forms of majorities: a majority of the federal legislature and a concurrent majority of the legislatures of each state. It was on that authority in 1832 that South Carolina passed the [[Ordinance of Nullification]] on the Tariff of 1828 and its successor, the [[Tariff of 1832]], thus beginning the [[Nullification Crisis]]. [[Andrew Jackson]] responded with the [[Force Bill]], but armed conflict was avoided after the [[Tariff of 1833]] was passed, the compromise being largely the work of Calhoun.