Editing Nullification crisis (section)

==Aftermath==
People reflected on the meaning of the nullification crisis and its outcome for the country. On May 1, 1833, Jackson predicted, "the tariff was only a pretext, and [[Secession in the United States|disunion]] and [[Confederate States of America|Southern confederacy]] the real object. The next pretext will be the negro, or [[History of slavery in the United States|slavery]] question."<ref>[[Jon Meacham]] (2009), ''[[American Lion (book)|American Lion: Andrew Jackson in the White House]]'', New York: Random House, p. 247; ''Correspondence of Andrew Jackson'', Vol. V, p. 72.</ref>

The final resolution of the crisis and Jackson's leadership had appeal throughout the North and South. [[Robert V. Remini]], the historian and Jackson biographer, described the opposition that nullification drew from traditionally states' rights Southern states:

{{quote|The Alabama legislature, for example, pronounced the doctrine "unsound in theory and dangerous in practice." Georgia said it was "mischievous", "rash and revolutionary". Mississippi lawmakers chided the South Carolinians for acting with "reckless precipitancy".<ref>Remini, Andrew Jackson, v3. p. 42.</ref>}}

The historian [[Forrest McDonald]], describing the split over nullification among proponents of states' rights, wrote, "The doctrine of states' rights, as embraced by most Americans, was not concerned exclusively, or even primarily, with state resistance to federal authority."<ref>McDonald, p. 110.</ref> But by the end of the nullification crisis, many Southerners questioned whether Jacksonian Democrats still represented Southern interests. The historian [[William J. Cooper Jr.]] notes, "Numerous Southerners had begun to perceive it [the Jacksonian Democratic Party] as a spear aimed at the South rather than a shield defending the South."<ref name="Cooper pp. 53–65">Cooper, pp. 53–65.</ref>

In the political vacuum created by this alienation, the Southern wing of the [[Whig Party (United States)|Whig Party]] was formed. The party was a coalition of interests united by the common thread of opposition to Jackson, and more specifically to his "definition of [[Federal power|federal]] and executive power." The party included former National Republicans with an "urban, commercial, and nationalist outlook", as well as former nullifiers. Emphasizing that "they were more southern than the Democrats," the party grew within the South by going "after the abolition issue with unabashed vigor and glee." With both parties arguing who could best defend Southern institutions, the nuances of the differences between [[free soil]] and [[Abolitionism in the United States|abolitionism]], which became an issue in the late 1840s with the [[Mexican–American War|Mexican War]] and territorial expansion, never became part of the political dialogue. This failure increased the slavery issue's volatility.<ref name="Cooper pp. 53–65"/>

Richard Ellis argues that the end of the crisis signified the beginning of a new era. Within the states' rights movement, the traditional desire for "a weak, inactive, and frugal government" was challenged. Ellis writes, "in the years leading up to the Civil War the nullifiers and their proslavery allies used the doctrine of states' rights and state sovereignty in such a way as to try to expand the powers of the federal government so that it could more effectively protect the peculiar institution." By the 1850s, states' rights had become a call for state equality under the Constitution.<ref>Ellis, p. 198.</ref>

Madison reacted to this incipient tendency by writing two paragraphs of "Advice to My Country", found among his papers. It said that the Union "should be cherished and perpetuated. Let the open enemy to it be regarded as a Pandora with her [[Pandora's box|box]] opened; and the disguised one, as the Serpent creeping with his deadly wiles into paradise." [[Richard Rush]] published this "Advice" in 1850, by which time Southern spirit was so high that it was denounced as a forgery.<ref>Brant p. 646; Rush produced a copy in Mrs. Madison's hand; the original also survives. The contemporary letter to [[Edward Coles]] (Brant, p. 639) makes plain that the enemy in question is the nullifier.</ref>

The first test for the South over slavery began during the final congressional session of 1835. In what became known as the [[Gag Rule]] Debates, abolitionists flooded Congress with petitions to end [[slavery in the District of Columbia]], where states' rights was not an issue. The debate was reopened each session as Southerners, led by South Carolinians Henry Pinckney and John Hammond, prevented the petitions from even being officially received by Congress. Led by John Quincy Adams, the slavery debate remained on the national stage until late 1844, when Congress lifted all restrictions on processing the petitions.<ref>Freehling, ''Prelude to Civil War'', pp. 346–356. McDonald (pp. 121–122) saw states' rights in the period from 1833–1847 as almost totally successful in creating a "virtually nonfunctional" federal government. This did not insure political harmony, as "the national political arena became the center of heated controversy concerning the newly raised issue of slavery, a controversy that reached the flash point during the debates about the annexation of the Republic of Texas."</ref>

Describing the legacy of the crisis, Sean Wilentz writes:

{{quote|The battle between Jacksonian democratic nationalists, northern and southern, and nullifier sectionalists would resound through the politics of slavery and antislavery for decades to come. Jackson's victory, ironically, would help accelerate the emergence of southern pro-slavery as a coherent and articulate political force, which would help solidify northern antislavery opinion, inside as well as outside Jackson's party. Those developments would accelerate the emergence of two fundamentally incompatible democracies, one in the slave South, the other in the free North.<ref name="Wilentz pg. 388">Wilentz, p. 388.</ref>}}

For South Carolina, the legacy of the crisis involved both the divisions within the state during the crisis and the apparent isolation of the state as the crisis was resolved. By 1860, when it became the first state to secede, it was more internally united than any other Southern state. Historian Charles Edward Cauthen writes:

{{quote|Probably to a greater extent than in any other Southern state South Carolina had been prepared by her leaders over a period of thirty years for the issues of 1860. Indoctrination in the principles of state sovereignty, education in the necessity of maintaining Southern institutions, warnings of the dangers of control of the federal government by a section hostile to its interests—in a word, the education of the masses in the principles and necessity of secession under certain circumstances—had been carried on with a skill and success hardly inferior to the masterly propaganda of the abolitionists themselves. It was this education, this propaganda, by South Carolina leaders which made secession the almost spontaneous movement that it was.<ref>Cauthen, p. 32.</ref>}}