ANTI-FEDERALISM, NULLIFICATION and SECESSION

In politics, Anti-Federalism is a term referring to those who believe that a central or federal government should have less power than state government.

Nullification is the branding of a specific law or act of Congress contrary to the needs and desires of the state government and the people of that state. The Boston Tea Party was a strong act of nullification of Britain’s taxation policies by some of the residents of Massachusetts.

Secession of the 13 colonies followed when many such despicable acts of the British crown forced the colonists to realize there would and could be no co-existence with Britain. The colonies felt they and they alone should have the right to determine their course in the world as free and independent, sovereign nations. The basic reason for the formation of a union of nation states was mutual defense.

The Federalists (liberals?) of colonial times favored the creation of a strong federal government that would more closely unite the states as one large, continental nation. They tended to come from the wealthier class of elite merchants and plantation owners. Federalists had been instrumental in the creation of the Constitution, arguing that it was a necessary improvement on the Articles of Confederation, the country's first attempt at unifying the states in a national political arrangement. Leaders among the Federalists included two men who helped develop the Constitution; James Madison and Alexander Hamilton, and two national heroes whose support would greatly improve the Federalists' prospects for winning, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin.

Anti-Federalists (conservatives?), on the other hand, were members of a loosely structured movement that opposed the creation of a stronger U.S. federal government and which later opposed the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. The previous constitution, called the Articles of Confederation, gave state governments more authority. Led by Patrick Henry of Virginia, Anti-Federalists worried, among other things, that the position of president, then a novelty, might evolve into a monarchy.

Passage of the Constitution by the states was by no means certain in 1787. The Anti-Federalists included primarily farmers and tradesmen and were less likely to be a part of the wealthy elite than were members of their opposition, the Federalists. The Anti-Federalists believed that each state should have a sovereign, independent government. Their leaders included some of the most influential figures in the nation, including Patrick Henry and George Mason, leading national figures during the Revolutionary War period.

Between September 17, 1787, the day the Constitution was signed by the Constitutional Convention, and May 29, 1790, the day Rhode Island became the thirteenth and last state to ratify the Constitution, the Federalists and Anti-Federalists engaged in a fierce national debate on the merits of the Constitution. This debate occurred in meeting halls, on streets, and on the printed page. Both sides in the argument had a considerable following. Many of the questions raised remain with us today: What is the best form of government? What rights must the government protect? Which governmental powers should be granted to the states, and which to the federal government?

In making their arguments, the Anti-Federalists often relied on the rhetoric of the Revolutionary War era, which stressed the virtues of local rule and associated centralized power with a tyrannical monarch. Thus, the Anti-Federalists frequently claimed that the Constitution represented a step away from the democratic goals of the American Revolution and toward the twin evils of monarchy and aristocracy. The Anti-Federalists feared that the Constitution gave the president too much power and that the proposed Congress would be too aristocratic in nature, with too few representatives for too many people.

The Anti-Federalists also shared the feeling that so large a country as the United States could not possibly be controlled by one national government. One Pennsylvania Anti-Federalist, who signed his articles "Centinel," declared,

“It is the opinion of the greatest writers, that a very extensive country cannot be governed on democratical principles, on any other plan than a confederation of a number of small republics, possessing all the powers of internal government, but united in the management of their foreign and general concerns… Anything short of despotism could not bind so great a country under one government.”

Although the Anti-Federalists were united in their opposition to the Constitution, they did not agree on what form of government made the best alternative to it. Some still believed that the Articles of Confederation could be amended in such a way that they would provide a workable confederation. Some wanted the Union to break up and re-form into three or four different confederacies. Others were even ready to accept the Constitution if it were amended in such a way that the rights of citizens and states would be more fully protected.

The Federalist vs. Anti-Federalist arguments continue to this day - over different issues, of course. The “Federalists,” for example, want the federal government to take over health care. The “Anti-federalists” believe health care is best left to individuals and their insurance companies. At worst, the Anti-Federalists believe the individual states are better equipped to handle the issue than a central government too far removed from the problems facing individuals.

Today’s Federalists probably jump for joy every time Obama appoints a “czar” to a government post. Anti-Federalists see such things as czars just one more reason to secede from the union - just one more example of a federal government gone amok.

Today’s Federalists don’t seem to be bothered by run-away federal tax and spend policies. Anti-Federalists are seeing red - red from anger and red from the color of budgetary ink.

Federalists favor strict gun controls and want all guns registered. Even better, from a Federalist viewpoint, is for private ownership of guns abolished and seized by the federal government. Anti-Federalists scream in bloody rage because they believe the 2^nd Amendment is inviolate and is the only thing protecting them from a complete federal takeover.

Whether it be nullification, such as Montana’s stand against gun laws, or secession, as Texas has already threatened, most Americans agree that something has to be done.

　

Read more: Constitution of the United States - Federalists Versus Anti-federalists - Government, Madison, National, Papers, Country, and Rights http://law.jrank.org/pages/5603/Constitution-United-States-FEDERALISTS-VERSUS-ANTI-FEDERALISTS.html#ixzz0xyL4WXJy


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NULLIFICATION - Events Leading to Civil War

Toward the end of his first term in office, President Jackson was forced to confront the state of South Carolina on the issue of the protective tariff. Business and farming interests in the state had hoped that Jackson would use his presidential power to modify tariff laws they had long opposed. In their view, all the benefits of protection were going to Northern manufacturers, and while the country as a whole grew richer, South Carolina grew poorer, with its planters bearing the burden of higher prices.

The protective tariff passed by Congress and signed into law by Jackson in 1832 was milder than that of 1828, but it further embittered many in the state. In response, a number of South Carolina citizens endorsed the states' rights principle of "nullification," which was enunciated by John C. Calhoun, Jackson's vice president until 1832, in his South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828). South Carolina dealt with the tariff by adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within state borders. The legislature also passed laws to enforce the ordinance, including authorization for raising a military force and appropriations for arms.

Nullification was only the most recent in a series of state challenges to the authority of the federal government. There had been a continuing contest between the states and the national government over the power of the latter, and over the loyalty of the citizenry, almost since the founding of the republic. The Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, for example, had defied the Alien and Sedition Acts, and in the Hartford Convention, New England voiced its opposition to President Madison and the war against the British.

In response to South Carolina's threat, Jackson sent seven small naval vessels and a man-of-war to Charleston in November 1832. On December 10, he issued a resounding proclamation against the nullifiers. South Carolina, the president declared, stood on "the brink of insurrection and treason," and he appealed to the people of the state to reassert their allegiance to that Union for which their ancestors had fought.

When the question of tariff duties again came before Congress, it soon became clear that only one man, Senator Henry Clay, the great advocate of protection (and a political rival of Jackson), could pilot a compromise measure through Congress. Clay's tariff bill -- quickly passed in 1833 -- specified that all duties in excess of 20 percent of the value of the goods imported were to be reduced by easy stages, so that by 1842, the duties on all articles would reach the level of the moderate tariff of 1816.

Nullification leaders in South Carolina had expected the support of other Southern states, but without exception, the rest of the South declared South Carolina's course unwise and unconstitutional. Eventually, South Carolina rescinded its action. Both sides, nevertheless, claimed victory. Jackson had committed the federal government to the principle of Union supremacy. But South Carolina, by its show of resistance, had obtained many of the demands it sought, and had demonstrated that a single state could force its will on Congress.

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WHAT IS NULLIFICATION?

Nullification is a constitutional theory that gives an individual state the right to declare null and void any law passed by the United States Congress which the state deems unacceptable and unconstitutional.

The concept is most well-known in the context of the sectionalist crisis that plagued the Union in the 40 years preceding the Civil War.

The origins of nullification are found in the Federalist-Republican debate of the late 1700s. James Madison and Thomas Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions (1798) declared that the states had the right to nullify laws by which the federal government overstepped its limits of jurisprudence. When the Republicans gained the presidency in the "revolution of 1800," nullification became moot.

The "tariff of abominations" of 1828 revived the issue. By this time in the United States, the North had become economically dominant due to manufacturing, and the South was beginning to suffer from exhausted land. The government enacted tariffs on foreign manufactures to protect Northern business, which raised the price of goods to be sold throughout the US. South Carolinians in particular were upset by their inability to afford these goods which the South could not produce. South Carolina threatened to secede from the Union.

John Calhoun, then Vice-President in the Jackson administration, promoted nullification as a moderate alternative to secession. A state would be able to nullify a federal law and exist as part of the Union unless three-fourths of the states passed the law as a constitutional amendment. In that case, the state would secede from the Union. Calhoun's theory of "concurrent majority" essentially gave each regional interest an absolute veto.

Calhoun wanted to preserve the Union and intended to use the threat of nullification simply to force the federal government to reduce tariff rates, but the 1830 Webster-Hayne debate in Congress divided the nation over nullification. A North versus West controversy about public lands in the frontier turned into a Southern and Western ideological struggle against Northeastern "tyranny."

President Jackson considered nullification to be treasonous. Jackson stated his view with the following toast at a Democratic Party banquet: "Our Federal Union-it must be preserved." John Calhoun responded: "The Union-next to our liberty most dear." Calhoun would resign as Vice-President and accept a Congressional seat from South Carolina.

In 1833, Congress passed a "force bill" which authorized Jackson to use violence to preserve the Union. A compromise on the tariff issue offered by Senator Henry Clay was passed in 1842, which gradually reduced rates to the 1816 level. Thirty years later in the Civil War (1861-1865), after the secession crisis was heightened by the slavery issue, violence would finally settle the matter of nullification.

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