American History Chapter 9 Notes

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- South attack Tariff of 1828

- Feared black rebellion (African Americans = 56% SC population)

- Fear abolition of slavery

- British Parliament ended slavery in West Indian Colonies (1833)

- Northern efforts in Missouri to end slavery

- South Carolina’s Ordinance of Nullification (1832)

- Threatened secession if “null and void” Tariffs of Abomination were collected after Feb 1, 1833

- Act of nullification – argument that a state has the right to void, within its borders, a law passed by Congress

- Vice President Calhoun’s arguments in The South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828)

- Each state has own interests so protective tariffs and national legislation is unconstitutional and unequal for different states

- Like Jefferson/Madison’s Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798 – sovereignty lay in the states, not the people

- States’ rights – state convention can declare a congressional law to be void within the state’s borders (state sovereignty over national gov’t authority)

- Senator Daniel Webster of MA nationalist view – protect “general welfare”

- Jacksons middle path (assist South economically + uphold national authority)

- Called Ordinance of Nullification violation of Constitution that allowed federal gov’t to pass tariffs

- Requested Congress to pass military Force Bill – force SC to obey national law

- Reduced tariff rates to modest levels of 1816

- Western wheat farmers want to export so favor lower tariffs to avoid foreign countries having lower tariffs

The Bank War

- Second Bank of the United States – Founded in Philadelphia 1816

- Privately managed under 20 year charter from federal gov’t that owned 20% of its stock

- Arrogant Bank president Nicholas Biddle

- Stabilized nation’s money supply

- Gave specie (gold/silver coins minted by US/foreign gov’ts) in exchange for nation’s paper money (from state-chartered banks

- Americans fear it will close weak banks

- Do not want to hold onto worthless paper notes

Jackson’s Bank Veto

- Jackson vetoes Clay and Webster’s rechartering bill (extend charter of Second Bank of the US)

- Congress has no constitutional authority to charter a national bank

- “Promoted the advancement of the few at the expense of… farmers, mechanics, and laborers”

- Institution should be “purely American” - British aristocrats owned much of bank’s stock

- Jackson’s attack on the bank = presidential victory (1832)

- Supported by eastern workers and western farmers – blamed Second Bank for high urban prices/slow farm income

- Supported by middle class lawyers, clerks, shopkeepers, artisans – prospered during decade of economic growth

The Bank Destroyed

- Jackson appoints Roger B. Taney as head of the Treasury Department (1833)

- Taney transfers specie from Second bank to state banks (“pet banks”)

- “Bank war” - Jackson uses reelection to justify mandate to destroy bank (independent from Congress)

- Clay and Senate opponents’ censure of executive tyranny – “…total change of the pure republican character of the Government and the concentration of all power in the hands of one man”

- Jackson prevents renewal of Second Bank’s national charter (1836)

- Jackson destroyed national banking (Hamilton) and American System of protective tariffs/public words (Clay and Adams)

Indian Removal

- South and Midwest whites demanded resettlement of Indians west of MS R.

- Indians don’t want to move west/leave ancestral lands

- Cherokees and Creeks in TN, GA, AL

- Chickasaws and Choctaws in MS and AL

- Seminoles in FL

- War of 1812 – Creeks give up millions of acres to Jackson but wanna control vast tracts they still had

Cherokee Resistance

- Mixed-race Cherokee (white fathers, Indian mothers) = indistinguishable from southern planters

- Owned 33 gristmills, 13 sawmills, 2400 spinning wheels, 760 looms, 2900 plows (1825)

- Georgia Cherokee James Vann (1809) – owned 100 black slaves, 2 trading posts, and gristmill

- 40 mixed-blood Cherokee families (1839) – own 10+ African American workers

- Integrated into American life to protect property and ancestral lands

- Sequoyah (1821) – part-Cherokee silversmith creates system of writing for Cherokee language

- New charter of Cherokee gov’t modeled on U.S. constitution (1826)

- Full-blood Cherokees (90% of the population) – “We would not receive money for land in which our fathers and friends are buried”

- Georgia gives up western land claims in exchange for federal gov’t extinguishing Indian landholdings (1802)

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