Faced with a reduced market for goods and pressured by British abolitionists, the British reduced their imports of cotton from the United States, which weakened the southern economy even more. The tariff forced the South to buy manufactured goods from U.S. manufacturers, mainly in the North, at a higher price, while southern states also faced a reduced income from sales of raw materials.Despite the sufferings of the South, the US experienced net economic growth with US GDP increasing from $888 million in 1828 to $1.118 billion by 1832 largely due to growth of the Northern manufacturing base.
Vice-President John C. Calhoun strongly opposed the tariff, anonymously authoring a pamphlet in December 1828 titled: The South Carolina Exposition and Protest in which he urged nullification of the tariff within South Carolina. The South Carolina legislature, although it printed and distributed 5,000 copies of the pamphlet, took none of the legislative action that the pamphlet urged.
The expectation of the tariff’s opponents was that with the election of Jackson in 1828, the tariff would be significantly reduced.When the Jackson administration failed to address its concerns, the most radical faction in South Carolina began to advocate that the state itself declare the tariff null and void within South Carolina.
In Washington, an open split on the issue occurred between Jackson and Vice-President Calhoun.On July 14, 1832, Jackson signed into law the Tariff of 1832 which made some reductions in tariff rates. Calhoun resigned on December 28 of the same year.
The reductions were too little for South Carolina. In November 1832 the state called for a convention. By a vote of 136 to 26, the convention overwhelmingly adopted an ordinance of nullification drawn by Chancellor William Harper. It declared that the tariffs of both 1828 and 1832 were unconstitutional and unenforceable in South Carolina. While the Nullification Crisis would be resolved with a compromise known as the Tariff of 1833, tariff policy would continue to be a national political issue between the Democratic Party and the newly emerged Whig Party for the next twenty years.
