Nullifier party
The Nullifier Party was an American party in the 1830s that was particularly strong in South Carolina .
John C. Calhoun had established the Nullification Doctrine in 1828 , according to which the states of the United States had the right not to implement federal laws that they believed to be incompatible with the United States Constitution . This is based on the assumption that the federal states that would have voluntarily united to form the union should have the last word in the interpretation of the constitution and ultimately also have the right to leave the union again.
Calhoun was Secretary of War under President James Monroe , then Vice President under Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson . In 1832 he resigned as Vice President during the nullification crisis to take over the Senate seat from Robert Y. Hayne , since the Vice President presides over the Senate but has no right to speak.
From 1828 to 1836 (terms from December to December), the governors of South Carolina were nullifiers or politicians close to them. Stephen D. Miller was in office from 1828 to 1830 and was elected the first Nullifier to the Senate in 1831. From 1830 to 1832 James Hamilton was the governor who built the States' Rights and Free Trade Party , which pursued goals similar to those of the Nullifier. He was succeeded from 1832 to 1834 by Robert Y. Hayne, whose successor from 1834 to 1836 by George McDuffie , who had represented South Carolina in the House of Representatives since 1821 and later became a Senator.
In the Senate, William C. Preston had been elected in 1833 to succeed Stephen D. Miller, who had resigned on health grounds. In addition to the two Senate seats in South Carolina, the party was represented in Congress with up to nine seats in the House of Representatives. MPs for the party were George McDuffie (1821–34), Warren R. Davis (1827–35), Robert Woodward Barnwell (1829–33), John Campbell (1829–31 and 1837–43), Dixon Hall Lewis (Alabama, 1829) –44), John Myers Felder (1831–35), John K. Griffin (1831–41), William K. Clowney (1833–35 and 1837–39), William J. Grayson (1833–37), Henry L. Pinckney (1833-37), Thomas D. Singleton (1833), Robert B. Campbell (1834-37), Francis Wilkinson Pickens (1834-43), James H. Hammond (1835-36) and Franklin H. Elmore (1836 -39).
Except for Lewis, all MPs were elected in South Carolina, which then had nine representatives. In the 22nd Congress (1831–33) there were four nullifiers in the House of Representatives, in the 23rd Congress (1833–35) nine, in the 24th Congress (1835–37) seven, in the 25th Congress (1837–39) four. Lewis and Elmore had joined the Democrats in the 25th Congress .
John Floyd , Governor of Virginia 1830–34 , was a member of the Democratic Party, but received all of South Carolina's electoral votes in the 1832 presidential election . At the time, South Carolina was the last state to elect its electorate not by a general election but by the state's parliament.
In the presidential election in 1836 , the party had already disintegrated and therefore did not put up a candidate of its own. Calhoun supported the Whig candidate Hugh L. White , who could only get the electors from Georgia and Tennessee behind him. The South Carolina Parliament gave its electoral votes to Willie P. Mangum , also a Whig candidate who, however, could not win any other state.
After President Jackson's tenure ended, the party fell apart. Most of their supporters later became Democrats, with Preston joining the Whig Party.
Individual evidence
- ^ University of Virginia: John C. Calhoun - Timeline, quotes, & contemporaries at the University of Virginia , accessed October 30, 2019