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What did Andrew Jackson say about nullification in his Proclamation to the People of South Carolina?

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Jackson's “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina” — Nullification Crisis U.S. Pres. Andrew Jackson issued his “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina” on December 10, 1832, in response to South Carolina's refusal to be bound by federal tariffs. In it Jackson asserted the supremacy of the federal government and rejected South Carolina's argument that it, as a state, had the right to reject laws made by the federal government that it deemed unconstitutional. Jackson's proclamation was an escalation of the Nullification Crisis, and some argue that it helped lay the foundation for the American Civil War.

In his December 10, 1832, Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, President Andrew Jackson denounced the doctrine of nullification as being "incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution".1

Jackson asserted the supremacy of the federal government and warned that "disunion by armed force is treason". In his rebuttal to the arguments posed by John C. Calhoun and the South Carolina nullifiers, Jackson argued that the state's position was based on the "strange" notion that a single state could prohibit the execution of federal law while remaining in the Union. He further contended that granting a state the right to decide which laws are constitutional effectively grants it the power to resist all federal laws.2