Why did South Carolina threatens to secede from the union in 1832?

Answer 1

So, president Jackson asked Congress to lower the tariff.It did so in 1832. But Southerners still thought the tariff was too high. South Carolina nullified the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832.

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Answer 2

In 1832, South Carolina threatened to secede over the issue of tariffs. A tariff is a special kind of tax on trade goods from one country to another.

In 1828, a tariff was passed that was meant to help boost industry in the North because factories there were having difficulty competing with cheaper goods being made in places like Great Britain. So the federal government raised taxes on those foreign goods, thereby making them more expensive, and causing foreign countries to send less products. The problem is that the South relied on trade with Britain to sell their cotton; the British, with their goods being cut back due to the tariff, subsequently chose to cut back on buying Southern cotton.

Southerners hated this "Tariff of Abominations", voted against it, and protested it after it went into effect. The tariff caused an economic downturn in the South. So in 1832, Southerns expected that President Andrew Jackson would get rid of it and come up with a new one that was more favorable, because Jackson himself was a Southerner- but he didn't. The new 1832 tariff did lower rates more favorably for the South, but they felt it did not go far enough and still disliked it.

South Carolina was hit the hardest by the economic downturn caused by the 1828 tariff, and when the 1832 was passed, they were the most upset. They threatened was was called "nullification"- which is for the state to unilaterally declare a federal law is not valid within their borders. It doesn't sound all that exciting but it's actually a pretty big deal- if South Carolina could nullify the tariff, then that would mean that any state could nullify any particular law they didn't like, thereby rendering the federal government and the US Constitution totally meaningless.

There were negotiations, threats of military force, and militias were raised. South Carolina threatened to secede from the US if it could not nullify the tariff; President Jackson threatened to send in the Army if they did so. In the end, cooler heads prevailed. A new, more South-friendly tariff was passed in early 1833, and the idea of nullification and secession went away- for a while. It would return again in 1860, resulting in the secession crisis and the Civil War.