xtile interests
of New England, the iron masters of Connecticut, New Jersey, and
Pennsylvania, the wool, hemp, and flax growers of Ohio, Kentucky, and
Tennessee, and the sugar planters of Louisiana developed into a
formidable combination in support of a high protective tariff.

_The Planting States Oppose the Tariff._--In the meantime, the cotton
states on the seaboard had forgotten about the havoc wrought during the
Napoleonic wars when their produce rotted because there were no ships to
carry it to Europe. The seas were now open. The area devoted to cotton
had swiftly expanded as Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana were opened
up. Cotton had in fact become "king" and the planters depended for their
prosperity, as they thought, upon the sale of their staple to English
manufacturers whose spinning and weaving mills were the wonder of the
world. Manufacturing nothing and having to buy nearly everything except
farm produce and even much of that for slaves, the planters naturally
wanted to purchase manufactures in the cheapest market, England, where
they sold most of their cotton. The tariff, they contended, raised the
price of the goods they had to buy and was thus in fact a tribute laid
on them for the benefit of the Northern mill owners.

_The Tariff of Abominations._--They were overborne, however, in 1824 and
again in 1828 when Northern manufacturers and Western farmers forced
Congress to make an upward revision of the tariff. The Act of 1828 known
as "the Tariff of Abominations," though slightly modified in 1832, was
"the straw which broke the camel's back." Southern leaders turned in
rage against the whole system. The legislatures of Virginia, North
Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama denounced it; a general
convention of delegates held at Augusta issued a protest of defiance
against it; and South Carolina, weary of verbal battles, decided to
prevent its enforcement.

_South Carolina Nullifies the Tariff._--The legislature of that state,
on October 26, 1832, passed a bill calling for a state convention which
duly assembled in the following month. In no mood for compromise, it
adopted the famous Ordinance of Nullification after a few days' debate.
Every line of this document was clear and firm. The tariff, it opened,
gives "bounties to classes and individuals ... at the expense and to the
injury and oppression of other classes and individuals"; it is a
violation of the Constitution of the United States an