e
Senate censured Jackson, but the censure was expunged after a long
struggle, in which Senator Thomas Hart Benton, of Missouri, championed
the President.

The opposition to a tariff for protection was very bitter in the South,
where the people regarded the tariff duties as a tribute exacted from
them for the benefit of the North. This feeling was especially strong in
South Carolina, where a State convention undertook to pronounce the
tariff law null and void, and held out a threat of secession should the
Federal Government attempt to collect the duties. The States of Alabama,
Tennessee and Georgia took firm ground against nullification, and on
December 10, 1832, President Jackson issued his famous proclamation,
exhorting all persons to obey the laws, and denouncing the South Carolina
ordinance. "I consider then," said the President, "the power to annul a
law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the
existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the
Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every
principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object
for which it was formed." The President declared it to be his intent to
"take care that the laws be faithfully executed," and he warned the
citizens of South Carolina that "the course they are urged to pursue is
one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to
support." Major Heileman, commanding the United States troops at
Charleston, was instructed to be vigilant in defeating any attempt to
seize the forts in that harbor, and two companies of artillery were
ordered to Fort Moultrie. The Unionist sentiment in South Carolina itself
was strong, and the crisis fortunately passed without any attempt to
carry into execution the nullification ordinance. Excitement ran high,
however, until the adoption in March, 1833, of a compromise tariff, which
provided for a gradual reduction of duties.

* * *

General Jackson in his annual message of 1830, recommended the devotion
of a large tract of land, west of the Mississippi, to the use of the
Indian tribes yet remaining east of that river, and Congress, in 1834,
enacted that "all that part of the United States west of the Mississippi
River, and not within the States of Missouri and Louisiana, or the
Territory of Arkansas, shall be considered the Indian country." This was
the origin of the presen