In 1825 Jefferson actually proposed that the Virginia Legislature should pass a set of resolutions pronouncing null and void the whole body of federal laws on the subject of internal improvements.  The Georgia Legislature, aroused by growing antislavery activities in the North, declared in 1827 that the remedy lay in “a firm and determined union of the people and the States of the South” against interference with the institutions of that section of the country.  Already Georgia had placed herself in an attitude of resistance to the Federal Government upon the rights of the Indians within her borders, and within the next decade she repeatedly nullified decisions of the federal courts on this subject.  In 1828 the South Carolina Legislature adopted a series of eight resolutions denouncing the lately enacted “tariff of abominations,” and a report, originally drafted by Calhoun and commonly known as The South Carolina Exposition, in which were to be found all of the essentials of the constitutional argument underlying the nullification movement of 1832.

When Jackson went into the White House, the country was therefore fairly buzzing with discussions of constitutional questions.  What was the true character of the Constitution and of the Union established under it?  Were the States sovereign?  Who should determine the limits of state and federal powers?  What remedy had a State against unconstitutional measures of the National Government?  Who should say when an act was unconstitutional?

The South, in particular, was in an irritable frame of mind.  Agriculture was in a state of depression; manufacturing was not developing as had been expected; the steadily mounting tariffs were working economic disadvantage; the triumph of members of Congress and of the Supreme Court who favored a loose construction of the Constitution indicated that there would be no end of acts and decisions contrary to what the South regarded as her own interests.  Some apprehensive people looked to Jackson for reassurance.  But his first message to Congress assumed that the tariff would continue as it was, and, indeed, gave no promise of relief in any direction.

It was at this juncture that the whole controversy flared up unexpectedly in one of the greatest debates ever heard on the floor of our Congress or in the legislative halls of any country.  On December 29, 1829, Senator Samuel A. Foote of Connecticut offered an innocent-looking resolution proposing a temporary restriction of the sale of public lands to such lands as had already been placed on the market.  The suggestion was immediately resented by western members, who professed to see in it a desire to check the drain of eastern population to the West; and upon the reconvening of Congress following the Christmas recess Senator Benton of Missouri voiced in no uncertain terms the indignation of his State and section.  The discussion might easily have led to nothing more than the laying of the resolution on the table; and in that event we should never have heard of it.  But it happened that one of the senators from South Carolina, Robert Y. Hayne, saw in the situation what he took to be a chance to deliver a telling blow for his own discontented section.  On the 19th of January he got the floor, and at the fag-end of a long day he held his colleagues’ attention for an hour.