History of the United States I / Unit 10 USH1 1380 worked example, 60 to 90 seconds
The Force Bill
The idea
Congress passed the Force Bill in eighteen thirty-three, giving the federal government the right to use federal troops to ensure compliance with federal law. Jackson, a slaveholding southerner himself, treated nullification as a threat to the Union rather than a defence of the South. And South Carolinians opposed to the nullifiers told him that eight thousand men stood ready to defend the Union, meaning ready to fight their own state.
In practice
A president preparing to send troops into a state over a customs duty.
Where people slip
Two things to hold. First, the crisis was defused by a compromise tariff and neither side tested the Force Bill, so the constitutional question was left open rather than settled. Second, the split inside South Carolina matters as much as the split between South Carolina and Washington. Secession was never a united southern position, and it was not one here.
Your place on the trail
Every lesson rests on earlier ones and opens later ones. Tap any to jump.
Builds on
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