States' Rights and All That Stuff

All this revisionist theory regarding the glorification of the old South, the sacred honor of the Confederacy, nullification, secession and other blather by people who only used history books for propping up the entertainment center is more than a little weird.

Forget the high falutin’ ideals of Abraham Lincoln. Take a look at “Old Hickory” himself, President Andy Jackson, a true Southerner before he became a Westerner, South Carolina born, and the first “common man” to gain the presidency.

When in 1828 he was faced with the most vexing problem of his administration, a tariff on British trade that would curtail profits in the south, his arch enemy was his own vice-president and S. Carolinian John C. Calhoun.

When Calhoun started spouting off about nullification rights (states could nullify federal laws they consider unconstitutional or could secede) and talked of “setting up their own government” Jackson understood, and stated, that the question was not about the tariff but of Union and the threat of disunion, which he considered treason.

Jackson stated bluntly that such talk was treasonous and if anything came of it he would “hang Calhoun from a tall tree.”

According to Jackson “the tariff can be modified” and it was.

Jackson also stated emphatically that the goal and purpose of the United States was Liberty and Union and as long as he had the power he would uphold that dual premise.

Of course Jackson threatened so often to hang somebody from a tall tree you had to kind of assume he probably had at one time or another. Jackson was not a gentleman’s gentleman.