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A nullification crisis emerged in the 1830s over President Andrew Jackson’s tariff acts of 1828 and 1832. Led by John Calhoun , President Jackson’s vice president, nullifiers argued that high tariffs on imported goods benefited northern manufacturing interests while disadvantaging economies in the South. South Carolina passed an Ordinance of Nullification declaring both tariff acts null and void and threatened to leave the Union. The federal government responded by enacting the Force Bill in 1833, authorizing President Jackson to use military force against states that challenged federal tariff laws. The prospect of military action coupled with the passage of the Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 (which lowered tariffs over time) led South Carolina to back off, ending the nullification crisis.
The ultimate showdown between national and state authority came during the
Civil War . Prior to the conflict, in
Dred Scott v. Sandford , the Supreme Court ruled that the national government lacked the authority to ban slavery in the territories.
Dred Scott v. Sandford , 60 U.S. 393 (1857). But the election of President Abraham
Lincoln in 1860 led eleven southern states to secede from the United States because they believed the new president would challenge the institution of slavery. What was initially a conflict to preserve the Union became a conflict to end slavery when Lincoln issued the
Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, freeing all slaves in the rebellious states. The defeat of the South had a huge impact on the balance of power between the states and the national government in two important ways. First, the Union victory put an end to the right of states to secede and to challenge legitimate national laws. Second, Congress imposed several conditions for readmitting former Confederate states into the Union; among them was ratification of the Fourteenth and
Fifteenth Amendment s. In sum, after the Civil War the power balance shifted toward the national government, a movement that had begun several decades before with
McCulloch v. Maryland (1819) and
Gibbons v. Odgen (1824).
The period between 1819 and the 1860s demonstrated that the national government sought to establish its role within the newly created federal design, which in turn often provoked the states to resist as they sought to protect their interests. With the exception of the Civil War, the Supreme Court settled the power struggles between the states and national government. From a historical perspective, the national supremacy principle introduced during this period did not so much narrow the states’ scope of constitutional authority as restrict their encroachment on national powers.
Joseph R. Marbach, Troy E. Smith, and Ellis Katz. 2005.
Federalism in America: An Encyclopedia . Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing.
The late 1870s ushered in a new phase in the evolution of U.S. federalism. Under dual federalism , the states and national government exercise exclusive authority in distinctly delineated spheres of jurisdiction. Like the layers of a cake, the levels of government do not blend with one another but rather are clearly defined. Two factors contributed to the emergence of this conception of federalism. First, several Supreme Court rulings blocked attempts by both state and federal governments to step outside their jurisdictional boundaries. Second, the prevailing economic philosophy at the time loathed government interference in the process of industrial development.
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