One reason I hate living in the south.

[makingmusic476]

 

The Ghost of RubangB said:
Why should a state have the right to nullify federal taxes?

Seriously, if you want to have slaves and no taxes, you don't secede. You go find an island somewhere.

And when you secede and somebody tries to stop you, it's a civil war.

 

Nullifaction generally dealt with states having the right to nullify acts which they deemed to be unconstitutional.

To quote Thomas Jefferson on the matter:

(from the Kentucky Resolution of 1798)

Resolved, that the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.

The idea at the time was that the federal government couldn't be trusted to regulate itself (and this is only proven today, with how the President gets away with so much BS, despite the Congress having complete control of the budget).  States, at the time, were seen by many to be the "fourth branch" of the US government, and had to nullify any acts of the US government they themselves deemed unconsitutional, should the federal government not do so itself.

Of course, I'm not saying that the Tariffs were unconstituional, nor that the States should have had the right to nullify them.  I'm just pointing out that tariffs were a primary cause of political climate in the 1860s.

And the tariffs were complete BS.  The South had a right to be pissed, and I guess nullifaction was their best bet prior to just getting the hell out. 

It's not simply an issue of taxes versus no taxes like you're trying to make it seem.  The Southern economy was continually being exploited by the North, and then it was finally destroyed via the war (entire cities were burned, often with the townspeople therein recieving no prior warning whatsoever), and via the subsequent Reconstruction.