This tariff act was passed on May 15, 1828, and on the 12th of June following the citizens of Colleton District, South Carolina, met at the courthouse in Walterborough and adopted an address to the people.  Among other things this address stated:  “For it is not enough that imposts laid for protection of domestic manufactures are oppressive, and transfer in their operation millions of our property to Northern capitalists.  If we have given our bond, let them take our blood.  Those who resist these imposts must deem them unconstitutional, and the principle is abandoned by the payment of one cent—­as much as ten millions.”  The address assumed “open resistance to the laws of the Union.”

Governor Taylor was asked to convene the Legislature.  He declined to take action on the request of the Colleton meeting, on the ground that “the time of great public excitement is not a time propitious for cool deliberation or wise determination.”

George McDuffie, a member of the House of Representatives in Congress from South Carolina, and a man of high character and great ability, was the leading spirit in the opposition to this tariff and resistance to its enforcement.  At a dinner in Columbia, S.C., he recommended that the State fix a tax on Northern manufactured goods, and proposed as a toast “Millions for defense, but not a cent for tribute.”  In the district of St. Helena, S.C., a public meeting was held at which this resolution was adopted: 

“Resolved, That, differing from those of our fellow-citizens who look to home production, or more consumption of the fabrics of the tariff States as a relief from our present burdens, we perceive in these expedients rather an ill-judged wasting of the public energy and diversion of the public mind than an adequate remedy for the true evil, the usurping of Congress, which (since that body will never construe down its own powers) can be checked, in our opinion, only by the action of States opposed to such usurpation.”

The reference to “expedients, rather an ill-judged wasting of the public energy,” was to the action of certain meetings in South Carolina where it was resolved to wear only their own manufactures, and abstain wholly from those made north of the Potomac.  The supporters of nullification defended themselves on constitutional grounds and on the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions of 1798.  Congress revised the tariff in May, 1832, modifying some of the duties imposed by the act of 1828.  In October, 1832, the Legislature of South Carolina passed an act providing for the calling of a convention of the people of the State.

The object of the convention was “to take into consideration the several acts of the Congress of the United States imposing duties on foreign imports, for the protection of domestic manufactures or for other unauthorized objects; to determine on the character thereof, and to devise the means of redress.”

The convention authorized under this act assembled on November 19, 1832.  An ordinance was passed to provide for arresting the operations of certain acts of Congress of the United States, purporting to be taxes laying duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities.  On its final passage the word “arresting” was stricken out and the word “nullifying” substituted in its place.