During the time of the “Great Compromise” people brought up important issues that remained unaddressed. One of the issues was, without having some kind of list of individual rights then the government would have too much control over the people. James Madison, a Republican, opposed this idea. He felt that the government shouldn’t have a blanket right to tell you what to do and how to do it. This woul

In the late 1820’s, the “tariff of abominations”, started to cause problems for the South Carolinians. They felt the tariff was “responsible for the stagnation of their state’s economy--even though the stagnation was largely a result of the exhaustion of South Carolina’s farmland, which could no longer compete effectively with the newly opened and fertile lands of the Southwest” (Brinkley, pg. 229). Vice President, John Calhoun, had his political future resting on how he dealt with this challenge. So to ensure the support of his home state, South Carolina, he developed the theory of nullification. Calhoun argued that “since the federal government was a creation of the states, the states- not the courts or Congress—were the final arbiters of the constitutionality of federal laws. If a state concluded that Congress had passed an unconstitutional law, then it could hold a special convention and declare the federal law null and void within the state” (Brinkley, pg.229).

The idea of nullification, I think, is closely related to electoral politics. Nullification is where the states get to create the powers of the government and if the government doesn’t obey them then the states can take them away. Lets look at a presidential election to see how the idea of nullification fits in. The people of the states get to vote which person they feel is a good candidate for presidency. Some wins and becomes the new President of the United States. If that President then does something that angers the people, they then can vote to get him out of office. The Governor recall election for

Some topics in this essay:
, Madison Republican, Amendment Constitution, Kentucky Resolutions, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, South Carolina, Gray Davis, Sedition Acts, United President, brinkley pg, idea nullification, james madison, federal government, virginia kentucky resolutions, kentucky resolutions, virginia kentucky, people vote, central government, national government, paint house, paint house purple,