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The Reign of Andrew Jackson by Frederic Austin Ogg
page 94 of 194 (48%)

The political theory current south of the Potomac and the Ohio made of
state rights a fetish. Yet the powerful sectional reaction which set
in after 1820 against the nationalizing tendency had as its main
impetus the injustice which the Southern people felt had been done to
them through the use of the nation's larger powers. They objected to
the protective tariff as a device which not only brought the South no
benefit but interfered with its markets and raised the cost of certain
of its staple supplies. They opposed internal improvements at national
expense because of their consolidating tendency, and because few of
the projects carried out were of large advantage to the Southern
people. They regarded the National Bank as at best useless; and they
resisted federal legislation imposing restrictions on slavery as
prejudicial to vested rights in the "peculiar institution."

After 1820 the pendulum swung rapidly back toward particularism. State
rights sentiment was freely expressed by men, both Southern and
Northern, whose views commanded respect; and in more than one
State--notably in Ohio and Georgia--bold actions proclaimed this
sentiment to be no mere matter of academic opinion. Ohio in 1819
forcibly collected a tax on the United States Bank in defiance of the
Supreme Court's decision in the case of M'Culloch _vs._ Maryland; and
in 1821 her Legislature reaffirmed the doctrines of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and persisted in resistance, even after the
Supreme Court had rendered a decision[9] specifically against the
position which the State had taken. Judge Roane of Virginia, in a
series of articles in the _Richmond Enquirer_, argued that the Federal
Union was a compact among the States and that the nationalistic
reasoning of his fellow Virginian, Marshall, in the foregoing
decisions was false; and Jefferson heartily endorsed his views. In
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