Cohens _vs._ Virginia, in 1821, the Supreme Court held that it had
appellate jurisdiction in a case decided by a state court where the
Constitution and laws of the United States were involved, even though
a State was a party; whereupon the Virginia House of Delegates
declared that the State's lawyers had been right in their contention
that final construction of the Constitution lay with the courts of the
States. Jefferson, also, gave this assertion his support, and
denounced the centralizing tendencies of the Judiciary, "which,
working like gravity without any intermission, is to press us at last
into one consolidated mass."

In 1825 Jefferson actually proposed that the Virginia Legislature
should pass a set of resolutions pronouncing null and void the whole
body of federal laws on the subject of internal improvements. The
Georgia Legislature, aroused by growing antislavery activities in the
North, declared in 1827 that the remedy lay in "a firm and determined
union of the people and the States of the South" against interference
with the institutions of that section of the country. Already Georgia
had placed herself in an attitude of resistance to the Federal
Government upon the rights of the Indians within her borders, and
within the next decade she repeatedly nullified decisions of the
federal courts on this subject. In 1828 the South Carolina Legislature
adopted a series of eight resolutions denouncing the lately enacted
"tariff of abominations," and a report, originally drafted by Calhoun
and commonly known as _The South Carolina Exposition_, in which were
to be found all of the essentials of the constitutional argument
underlying the nullification movement of 1832.

When Jackson went into the White House, the country was therefore
fairly buzzing with discussions of constitutional questions. What was