Confederacy in New York, but when some members of the Meskwaki (Fox) and the Sauk triggered the Black Hawk War by trying to cross back to the east side of the Mississippi, the peace treaties ratified after their defeat reduced their lands further. During his administration, he made about 70 treaties with American Indian tribes. He had removed almost all the Native Americans east of the Mississippi and south of Lake Michigan, about 70,000 people, from the United States; though it was done at the cost of thousands of Native American lives lost because of the unsanitary conditions and epidemics arising from their dislocation, as well as their resistance to expulsion. Jackson's implementation of the Indian Removal Act contributed to his popularity with his constituency. He added over 170,000 square miles of land to the public domain, which primarily benefited the United States' agricultural interests. The act also benefited small farmers, as Jackson allowed them to purchase moderate plots at low prices and offered squatters on land formerly belonging to Native Americans the option to purchase it before it was offered for sale to others. Nullification crisis Jackson had to confront another challenge that had been building up since the beginning of his first term. The Tariff of 1828, which had been passed in the last year of Adams' administration, set a protective tariff at a very high rate to prevent the manufacturing industries in the Northern states from having to compete with lower-priced imports from Britain. The tariff reduced the income of southern cotton planters: it propped up consumer prices, but not the price of cotton which had severely declined in the previous decade. Immediately after the tariff's passage, the South Carolina Exposition and Protest was sent to the U.S. Senate. This document, which had been anonymously written by John C. Calhoun, asserted that the constitution was a compact of individual states and when the federal government went beyond its delegated duties, such as enacting a protective tariff, a state had a right to declare this action unconstitutional and make the act null and void with the borders of that state. Jackson suspected Calhoun of writing the Exposition and Protest, and opposed his interpretation. Jackson argued that Congress as a whole had full authority to enact tariffs and that a dissenting state was denying the will of the majority. He also needed the tariff, which generated 90% of the