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Nullification crisis
Main article: Nullification crisis
Civil War-era lithograph cartoon of Calhoun bowing before Jackson during the nullification crisis by Pendleton's Lithography and published by L. Prang & Co. (1864)
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.[244] 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.[245] Immediately after the tariff's passage, the South Carolina Exposition and Protest was sent to the U.S. Senate.[246] This document, which had been anonymously written by John C. Calhoun, asserted that the constitution was a compact of individual states[247] 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.