Fillmore, Millard (1800-1874) to Curtis Dixon
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Gilder Lehrman Collection #: GLC05575 Author/Creator: Fillmore, Millard (1800-1874) Place Written: Washington, D.C. Type: Autograph letter signed Date: 5 March 1834 Pagination: 1 p. : address : free frank ; 25 x 20 cm. Order a Copy
Sends his congratulations on his cousin's marriage and jokes that he believes "a state of matrimony is upon the whole the best state in the Union, and will be the last to yield to the sundering doctrine of nullification, and that there is little danger to be apprehended from the opposite extreme of consolidation."
At this time, Fillmore was serving in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1833–1835.
The Nullification Crisis was a sectional crisis during the presidency of Andrew Jackson over the issue of protective tariffs passed by the federal government in 1828 and 1832 that benefited trade in the northern states but caused economic hardships for Southern states. In response, a number of South Carolina citizens endorsed the states' rights principle of "nullification," which was enunciated by John C. Calhoun, Jackson's vice president until 1832. South Carolina adopting the Ordinance of Nullification, which declared both the tariffs of 1828 and 1832 null and void within state borders. Senator Henry Clay mediated a compromise between South Carolina and the federal government in 1833 but the crisis deepened the divide between the north and the south and planted the seeds for the Civil War.
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