| In the 1820's and 1830's the conflict over tariff policy led to a powerful social movement in South Carolina, the Nullification movement. This movement helped create a new Southern world view. The movement was psychologically connected to slave agrarianism, and found itself unnerved by changes that were occurring due to the modernization process.;The tremendous growth of textile manufacturing in Great Britain had direct impact on the cotton and textile industries in the United States. This caused great strain on the relationship of the North and the South. Although the South became dependent on the British, the planters felt threatened by the North's protective tariff policies, not the British and this perpetuated further dependency. The forces that contributed to this dependency were not merely economic, but ideological and cultural as well. The rise of white egalitarianism associated with the age of Jackson could have threatened the planters' aristocratic hegemony. The planters' own attitudes towards work, industrialization, and education also strengthened its dependence.;The Nullifiers attempted to adapt to the modernization process by blending elements of what Louis Hartz refers to as the liberal and feudal fragments. This mix of the liberal and feudal fragments is central to understanding Nullification. The movement's liberal-feudal amalgamation is explored by examining the works of two Nullification leaders, James Hamilton, Jr. and Thomas Cooper. They reflected bath the turmoil in South Carolina and the ambivalence of the Nullifier ideology. Ironically, Hamilton mobilized mass support for minority rule and slavery by taking advantage of the newly emerging white egalitarianism of the Jacksonian era. Cooper created a progressive defense of the slave system by using the ideas of the political economists. His work merged the feudal and liberal fragments into a new defense of the Southern slave system.;The Nullifiers were truly at the crossroads of the modern world. Although the British textile industry enriched them, they feared industrialization. Although they feared majority rule, they mobilized the white working class. They synthesized seemingly contradictory elements into a unique world view that served as the basis of Southern planter hegemony until the end of the Civil War. |
