America’s first Constitutional Crisis over Nullification dates back to 1828 — 1832, when Trump’s favorite President, Andrew Jackson, faced down efforts by South Carolina to overturn the Constitutional supremacy of Federal laws imposing tariffs that favored Northern industry at the expense of slave state buyers of imported goods. Nullification was a pet Constitutional theory of Southern slave holders, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, positing that each sovereign state possessed the power to independently determine the invalidity of Federal enactments and to interdict the enforcement of such laws within that state. The Nullification Crisis turned the soil and planted seeds from which the American Civil War sprouted just three decades later, as noted at the website, Essential Civil War Curriculum —
The nullification crisis foreshadowed the secession crisis of the early 1860s, and despite being thirty years apart, the two events share several themes. In both cases, radical fire-eaters in South Carolina threatened secession and declared their state’s sovereignty, national politicians debated the nature of the Constitution, and the economic differences of the North and South took center stage.
Today, sadly, Donald Trump’s Republican Party has seized upon the exact same kind of thinking(?) that led to numerous Constitutional crises in the 19th Century, including Nullification and the horrors of Succession and Civil War. Discredited Constitutional theories from 150 — 200 years ago still enjoy happy and productive lives in the otherwise empty crania of Trump’s treacherous Republicans. An example of this arose this week in my home State of Missouri, when our very red, very gerrymandered State Legislature acted as described here by the St. Louis Post Dispatch —
JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri House on Wednesday gave first-round approval to a proposal that would prevent local law enforcement from enforcing federal gun laws that aren’t on the books in Missouri.
The “Second Amendment Preservation Act,” sponsored by Rep. Jered Taylor, R-Nixa, seeks to invalidate federal laws or other actions deemed to infringe on a person’s Second Amendment right to bear arms.
Lawmakers approved the proposal Wednesday on a 107-43 vote.
For people who say, endlessly, that they want to make America great again, Trump’s Republicans seem to have stunningly short memories. My father’s grandfather fought in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Only his unit’s last minute assignment to guard a rail depot in the rear stopped him from near certain death (annihilating my own existence) in Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg in 1863. I have no difficulty remembering the dire perils to the Constitution and to American lives, of pernicious ideas like nullification and succession. But modern Republicans only remember a time when White Supremacy was acceptable and seemingly normal, and, to them, that’s what’s great.
But if we ask the Civil War dead, or the postbellum lynching victims, or people like Medgar Evers and MLK, or the corpses left behind by the January 6 Insurrection at the Capitol, their shades would, almost certainly, beg to differ. Most of them would realize that White Supremacy is a deadly social disease that requires eradication every bit as much as COVID-19 or any other plague. White Supremacy is also the force most often behind efforts to weaken or destroy the U.S. Constitution an Union.
Just like the Nullification Crisis in 1832 wasn’t really about tariffs, but rather White Supremacy, just like the Civil War wasn’t about States Rights but rather about White Supremacy, just like Jim Crow wasn’t about separate but equal but rather about White Supremacy, Missouri Republicans’ “Second Amendment Preservation Act” sure as hell isn’t about guns, but rather about White Supremacy.
If this so-called “Second Amendment Preservation Act” became law in Missouri, we wouldn’t have long to wait, before power hungry white folks tried to nullify equal employment or fair housing or pubic accommodation protections afforded by Federal Civil Rights Acts with a “First Amendment Freedom of Association Preservation Act”. That is the most repugnant vice of the nullification idea: It offers no guidance on where to draw any line, eventually pointing to the total overthrow of the U.S. Constitution.
Should this bill become law in Missouri, courts will strike it down, probably on its face without trial. Before Trump and McConnell so horribly overstocked the Federal bench with white, right wing zealots, I would have predicted that outcome with certainty. Now it’s only very likely. But it’s time for everyone to notice that battering rams are slamming the gates of the Constitution with forces unlike any seen since the 19th Century Constitutional crises over slavery and equality. There are cracks in the foundations of the Republic. Maybe Trump is gone, but Trumpism is still here and dire perils for our nation and the Constitution continue.