The purpose of this research is to examine the policies and programs promoted by southern nationalists in the United States from 1830 to 1861. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which southern nationalism arose in the U.S., citing specific features of its development, and then to discuss the degree of success on the part of southern nationalists in advancing their agenda.
Growth of Southern nationalism 1830-1860 has to be placed in the context of the transformation of American society and political economy as a whole and in the South in particular. Southern nationalism from the 1830s to 1860 really began in 1820, with the Missouri Compromise, the first major controversy over the American West and slavery. The question was whether slavery would be allowed in new states admitted from the area of the Louisiana Purchase. It was a controversy for the reason that whether a state was slave or free affected the manner in which the state was represented in Congress. Because of emerging sentiments, mainly in the North, against slavery in society as a whole, and because the North's population was growing far faster than that of the South, the South was losing congressional representation in the House (McCardell 23). It logically followed that a free-state Congressional majority in both House and Senate could vote to abolish slavery in the South. Thus the South's social and economic structure had a stake in the structure of new states. As resolved by Henry Clay, the Missouri Compromise provided that states would be admitted in pairs and that those above the latitude of 36/30 would be free and those below would be slave states.
The issue receded until 1828, with the passage of the so-called Tariff of Abominations. A tariff is a fee, added by the to the cost of imported goods by the government of the importing country. The effect is to make them as expensive to buy as similar goods manufactured in that country. Tariff...