Force Bill

In an early draft of what would eventually become his "Proclamation to the People of South Carolina" on December 10, 1832, Jackson declared to the South Carolina government: Seduced as you have been, my fellow countrymen by the delusion theories and misrepresentation of ambitious, deluded & designing men, I call upon you in the language of truth, and with the feelings of a Father to retrace your steps.

Rally again under the banners of the union whose obligations you in common with all your countrymen have, with an appeal to heaven, sworn to support, and which must be indissoluble as long as we are capable of enjoying freedom.

Recollect that the first act of resistance to the laws which have been denounced as void by those who abuse your confidence and falsify your hopes is Treason, and subjects you to all the pains and penalties that are provided for the highest offence against your country.

As a matter of principle, the South Carolina legislature voted to nullify the Force Bill, but simultaneously, a Compromise Tariff was passed by Congress, defusing the crisis.

While the Force Bill rejected the concept of individual states' rights to nullify federal law or to secede from the Union, this was not universally accepted.