Force Bill

Force Bill, law passed by the U.S. Congress in 1833 that gave the president the power to use the military to enforce the collection of import duties if a state refused to comply with federal tariffs. The bill was passed during the Nullification Crisis, which arose after South Carolina declared that it would treat the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 as null and void. The Force Bill also contained a provision that rendered it effective only until the conclusion of the next congressional session.

Tariffs in the United States provided operating revenue for the government, but from 1816 they were designed with the additional goal of protecting manufacturing enterprises from low-priced imports, particularly from Great Britain. However, such levies raised the cost of needed goods in the agrarian South and left Great Britain, the primary market for cotton grown in the southern states, with reduced income, which in turn limited the amount of cotton it was likely to purchase. Consequently, Southern lawmakers opposed the ever-increasing tariffs supported by the manufacturing states. The Tariff of 1828, also called the Tariff of Abominations, raised rates substantially (to as much as 50 percent on manufactured goods) but for the first time also targeted items most frequently imported in the industrial states in New England. Southern Democrats hoped that the latter levies would prove unpalatable to northerners and that the bill would fail, but lawmakers in other northern states carried the bill, which was signed into law by Pres. John Quincy Adams.

The idea that states had the right to ignore federal laws if they deemed that the U.S. government lacked authority to pass such legislation had first been advocated (anonymously) by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. Three decades later John C. Calhoun, a former lawmaker from South Carolina then serving as vice president under Adams, anonymously wrote the South Carolina Exposition and Protest (1828), in which he maintained that the government had exceeded its authority in passing the Tariff of Abominations and that states therefore were not required to enforce it. Congress later passed the Tariff Act of 1832, which only slightly lowered the previous levies. South Carolina then adopted (1832) the Ordinance of Nullification, proclaiming both tariffs null and void within the state and threatening to secede if the federal government attempted to enforce the tariffs.

Pres. Andrew Jackson declared that states did not have the right of nullification and asked Congress for authority to collect the tariff by force if necessary. Congress responded with the Force Bill. The law allowed the president to relocate customs houses and to require that customs duties be paid in cash. It also authorized the use of armed forces to protect customs officials and enforce collection of tariffs. At the same time Congress passed a law substantially reducing import duties. South Carolina then rescinded its nullification of the tariff laws but nullified the Force Bill, though its provisions were no longer necessary. Jackson’s actions in asking for the Force Bill were seen by nationalists as a heroic move that preserved the integrity of the Union and underscored the primacy of the federal government.