WHAT HATH A WARM OVERCOAT WROUGHT

WHAT HATH A WARM OVERCOAT WROUGHT?
An Alternate History Timeline
By Robert Perkins

INTRODUCTION

During the administration of President Andrew Jackson, there was a major crisis when the State of South Carolina threatened to nullify recently passed federal tariff acts and prevent them from being enforced within the bounds of said State. In response, President Jackson made it clear that he intended to use military force against South Carolina if she proceeded with these actions, and South Carolina, in the end, backed down, defusing the crisis.

What is less known or appreciated is that the Northern States, during the same period and afterward right up until the outbreak of the War between the States, effectively nullified not only federal legislation...in the form of the Fugitive Slave Act...but also a provision of the Constitution itself...the so-called Fugitive Slave Clause of the Constitution.

In 1842, the United States Supreme Court, in the Prigg v Pennsylvania decision, ruled that Northern "Personal Liberty Laws," as these pieces of nullifying legislation were known, were unconstitutional. Chief Justice Story, in his opinion in the Prigg case, wrote that States could not constitutionally over-ride federal law via State legislation. But, he continued, there was also no constitutional requirement that the State governments must enforce federal laws. In response, in the following year, four States...Pennsylvania, New York, Ohio, and Vermont...passed new personal liberty laws seeking to take advantage of this apparent loophole in the Supreme Court's decision. The new laws forbade State officials from taking any action with regard to run-away slaves at all...said slaves could not be apprehended by State law enforcement officials, could not be held in State jails, and claims for their return could not be heard in State Courts. Although these laws were clearly a violation of the spirit of the Constitution, if not technically a violation of the letter of it, they were never challenged.

Unlike the situation with South Carolina during the Jackson Administration, the Administration of President John Tyler...a staunch believer in States' Rights...never threatened to use military force against those Northern States which were effectively nullifying not only Federal Law, but the Constitution itself. But what if a President inclined to do just that had been in office? Although we can never know what William Henry Harrison would have done in this situation had he survived to serve out his term, we can speculate on his actions, and the possible results. And so, we present this timeline. Enjoy!

Part One: 1841-1860

Part Two: 1861-1880

WATCH FOR FUTURE UPDATES!

Some clipart on this page is used courtesy of

and

Webpromotion.com

Hosted by www.Geocities.ws