#91: The Nullification Crisis, The Carolina Housewife Cookbook, and Jazz Concert at Fort Moultrie
For South Carolina history lovers far and wide! Enjoy weekly SC history and upcoming SC historical events
Welcome to the first 100 days of the South Carolina History Newsletter! My name is Kate Fowler and I live in Greenville, SC. I have a 9-5 job in marketing, and outside of work, have a deep love of history. I started this newsletter as a passion project to learn more about our beautiful state and build a community of fellow SC history lovers along the way! To establish a foundation for the newsletter and to grow my expertise on a wide variety of South Carolina historical topics, this past February I challenged myself to post 100 newsletters in 100 days. After this coming May 20th, the newsletter will become weekly. Thank you for joining the journey!
Dear reader,
Welcome to Newsletter #91 of The South Carolina History Newsletter! I’m so happy you’re here.
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Kate
(Writing from Greenville, SC)
➳ Featured SC History Event
Please enjoy our featured SC History Event below, and click here to visit my SC History Events Calendar that organizes all the upcoming SC history events I have discovered. Please let me know if you’d like to add an event to the calendar! Reply to this email or send me a note at schistorynewsletter@gmail.com.
Tuesday, June 4th at 5:30 pm | “Charlton Singleton Quintet: Jazz Concert at Fort Moultrie” | Fort Moultrie | Sullivan’s Island, SC | $50 members, $55 non-members
➳ SC History Fun Facts
I.
Did you know that The Nullification Crisis of 1832-33 was the first time in American history that the country was on the brink of civil war?
30 years before the Civil War broke out, political disunion appeared to be on the horizon with the Nullification Crisis of 1832-33.
Starting in 1816, the United States used tariffs to protect American industry against foreign competition.
Protective tariffs formed the foundation of Henry Clay’s “American System” which served as the main economic policy of the United States until President Andrew Jackson’s election.
The first tariff passed was relatively low, but it progressively rose each year until 1828, with what became known as the “Tariff of Abominations.”
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Representative Silas Wright, an ally of Jackson, first proposed this tariff in 1828 as “a ploy to help Old Hickory’s presidential campaign.”
The tariff raised duties to between 30-50% on certain raw materials, which “protected the Mid-Atlantic and western states which produced these raw materials, but left southern states—and its cotton and tobacco industry—unprotected.”
Here are political cartoons from the time illustrating the Nullification Crisis:
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In retaliation for the high tariff, foreign markets blocked the sale of American cotton, the South’s chief export and the cornerstone of their economy which caused economic issues in the South.
In 1828, Jackson’s soon to be Vice President and ally John C. Calhoun of South Carolina wrote an anonymously published a pamphlet titled “Exposition and Protest” which passionately criticized the tariff and laid the groundwork for nullification theory.
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Despite southern objections, the tariff passed and “went largely forgotten in American consciousness” until an exchange on the Senate floor between South Carolinian Senator Robert Hayne and Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster in January 1830 which reopened the debate.
Hayne argued that “state sovereignty permitted the nullification of federal rulings when those rulings infringed on states’ rights, going so far as to argue for secession in order to preserve state and personal liberty.”
From American Battlefield Trust:
“Webster famously responded with “liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable,” to Webster and many other unionists, people, not states comprised the union. Nullification propagated secession which in turn would destroy the union: the sole protector of liberty. Thus, to preserve liberty, one must preserve the union. Nullifiers did not believe in this link between union and liberty but rather argued that it was the states alone which protected individual freedoms from an overreaching federal government.”
The issue of nullification divided the White House as Vice President Calhoun staunchly supported states’ rights and served as a spokesman for nullification by revealing he wrote “Exposition and Protest.”
Jackson, on the other hand, supported states’ rights, but not at the expense of the Union and once stated he “would rather die in the last ditch than see the union dismantled.”
The Nullification Crisis was one in a series of issues that destroyed Jackson and Calhoun’s relationship.
In 1832 Congress replaced the Tariff of Abominations with a lower tariff; however, that was not enough to satisfy the South Carolinians who had made faint threats of nullification since 1828.
Almost immediately following Jackson’s re-election in 1832, South Carolina, fortified by the recent election of many state nullifiers, formed a convention that denounced the Tariff of Abominations and its 1832 revision “and formally adopted an Ordinance of Nullification. This ordinance declared those tariffs null and void and forbade the collection of duties within the boundary of the state following February 1, 1833. Finally, the ordinance declared that any act of force by Congress against South Carolina would lead to its immediate secession from the union.”
In the past Jackson simply acknowledged the supremacy of union over state sovereignty without taking any direct action; however, this explicit threat of secession forced him to act against these nullifiers.
Jackson advised his Secretary of War Lewis Cass to prepare for war, and over the course of a few months, Cass compiled arms and enlisted a militia in preparation to enter South Carolina to enforce the tariff and prevent secession.
During his war preparations, Jackson “engaged in a national public relations campaign to discredit nullification in the mind of the American public.” Jackson gave speeches against nullification that vehemently denounced South Carolina and promoted unionism.
Jackson also gave a special speech to Congress asking them to reaffirm his authority to use force to ensure the execution of United States laws, which Congress complied with in a bill aptly known as “Jackson’s force bill.”
Despite his preparations, Jackson did not desire a civil war, but rather hoped the nullifiers would back down against his threats.
In response to Jackson’s vigorous actions, South Carolinians delayed the enactment of their ordinance. Jackson, in turn, discretely supported Speaker of the House Henry Clay’s efforts to lower the tariff that caused this crisis.
On March 2, 1833, Congress passed both Jackson’s and Clay’s tariff reduction. In response, South Carolinians rescinded their Ordinance of Nullification and the crisis passed.
Many parties claimed to be the victor of this crisis: Calhoun and his nullifiers for receiving a tariff reduction, Clay for his compromise that prevailed. However, “Jackson remained the true victor as he reaffirmed his executive authority and prevented a potential civil war days before his second inauguration.”
Although not the first crisis that “dealt with state authority over perceived unconstitutional infringements on its sovereignty,” the Nullification Crisis represented “a pivotal moment in American history as this is the first time tensions between state and federal authority almost led to a civil war.”
Ultimately, the spirit of union prevailed, and Americans reached a compromise which avoided war. However, this crisis laid the groundwork for “the secession theory that reemerged in the 1850s at a time of heightened sectional tensions.” By then the United States would not be so lucky, and debates over slavery and the legitimacy of secession would plunge Americans into a horrific civil war.
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my source for this section
Please leave a comment below!
II.
Did you know that The Carolina Housewife Cookbook was one of the first regional cookbooks of the United States?
The Carolina Housewife, or House and Home: By A Lady of Charleston, written by Sarah “Sally” Rutledge, was last of what are widely recognized as “the first three regional American cookbooks” in America — together with Mary Randolph’s The Virginia House-Wife (1824) and Lettice Bryan’s The Kentucky Housewife (1839).
First published at Charleston in 1847 and reprinted twice during the decade before the Civil War, today, all antebellum editions of The Carolina Housewife are extremely rare. However, one can also purchase a modern edition of the book on Amazon here.
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It is the “first cookbook to feature rice as an American staple and the first to focus on the foodways of the Lowcountry.” Randolph’s work stands as a record of early foodways in the Tidewater country, Bryan’s in the Bluegrass region.
The Carolina Housewife was published anonymously, as “ladies of Charleston were only expected to have their names in print three times: when they were born, when they wed, and when they died.”
Yet it was hardly a secret among her family and friends that the author was Miss Sarah “Sally” Pinckney Rutledge (1782-1855), daughter of Edward Rutledge — a signer of the Declaration of Independence — and niece of another South Carolina signer, Arthur Middleton.
Sally Rutledge was “as close to royalty as one could be in the post-revolutionary South.”
During her youth, Rutledge lived in England with the family of her father’s legal partner, Thomas Pinckney, who was U. S. minister to the Court of St. James (i.e., the U.S. ambassador to the United Kingdom).
On returning to the United States, Rutledge would spend the remainder of her 73 years in Charleston, whether at her family’s home at the corner of Broad and Orange streets (which still stands today as the Governor’s House Inn); at the home of her brother, Henry Middleton Rutledge; or at various locations in town with her widowed stepmother, Mary Rutledge, and cousin, Harriet Pinckney.
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All of these homes and their different kitchens — and different kitchen staffs —undoubtedly gave Rutledge a broad range of experience with Lowcountry culinary practices, and in 1847, at the age of 65, she produced the first edition of her famous cookbook, featuring about 550 recipes.
Reprinted in 1851 and 1855, it promised its readers “principally receipts for dishes that have been made in our own homes, and with no more elaborate battrie de cuisine than that belonging to families of moderate income: even those dishes lately introduced among us have been successfully made by our own cooks.”
Nearly 100 of these dishes include corn or rice, including the first published recipe for Hoppin’ John, a traditional Lowcountry favorite of long-grain rice, black eyed peas, and salt pork.
Where does the name “Hoppin’ John” come from? Some say an “old, hobbled man called hoppin’ John became known for selling peas and rice on the streets of Charleston.” Others say enslaved children hopped around the table in eager anticipation of the dish. Most food historians think the name derives from a French term for dried peas, “pois pigeons” which when pronounced in French sounds like “Hoppin’ John.”
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There are more than 5 pages of tomato recipes, including directions for stewing, frying, baking, pickling, and preserving this distinctly American product.
Her recipe for “Macaroni al la Napolitana” was among the first published in America combining the tomato with a pasta.
There are recipes for cooking tomatoes in omelets and with okra, one for “Knuckle of Veal with Tomatoes,” and another for “Baked Shrimps and Tomatoes.”
Her rice dishes, besides Hoppin’ John, include rice crumpets, waffles, sponge cake, flummery, blancmange, golden crusted casseroles, and a “Poor Man’s Rice Pudding.”
As author Karen Hess writes, “Miss Rutledge recognized the peculiar genius of South Carolina cookery and set about to record it.”
Yet Rutledge likely prepared few of these Lowcountry dishes herself, and certainly not on a regular basis. Instead, most all of the meals that she and her family enjoyed — as ranking members of Charleston’s elite — would have been prepared by enslaved women.
Indeed, Rutledge’s family owned a large rice plantation near the city that enslaved more than 50 people. The great majority of enslaved domestic workers could neither read nor write. As such, The Carolina Housewife was written not for them, but for their mistresses, the genteel white women for whom they labored as
property.
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And many of the recipes described in its pages were West African in origin, including those for bennie (sesame) soup, two different okra soups, groundnut soup, and even the traditional Hoppin’ Johns.
This cookbook, so famous for its original presentation of southern cuisine, thus documents the shaping of that cuisine by African ingredients and tastes. Such is true for each of the southern “Housewife” cookbooks: “the African recipes they recorded ironically came to define what it meant to be southern.”
According to historian Sarah Walden, “The physical and intellectual labor of slaves made possible the observable tastes of the white slaveholding elite.”
Please scroll to the bottom of this email for my sources for this section
Please leave a comment below!
➳ Quote from an SC historical figure
“If it be conceded, as it must be by every one who is the least conversant with our institutions, that the sovereign powers delegated are divided between the General and State Governments, and that the latter hold their portion by the same tenure as the former, it would seem impossible to deny to the States the right of deciding on the infractions of their powers, and the proper remedy to be applied for their correction. The right of judging, in such cases, is an essential attribute of sovereignty, of which the States cannot be divested without losing their sovereignty itself, and being reduced to a subordinate corporate condition. In fact, to divide power, and to give to one of the parties the exclusive right of judging of the portion allotted to each, is, in reality, not to divide it at all; and to reserve such exclusive right to the General Government (it matters not by what department) to be exercised, is to convert it, in fact, into a great consolidated government, with unlimited powers, and to divest the States, in reality, of all their rights, it is impossible to understand the force of terms, and to deny so plain a conclusion.”
— From John C. Calhoun’s “Exposition and Protest” in opposition the Tariff of 1828
Nullification Crisis article sources:
“Nullification Crisis.” American Battlefield Trust, 7 Jan. 2019, https://www.battlefields.org/learn/articles/nullification-crisis. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Sinha, Manisha. “Nullification.” South Carolina Encyclopedia, 11 May 2024, https://www.scencyclopedia.org/sce/entries/nullification/#:~:text=The%20crisis%2C%20which%20began%20as,and%20secede%20from%20the%20Union. Accessed 10 May 2024.
“South Carolina Exposition and Protest/Exposition.” Wikisource, the Free Library, https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/South_Carolina_Exposition_and_Protest/Exposition. Accessed 10 May 2024.
“The Nullification Crisis” Andrew Jackson’s Hermitage, https://thehermitage.com/andrew-jackson-the-nullification-crisis. Accessed 10 May 2024.
Carolina Housewife Cookbook article sources:
“The Carolina Housewife, or House and Home: By A Lady of Charleston.” Jordan Antiques & Antiquarian Books, https://www.jordanantiquarianbooks.com/item/one-of-the-first-three-regional-american-cookbooks-the-carolina-housewife-or-house-and-home/. Accessed 10 May 2024.
“Hoppin’ John: A New Year’s Tradition.” History Channel, 22 December 2020, https://www.history.com/news/hoppin-john-a-new-years-tradition. Accessed 10 May 2024.
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