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How Does California Compare with the Nullification of the South Before the Civil War?
Not Paying Protective Tariffs in the South
One of the occurrences that led to the United States Civil War, April 12, 1861 to April 9, 1865, between Northern states (The Union) and Southern states (The Confederacy), were none other than federal tariffs. The North was mainly industrial and the South agricultural. Before the Civil War, the United States Congress placed tariffs on manufactured products, primarily to protect and encourage the growth of domestic industries. These tariffs, often referred to as protective tariffs, were designed to make imported goods more expensive, thereby encouraging consumers to purchase locally made products.
Southern states often opposed protective tariffs, arguing that they hurt their agricultural economy by raising the cost of manufactured goods. The Nullification Crisis, sparked by South Carolina’s opposition to the Tariff of 1828 and 1832, highlighted the tensions surrounding tariffs and states’ rights. The crisis was led by Senator and then Vice President John C. Calhoun. He said the tariffs were null and void within the South Carolina border, arguing that states had the right to nullify federal laws deemed unconstitutional. This contradicted President Andrew Jackson, who opposed nullification and would threaten the use of force to enforce the tariffs.
Many Southerners feared the federal government might use the tariff as a stepping stone to attack the institution of slavery. They saw the tariff as a demonstration of federal power that could eventually be used to abolish slavery, which they saw as a state right. The United States Constitution did not disallow slavery.
States and Immigration Law
The United States Constitution does address immigration. It grants Congress the power to regulate immigration, particularly through the Naturalization Clause and the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The Naturalization Clause, found in Article I, Section 8, Clause 4, grants Congress the power to establish a uniform rule for naturalization throughout the United States. Naturalization is the legal process by which a person born in a foreign country can become a citizen of the United States.
The Commerce Clause, which is Article I, Section 8, Clause 3, grants Congress the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations. The Supreme Court has also interpreted this to include the power to regulate the admission and exclusion of aliens. Individuals who enter the U.S. without going through designated ports of entry or without proper inspection are considered unauthorized immigrants.
In U.S. law, an “illegal immigrant” is a foreign national who enters or remains in the United States without legal authorization. This can occur through various means, such as entering without proper inspection, overstaying a visa, or entering under false pretenses. While the term “illegal immigrant” is commonly used, this is not a legally recognized term in U.S. law. The legal terminology is “undocumented immigrant” or “unauthorized immigrant.”
States are not required by the United States Constitution to enforce immigration laws. This is where the sanctuary city comes. However, states cannot impede, stop, or obstruct the federal government from the enforcement of federal laws. Obstructing federal law enforcement officials from enforcing federal immigration laws is obstruction of justice. Federal law includes provisions that criminalize interfering with the enforcement of immigration laws.
Nullification
A state obstructing the enforcement of federal laws is a form of nullification. Nullification, in this context, refers to a state’s attempt to declare a federal law void within its borders. A state could do this by obstructing federal officials from enforcing federal immigration laws because it considers those laws unconstitutional. The federal government does not have the right to violate the United States Constitution, but a state could challenge an action it sees as unconstitutional either in federal court or by initiating an attempt to change the law.
The Southern states were not always enforcing federal tariffs before the Civil War. They were not producing many manufactured goods compared to the North and they didn’t want to pay reciprocal tariffs charged on their agricultural goods, such as cotton. The federal government’s authority over states was not firmly established until after the Civil War.
The Supreme Court rejected the theory of nullification, specifically in the 1859 case of Ableman v. Booth and the 1958 case of Cooper v. Aaron. In Ableman v. Booth, the Court rejected Wisconsin’s attempt to nullify the Fugitive Slave Act. In Cooper v. Aaron, the Court held that states could not nullify federal law, specifically in the context of school desegregation following the Brown v. Board of Education decision. The Supreme Court’s decisions have consistently affirmed the principle of federal supremacy and the federal judiciary’s authority to interpret the Constitution.
California Like the South Before the Civil War
California in the present operates in accordance with the South before the Civil War, when it would not pay the federal tariffs on manufactured goods. In recent days, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, said that President Trump wanted “Civil War on the streets” of Los Angeles. The state of California under Newsom failed to protect federal law enforcement, so President Trump called the California National Guard to protect them. California and Newsom are nullifying federal laws.
35th Anniversary of the Church I Planted in California, pt. 2
Every true church starts by the grace of God and under the headship of Jesus Christ. The Apostle Paul wrote and I echo his belief in 1 Corinthians 15:10:
But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but I laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.
He described in part his planting of the church at Corinth, a New Testament church under the authority of Jesus Christ.
My first church was a Baptist church, First Baptist Church of Covington, Indiana. As a 12 year old, I joined Maranatha Baptist Church in Covington. Later that year, I gave a public testimony of salvation to become a member of Calvary Baptist Church in Watertown, Wisconsin. For three months after my last year of graduate school, I became a part of Lehigh Valley Baptist Church in Emmaus, Pennsylvania. I came back to Calvary in Watertown for two years before joining Emmanuel Baptist Church in Elkhorn, WI.
One of my college professors, the late Richard Weeks, allegedly had the largest personal Baptist history library in the world. He accumulated a huge collection of old, out-of-print Baptist books available for his students to read. The bookstore sold Baptist books, required for outside reading. My college reprinted the two volume A History of Baptists by Thomas Armitage. The textbook for Baptist History was John T. Christian‘s, A History of Baptists. We read books by Roy Mason, S. E. Anderson, Chester Tulga, J. M. Carroll, and B. H. Carroll.
I was and am a Baptist. I believe that there have been true churches in perpetuity since the first church in Jerusalem, known by different names. They began calling those churches, Baptist churches. Certain distinctives characterize those churches, the first of which is the Bible is their sole authority for faith and practice. They are also separatist, separated personally and ecclesiastically. True Baptist churches are the Lord’s churches.
Three different summers I traveled to 70-80 churches out West. I witnessed firsthand the dearth of true, biblical churches in the San Francisco Bay Area. Both the teaching of Romans 15:20 and the obvious need to preach the gospel to every creature (Mark 16:15) worked on me toward the idea of starting a church in the San Francisco Bay Area, Romans 15:20 reading:
Yea, so have I strived to preach the gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I should build upon another man’s foundation.
It was not my desire to go somewhere where I believed the gospel was already being preached. With 40 million people in California and 7.75 million people in the San Francisco Bay Area, in my lifetime I would not run out of the opportunity to preach to people who had not heard, no matter how hard I worked. The Bay Area is also a transient society with a huge turnover. Every 5-10 years, new people or families occupy the same apartments or houses. Even if most didn’t listen or were hostile to the gospel, some would.
From my own observation, professing Christians were not bumping into each other and scrambling all over the Bay Area, like ants on an anthill, to preach the gospel to those who haven’t heard. I didn’t know how they would react, but I was optimistic. I theorized that the Bay Area was so bad, as bad as people think or worse, because not much preaching occurred there. Before fire fell like Sodom and Gomorrah, someone should make a greater attempt at preaching to it.
As I went to college in the early eighties, I heard very little exposition of scripture, except on the radio. I became convinced of exposition as superior or even God’s will for preaching and dedicated myself to its practice. Exposition became my belief for or philosophy of preaching. It was not until graduate school that I planned in the sense of preparing to preach exposition. Zooming forward to right now, I preached or taught through every word of the Bible over the thirty three years. Nothing had a greater impact toward success than the Word of God in its context.
I had decided that I would start the church with raising only limited support. I determined not to spend any extra time doing so. Instead, I would receive some money from churches and work a job. I had not heard the term, bivocational, but I did know the word, tentmaking. Rather than spend months waiting, I wanted to get going right away.
In May 1987, I knew the San Francisco Bay Area, but I wasn’t sure the exact location where I would begin. I drove out to California in a Dodge Omni my parents gave me, stopping in churches on the way. Once I arrived, I started scouting. I did that for one week. There was no internet. I couldn’t go online to find out about cities, towns, and other churches. Using paper maps, I went from one town to another, stopping at a phone booth to look for what churches were there in the yellow pages of phone books and took notes at each stop. I called churches at pay phones and talked to their leaders. I had a goal of finding towns with no Baptist church at all.
To Be Continued
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