Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions
Objective:
Students will analyze documents to identify how the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions laid the groundwork for Southern
Secession.
Document Analysis:
Studnets will be given three documents to anlayize in order to determine the impact that the Kentucky and Virginia
resolutions had on state’s rights issues leading up to southern secession. They will begin by reading the resolutions and
also the South Carolina Nullification Ordinance of 1832. Students will briefly pair up and discuss on what foundation the
southern states built their argument. (10th amendment)
They will then be given a political cartoon depicting Abe Lincoln as a school teacher holding a copy of the US
Constitution. He is scolding a few of his students, who are southern leaders. Once again, have students pair up with the
same partner and discuss the cartoon and how Presidnet Lincoln felt about states rights and succession.
Once they have discussed these two issues have them individually write a paragraph explaining who they agree with and
why. They are not allowed to stradle the fence. They must pick a side and defend it.
Documents
Kentucky Resolution (1798)
That the several states composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited
submission to their general government; but that, by compact, under the style and title of a Constitution for the
United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes,
delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each state to itself, the residuary mass of right
to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its
acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each state acceded as a state, and is an
integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party; that this government, created by this compact,
was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself, since that would have
made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact
among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions
as of the mode and measure of redress.
Virginia Resolution of 1798
That this Assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government
as resulting from the compact to which the states are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the
instrument constituting that compact, as no further valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in
that compact; and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable, and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by
the said compact, the states, who are parties thereto, have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for
arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights and
liberties, appertaining to them.
South Carolina Ordinance of Nullification, 1832
Whereas the Congress of the United States , by various acts, purporting to be acts laying duties and imposts on
foreign imports, but in reality intended for the protection of domestic manufactures, and the giving of bounties
to classes and individuals engaged in particular employments, at the expense and to the injury and oppression of
other classes and individuals... hath exceeded its just powers under the Constitution....
We, therefore the people of the state of South Carolina in Convention assembled, do declare and ordain .... laws
for the imposting of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities.... are unauthorized by the
Constitution of the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null, void, and no law,
nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens and all promises, contracts, and obligations, made or entered
into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by said acts, and all judicial
proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void.