Nullification means insurrection and war and the other states have a right to put it down.

This line is associated with President Andrew Jackson’s response to the Nullification Crisis (1832–1833), when South Carolina declared the federal tariff laws “null and void” within the state and threatened secession. Jackson, a strong nationalist despite his states’-rights rhetoric in other contexts, treated nullification as a direct challenge to the Union’s authority and to constitutional government. In late 1832 he issued a formal proclamation denouncing nullification and prepared to enforce federal law, including seeking congressional authority in the Force Bill (1833). The crisis eased only after a negotiated tariff compromise, but Jackson’s stance set an important precedent for federal supremacy and resistance to unilateral state defiance.

The statement frames “nullification” not as a legitimate constitutional remedy but as a step toward rebellion: if a state may unilaterally void federal law, the Union becomes a mere voluntary association, enforceable only at each state’s pleasure. Jackson’s language collapses the distance between legal theory and armed conflict—“insurrection and war”—arguing that the practical outcome of nullification is coercive confrontation. By adding that “the other states have a right to put it down,” he asserts a collective national interest in preserving the Union and the rule of federal law. The quote encapsulates the early nineteenth-century clash between compact theory and federal supremacy that foreshadowed later sectional conflict.