On the two ends of the scale are the northern states that are in less need for slaves and believed that if they were property that they should not count as part of the population, and the southern states whose economy would be nonexistent without the labor. What became negotiated from the opposition was the agreement to count all slaves as 3/5 of a person when voting. Ultimately, this convention, and the decisions brought forth from it, was the inspiration to lead our founders to draft our United States Constitution. .
In 1828, Vice President (and South Carolina native) John C. Calhoun disgustedly tagged the protective tariff of 1816 on imported goods the Tariff of Abominations. This tariff, after being increased several times, posed a pressure of brimming proportions upon the south to compete in the agricultural world market by reducing the amount of trade with Britain. This forced the south to purchase manufactured goods from the north for higher prices which in turn made the north richer. Calhoun, being loyal to his state and to the Constitution, came up with a nullification theory and stated that any state had the right to secede from the union. Senator Robert Hayne empathized with Calhoun and denounced the tariff saying " It is the principle involved in the contest - a principle, which substituting the discretion of Congress for the limitations of the constitution, brings the States and the people to the feet of the federal government, and leaves them nothing they can call their own." The government, eager to preserve the union, issued two tariffs after Calhoun's resignation in 1832, which South Carolina voided. In 1833, President Jackson proposed a Force Tariff of 1833 which would allow the US to send troops to South Carolina to enforce the tariff of 1828. Stepping in, negotiator Henry Clay proposed a tariff to lower duties over a ten year period, which temporarily appeased the states and postponed an inevitable civil war.
