From 1828 to 1834, South Carolina was wracked by the Nullification Crisis. During Andrew Jackson’s presidency, Americans faced progressively higher tariffs until 1828, which raised the tariff up to 50% on certain raw materials. In response to the tariff, foreign countries blocked American cotton sales, damaging the southern economy. John C. Calhoun, a South Carolinian and Andrew Jackson’s vice-president running mate, criticized the tariff in his pamphlet, South Carolina Exposition and Protest. Calhoun and his supporters claimed that the tariff disproportionately hurt the South, which northerners intended as a step to fight against slavery: if South Carolinians lacked money, they could not invest so heavily in enslaved people. To protect slavery, he argued South Carolina should nullify the tariff; the pamphlet thus established nullification and secession as the groundwork for states’ rights political platforms. Lowcountry South Carolinians widely supported Calhoun, but those in the upcountry actively formed the Unionist Party, which emphasized loyalty to the Union and criticized the power of a few lowcountry elite politicians. Calhoun’s party ultimately succeeded in passing nullification, and Jackson responded with the Wilkins Act, which bolstered his power to implement the tariff in South Carolina. Ultimately, nullifiers accepted a compromise tariff in 1833, but the crisis laid a foundation for political tensions later central to the Civil War in South Carolina.