This book asks the questions: if Nullification was constitutional and an American not Southern or sectional principle of republican and federal government, what happened to it? How did it come to be viewed as something unconstitutional, sinister, and even disunionist? This second volume of
Nullification, A Constitutional History, 1787-1828
is the first to answer this critical question. After tracing the origins of the first and second Nullification movements in America (Virginia in the 1790s and New England from 1808 to 1815) and characterizing them both to be defenses of the republic and its federal, not national character (with Nullification as a constitutional veto or negative given to the states for the preservation of their reserved rights), the early rejection of nullification as an original intention is then explained.