Perhaps it’s asking too much for Tennessee lawmakers to have an awareness and appreciation of the past, since many don’t seem to have much of a grasp on the present. Still, you’d think they might have a certain familiarity with events involving Tennessee’s favorite White House occupant.

No. Not the Orange Guy. Andrew Jackson.

Here’s the situation: There’s a measure before the General Assembly now that would set up a process by which Tennessee could determine that “a federal law, rule, or executive order is unconstitutional under the Constitution of the United States.”

It would start with a joint resolution by the legislature, which would be passed along to the governor. If the governor then, in consultation with the attorney general, agreed with the legislature’s assessment, he or she “may nullify the law, rule, or executive order for purposes of rendering it unenforceable within the state.”

Does the notion of a state attempting to invalidate federal edicts sound at all familiar?

I’ll help.

Back in 1828, the relatively new federal government passed tariffs on some imported goods, an action that mostly served the interests of Northern industries.

Southerners generally took exception to what was, for them, higher prices for no good reason. A new, compromise Tariff Act of 1832 appeased some, but not all. Jackson supported both tariff measures.

Chief among the objectors was South Carolina. In November 1832, its legislature passed an ordinance of nullification, declaring both tariff acts “null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens.”

Did I mention that John C. Calhoun, a South Carolinian who was vice president during Jackson’s first term, was a driving – though sometimes unseen – force behind his home state’s opposition? Or that he was so at odds with Jackson over tariffs that he resigned in the summer of 1832?

I think I won’t get into that.

Jackson did not take kindly to South Carolina’s rebelliousness and, in response, issued his Nullification Proclamation in December 1832.

As you probably know, Jackson has suffered some in public esteem of late, owing largely to his policies regarding people with darker skins than his own, including owning some of them. But his response to nullification was good, solid stuff. Here he lays out South Carolina’s faulty premise:

“The ordinance is founded, not on the indefeasible right of resisting acts which are plainly unconstitutional, and too oppressive to be endured, but on the strange position that any one State may not only declare an act of Congress void, but prohibit its execution – that they may do this consistently with the Constitution – that the true construction of that instrument permits a State to retain its place in the Union, and yet be bound by no other of its laws than those it may choose to consider as constitutional.”

And here he offers his assessment of South Carolina’s defiance:

“I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”

I suspect Jackson had some help with the composition and editing of that work, since everything is spelled correctly and there are no cuss words. But I like it a lot, and so did he, apparently, because he displayed a copy of it in his Nashville home, The Hermitage. What is believed to be that copy is there today.

South Carolina, standing virtually alone, ultimately retreated from defiance, and yet another compromise tariff act helped soothe matters. Until the Civil War, which involved an even bigger constitutional overreach.

A difference between South Carolina’s efforts way back when and Tennessee’s today is that the current Tennessee legislation cites no particular federal action that it takes issue with. Rather, it’s a blank check for any and all federal dealings that legislators might object to.

Which, for me, calls to mind an old saying that I think Old Hickory would agree with: Don’t let your mouth write a check that your @$$ can’t cash.

Joe Rogers is a former writer for The Tennessean and editor for The New York Times. He is retired and living in Nashville. He can be reached at [email protected]