A typical complaint that someone from South Carolina might have had about the federal government during the Nullification Crisis of the 1830s was the belief that the federal government was overstepping its constitutional authority and imposing unjust tariffs on imported goods, particularly on South Carolina's key cash crop, cotton. South Carolinians argued that these protective tariffs favored Northern manufacturing states at the expense of Southern agricultural states. They saw it as an unfair economic burden that hindered their ability to trade freely and made their products less competitive in the global market. Consequently, they believed that the federal government's actions were unconstitutional and violated the principles of state sovereignty outlined in the Tenth Amendment.
