nt from Charleston to the new city of Columbia in the state's midlands. South Carolinians played a prominent role in antebellum regional and national politics. Andrew Jackson was born near the North Carolina border but claimed South Carolina as his native state. John C. Calhoun served as secretary of war before becoming vice president of the United States in 1824. Calhoun emerged as the preeminent political theorist of state's rights when South Carolina nullified federal tariffs in 1832. The state thereafter was in the lead in resisting the threat to southern institutions from abolitionists and a stronger federal government and was the first to secede from the Union when it ratified the Ordinance of Secession on December 20, 1860....
