Bluffton Movement

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The Bluffton Movement (1844), in the U.S. state of South Carolina, was an attempt to invoke "separate state action" against the tariff of 1842, after John Calhoun's failure to secure the presidential nomination and the Northern Democrats' abandonment of the South on the tariff had apparently destroyed hope for relief within the Democratic Party. Though many of the "Blufftonites" undoubtedly contemplated disunion, the object of their leader, Robert Barnwell Rhett, seems rather to have been a "reform" of the Union giving further safeguards to Southern interests. The movement collapsed within a short time, largely through its repudiation by Calhoun.

[edit] Source

  • Dictionary of American History by James Truslow Adams, New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1940