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WIKINOMICS
How Mass Collaboration
Changes Everything
Don Tapscott
and Anthony D. Williams
Portfolio

PORTFOLIO
Published by the Penguin Group
Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700,
Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.)
Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Penguin Ireland, 25 St. Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd)
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Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd)
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park,
New Delhi-110 017, India
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Auckland 1310, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)
Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue,
Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices:
80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
First published in 2006 by Portfolio,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Copyright © Don Tapscott and Anthony D. Williams, 2006
All rights reserved
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA
Tapscott, Don, 1947-
Wikinomics : how mass collaboration changes everything / Don Tapscott and
Anthony D. Williams,
p. cm.
Includes index.
Contents: The art and science of peer production—The perfect storm—The
peer pioneers—Ideagoras—The prosumers—The new Alexandrians—Platforms for
participation—The global plant floor—The Wiki workplace—The collaborative mind.
ISBN 978-1-59184-138-8
1. Business networks. 2. Creative ability in business. I. Williams, Anthony D.
II. Title.
HD69.S8T37 2007
658'.046—dc22 2006051390
Printed in the United States of America
Set in Janson Text with Daily News
Designed by Daniel Lagin
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication
may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any
form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise),
without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher
of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other
means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please pur-
chase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic
piracy of copyrightable materials. Your support of the authors' rights is appreciated.

We dedicate this book to our children, Alex and Niki Tapscott
and Immanuel Williams. We hope that it helps our generation open up
the economy to yours.

CONTENTS
Introduction
Subtitles
1. Wikinomics
2. The Perfect Storm
3. The Peer Pioneers
4.Ideagoras
5. The Prosumers
6. The New Alexandrians
7. Platforms for Participation
8. The Global Plant Floor
9. The Wiki Workplace
10. Collaborative Minds
11. The Wikinomics Playbook
Acknowledgments
Notes
Index
1
5
7
34
65
97
124
151
183
213
239
268
291
293
297
315

INTRODUCTION
Throughout history corporations have organized themselves according
to strict hierarchical lines of authority. Everyone was a subordinate to
someone else—employees versus managers, marketers versus customers,
producers versus supply chain subcontractors, companies versus the com-
munity. There was always someone or some company in charge, controlling
things, at the "top" of the food chain. While hierarchies are not vanishing,
profound changes in the nature of technology, demographics, and the global
economy are giving rise to powerful new models of production based on
community, collaboration, and self-organization rather than on hierarchy
and control.
Millions of media buffs now use blogs, wikis, chat rooms, and personal
broadcasting to add their voices to a vociferous stream of dialogue and de-
bate called the "blogosphere." Employees drive performance by collabo-
rating with peers across organizational boundaries, creating what we call a
"wiki workplace." Customers become "prosumers" by cocreating goods
and services rather than simply consuming the end product. So-called sup-
ply chains work more effectively when the risk, reward, and capability to
complete major projects—including massively complex products like cars,
motorcycles, and airplanes—are distributed across planetary networks of
partners who work as peers.
Smart companies are encouraging, rather than fighting, the heaving
growth of massive online communities—many of which emerged from
the fringes of the Web to attract tens of millions of participants overnight.
Even ardent competitors are collaborating on path-breaking scientific ini-
tiatives that accelerate discovery in their industries. Indeed, as a growing
number of firms see the benefits of mass collaboration, this new way of

2 * W I K I N O M 1 C S
organizing will eventually displace the traditional corporate structures as
the economy's primary engine of wealth creation.
Already this new economic model extends beyond software, music,
publishing, pharmaceuticals, and other bellwethers to virtually every part
of the global economy. But as this process unravels, many managers have
concluded that the new mass collaboration is far from benign. Some critics
look at successful "open source" projects such as Linux and Wikipedia, for
example, and assume they are an attack on the legitimate right and need of
companies to make a profit. Others see this new cornucopia of participa-
tion in the economy as a threat to their very existence (has anyone bought
a music CD lately?).
We paint a very different picture with the evidence we have accumu-
lated in this book. Yes, there are examples of pain and suffering in indus-
tries and firms that have so far failed to grasp the new economic logic. But
the forthcoming pages are filled with many tales of how ordinary people
and firms are linking up in imaginative new ways to drive innovation and
success. A number of these stories revolve around the explosive growth of
phenomena such as MySpace, InnoCentive, flickr, Second Life, YouTube,
and the Human Genome Project. These organizations are harnessing mass
collaboration to create real value for participants and have enjoyed phe-
nomenal successes as a result.
Many mature firms are benefiting from this new business paradigm,
and we share their stories too. Companies such as Boeing, BMW, and Proc-
ter & Gamble have been around for the better part of a century. And yet
these organizations and their leaders have seized on collaboration and self-
organization as powerful new levers to cut costs, innovate faster, cocreate
with customers and partners, and generally do whatever it takes to usher
their organizations into the twehty-first-century business environment.
This book, too, is the product of several long-running collaborations.
In the last few years the New Paradigm team has conducted several large
multiclient investigations to understand how the new Web (sometimes
called the Web 2.0) changes the corporation and how companies innovate,
build relationships, market, and compete.
A $3 million study in 2000-2001 examined the rise of an increasingly
mobile and pervasive Web and its impact on business models.1
In 2003 we
raised $2 million to study Web-enabled transparency as a new force to

I N T R O D U C T I O N « 3
foster powerful networked businesses and trust.2
In 2004-2005 a $4 mil-
lion program explored how new technology and collaborative models
change business designs and competitive dynamics.3
The conclusion from all of this work is striking and enormously posi-
tive. Billions of connected individuals can now actively participate in inno-
vation, wealth creation, and social development in ways we once only
dreamed of. And when these masses of people collaborate they collectively
can advance the arts, culture, science, education, government, and the econ-
omy in surprising but ultimately profitable ways. Companies that engage
with these exploding Web-enabled communities are already discovering the
true dividends of collective capability and genius.
To succeed, it will not be sufficient to simply intensify existing man-
agement strategies. Leaders must think differently about how to compete
and be profitable, and embrace a new art and science of collaboration we
call wikinomics. This is more than open source, social networking, so-
called crowdsourcing, smart mobs, crowd wisdom, or other ideas that
touch upon the subject. Rather, we are talking about deep changes in the
structure and modus operandi of the corporation and our economy, based
on new competitive principles such as openness, peering, sharing, and act-
ing globally.
The results of this foundational research are proprietary to the mem-
bers that funded it, including more than one hundred in-depth reports and
countless executive briefings, seminars, and workshops. However, our work
with these companies inspired us to devote weekends and evenings to write a
book that would take this work to the next level and inspire a broad audi-
ence to apply its ideas, frameworks, and guidelines. We conducted more
than one hundred interviews and discussions with key players in this revo-
lution. Unless otherwise footnoted, all quotes in this book come from
these conversations.
In the process, we, as authors, learned something about collaboration
too. We authored these pages on separate continents, with Don working
primarily from Toronto, Canada, and Anthony based in London, England.
When we were both working on the manuscript at the same time we hooked
up with a Skype connection, talking, exchanging material, or being silent as
appropriate. At times it felt like we were in the same room.
We have also collaborated intensely with more than one hundred

4 « W I K I N O M I C S
leading thinkers and practitioners. Their roles in bringing this book to life
are graciously acknowledged at the end of the book. In one interesting
twist we decided that the best way to come up with a great subtitle was to
hold an open discussion on the Web. Within twenty-four hours we had
dozens of great subtitle suggestions—the best of which are listed on the
Subtitles page.
Most notably, with Wikinomics we're making a modest attempt to rein-
vent the concept of a book. You'll note that the final chapter, The Wiki-
nomics Playbook, has only fifteen words: "Join us in peer producing the
definitive guide to twenty-first-century strategy on www.wikinomics.com."
It is our hope that this book will transcend its physical form to become a
living, real-time, collaborative document, cocreated by leading thinkers.
As such, we view the book as a call to arms to create a wikinomics commu-
nity. And we hope that the book and community will be uniquely helpful
to corporate practitioners and anyone who wants to participate in the
economy in new ways.

SUBTITLES
Books have a title page. This is our subtitle page. In what we believe to
be a first, we're listing a few of our favorite suggestions for subtitles
gleaned from a public online discussion held the week of June 2, 2006. We
received more than one hundred great suggestions in the first forty-eight
hours. To our collaborators—you know who you are—we extend our most
sincere thanks.
Edit This Book!
The Dividends of Collective Genius
We the People
Business (The Remix)
The New World of Collaborative Production
Peer Innovation in the Age of MySpace, Linux, and Wikipedia
Profiting from Collaborative Anarchy
Please Register to Participate
The Power of Us
Creating a New Page in Business History
Unleashing Our Collective Genius
This Book Is a Stub
Harnessing the Power of Your Peers
(Your Input Needed Here)*
Peer-Powered Profit in Life, Business, and Individual Choice
The Peer Advantage: Myth or Magic?
Peer Producing the Future

1. WIKINOMICS
The Art and Science of Peer Production
It was late in the afternoon, on a typically harsh Canadian winter day,
as Rob McEwen, the CEO of Goldcorp Inc., stood at the head of the
boardroom table confronting a room full of senior geologists. The news
he was about to deliver was not good. In fact it was disastrous, and McEwen
was having a hard time shielding his frustration.
The small Toronto-based gold-mining firm was struggling, besieged by
strikes, lingering debts, and an exceedingly high cost of production, which
had caused them to cease mining operations. Conditions in the marketplace
were hardly favorable. The gold market was contracting, and most analysts
assumed that the company's fifty-year-old mine in Red Lake, Ontario, was
dying. Without evidence of substantial new gold deposits, the mine seemed
destined for closure, and Goldcorp was likely to go down with it.
Tensions were running at fever pitch. McEwen had no real experience
in the extractive industries, let alone in gold mining. Nevertheless, as an
adventurous young mutual fund manager he had gotten involved in a
takeover battle and emerged as Goldcorp Inc.'s majority owner. Few peo-
ple in the room had much confidence that McEwen was the right person to
rescue the company. But McEwen just shrugged off his critics.
He turned to his geologists and said, "We're going to find more gold on
this properly, and we won't leave this room tonight until we have a plan to
find it." At the conclusion of the meeting he handed his geologists $10 mil-
lion for further exploration and sent them packing for Northern Ontario.
Most of his staff thought he was crazy but they carried out his instruc-
tions, drilling in the deepest and most remote parts of the mine. Amazingly,
a few weeks later they arrived back at Goldcorp headquarters beaming
with pride and bearing a remarkable discovery: Test drilling suggested rich

8 § W I K I N O M 1 C S
deposits of new gold, as much as thirty times the amount Goldcorp was
currently mining!
The discovery was surprising, and could hardly have been better timed.
But after years of further exploration, and to McEwen's deep frustration,
the company's geologists struggled to provide an accurate estimate of the
gold's value and exact location. He desperately needed to inject the urgency
of the market into the glacial processes of an old-economy industry.
In 1999, with the future still uncertain, McEwen took some time out for
personal development. He wound up at an MIT conference for young pres-
idents when coincidentally the subject of Linux came up. Perched in the lec-
ture hall, McEwen listened intently to the remarkable story of how Linus
Torvalds and a loose volunteer brigade of software developers had assembled
the world-class computer operating system over the Internet. The lecturer
explained how Torvalds revealed his code to the world, allowing thousands
of anonymous programmers to vet it and make contributions of their own.
McEwen had an epiphany and sat back in his chair to contemplate. If
Goldcorp employees couldn't find the Red Lake gold, maybe someone else
could. And maybe the key to finding those people was to open up the ex-
ploration process in the same way Torvalds "open sourced" Linux.
McEwen raced back to Toronto to present the idea to his head geolo-
gist. "I'd like to take all of our geology, all the data we have that goes back
to 1948, and put it into a file and share it with the world," he said. "Then
we'll ask the world to tell us where we're going to find the next six million
ounces of gold." McEwen saw this as an opportunity to harness some of
the best minds in the industry. Perhaps understandably, the in-house geol-
ogists were just a little skeptical.
Mining is an intensely secretive industry, and apart from the minerals
themselves, geological data is the most precious and carefully guarded re-
source. It's like the Cadbury secret—it's just not something companies go
around sharing. Goldcorp employees wondered whether the global com-
munity of geologists would respond to Goldcorp's call in the same way
that software developers rallied around Linus Torvalds. Moreover, they
worried about how the contest would reflect on them and their inability to
find the illusive gold deposits.
McEwen acknowledges in retrospect that the strategy was controversial
and risky. "We were attacking a fundamental assumption; you simply don't

W I K I N O M I C S » 9
give away proprietary data," he said. "It's so fundamental," he adds, "that no
one had ever questioned it." Once again, McEwen was determined to sol-
dier on.
In March 2000, the "Goldcorp Challenge" was launched with a total
of $575,000 in prize money available to participants with the best methods
and estimates. Every scrap of information (some four hundred megabytes
worth) about the 55,000-acre property was revealed on Goldcorp's Web
site. News of the contest spread quickly around the Internet, as more than
one thousand virtual prospectors from fifty countries got busy crunching
the data.
Wthin weeks, submissions from around the world came flooding in to
Goldcorp headquarters. As expected, geologists got involved. But entries
came from surprising sources, including graduate students, consultants,
mathematicians, and military officers, all seeking a piece of the action. "We
had applied math, advanced physics, intelligent systems, computer graphics,
and organic solutions to inorganic problems. There were capabilities I had
never seen before in die industry," says McEwen. "When I saw the computer
graphics I almost fell out of my chair." The contestants had identified 110
targets on the Red Lake property, 50 percent of which had not been previ-
ously identified by the company. Over 80 percent of the new targets yielded
substantial quantities of gold. In fact, since the challenge was initiated an as-
tounding eight million ounces of gold have been found. McEwen estimates
the collaborative process shaved two to three years off their exploration time.
Today Goldcorp is reaping the fruits of its open source approach to
exploration. Not only did the contest yield copious quantities of gold, it
catapulted his underperforming $100 million company into a $9 billion jug-
gernaut while transforming a backward mining site in Northern Ontario
into one of the most innovative and profitable properties in the industry.
Needless to say McEwen is one happy camper. As are his shareholders. One
hundred dollars invested in the company in 1993 is worth over $3,000 today.
Perhaps the most lasting legacy of the Goldcorp Challenge is the vali-
dation of an ingenious approach to exploration in what remains a conserva-
tive and highly secretive industry. Rob McEwen bucked an industry trend
by sharing the company's proprietary data and simultaneously transformed
a lumbering exploration process into a modern distributed gold discovery
engine that harnessed some of the most talented minds in the field.

10 » W I K I N O M I C S
McEwen saw things differently. He realized the uniquely qualified
minds to make new discoveries were probably outside the boundaries of
his organization, and by sharing some intellectual property he could har-
ness the power of collective genius and capability. In doing so he stumbled
successfully into the future of innovation, business, and how wealth and
just about everything else will be created. Welcome to the new world of
wikinomics where collaboration on a mass scale is set to change every in-
stitution in society.
THE NEW W O R L D OF WIKINOMICS
Due to deep changes in technology, demographics, business, the economy,
and the world, we are entering a new age where people participate in the
economy like never before. This new participation has reached a tipping
point where new forms of mass collaboration are changing how goods and
services are invented, produced, marketed, and distributed on a global
basis. This change presents far-reaching opportunities for every com-
pany and for every person who gets connected.
In the past, collaboration was mostly small scale. It was something that
took place among relatives, friends, and associates in households, communi-
ties, and workplaces. In relatively rare instances, collaboration approached
mass scale, but this was mainly in short bursts of political action. Think
of the Vietnam-era war protests or, more recently, about the raucous
antiglobalization rallies in Seattle, Turin, and Washington. Never before,
however, have individuals had the power or opportunity to link up in loose
networks of peers to produce goods and services in a very tangible and
ongoing way.
Most people were confined to relatively limited economic roles,
whether as passive consumers of mass-produced products or employees
trapped deep within organizational bureaucracies where the boss told
them what to do. Even their elected representatives barely concealed their
contempt for bottom-up participation in decision making. In all, too many
people were bypassed in the circulation of knowledge, power, and capital,
and thus participated at the economy's margins.
Today the tables are turning. The growing accessibility of information
technologies puts the tools required to collaborate, create value, and com-

W I K I N O M I C S * 11
pete at everybody's fingertips. This liberates people to participate in inno-
vation and wealth creation within every sector of the economy. Millions of
people already join forces in self-organized collaborations that produce
dynamic new goods and services that rival those of the world's largest and
best-financed enterprises. This new mode of innovation and value creation
is called "peer production," or peering—which describes what happens
when masses of people and firms collaborate openly to drive innovation
and growth in their industries.1
Some examples of peer production have recently become household
names. As of August 2006, the online networking extravaganza MySpace
had one hundred million users—growing a half a million a week—whose
personal musings, connections, and profiles are the primary engines of
value creation on the site. MySpace, YouTube, Linux, and Wikipedia—
today's exemplars of mass collaboration—are just the beginning; a few fa-
miliar characters in the opening pages of the first chapter in a long-running
saga that will change many aspects of how the economy operates. In the
forthcoming pages of this book we describe seven unique forms of peer
production that are making the economy more dynamic and productive.
Along the way we offer engaging stories for the casual reader and great in-
sights for the businessperson seeking to harness this new force in their
business.
Age of Participation
Call them the "weapons of mass collaboration." New low-cost collaborative
infrastructures—from free Internet telephony to open source software to
global outsourcing platforms—allow thousands upon thousands of individu-
als and small producers to cocreate products, access markets, and delight
customers in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past.
This is giving rise to new collaborative capabilities and business models that
will empower the prepared firm and destroy those that fail to adjust.
The upheaval occurring right now in media and entertainment pro-
vides an early example of how mass collaboration is turning the economy
upside down. Once a bastion of "professionalism," credentialed knowl-
edge producers share the stage with "amateur" creators who are disrupting
every activity they touch. Tens of millions of people share their news, in-

1 2 » W I K I N O M I C S
formation, and views in the blogosphere, a self-organized network of over
50 million personal commentary sites that are updated every second of the
day.2
Some of the largest weblogs (or blogs for short) receive a half a mil-
lion daily visitors,3
rivaling some daily newspapers. Now audioblogs, pod-
casts, and mobile photo blogs are adding to a dynamic, up-to-the-minute
stream of person-to-person news and information delivered free over
the Web.
Individuals now share knowledge, computing power, bandwidth, and
other resources to create a wide array of free and open source goods and
services that anyone can use or modify. What's more, people can con-
tribute to the "digital commons" at very little cost to themselves, which
makes collective action much more attractive. Indeed, peer production is a
very social activity. All one needs is a computer, a network connection, and
a bright spark of initiative and creativity to join in the economy.
These new collaborations will not only serve commercial interests,
they will help people do public-spirited things like cure genetic diseases,
predict global climate change, and find new planets and stars. Researchers
at Olson Laboratory, for example, use a massive supercomputer to evaluate
drug candidates that might one day cure AIDS. This is no ordinary super-
computer, however. Their FightAIDS@home initiative is part of the World
Community Grid, a global network where millions of individual computer
users donate their spare computing power via the Internet to form one of
the world's most powerful computing platforms.
These changes, among others, are ushering us toward a world where
knowledge, power, and productive capability will be more dispersed than
at any time in our history—a world where value creation will be fast, fluid,
and persistently disruptive. A world where only the connected will survive.
A power shift is underway, and a tough new business rule is emerging: Har-
ness the new collaboration or perish. Those who fail to grasp this will find
themselves ever more isolated—cut off from the networks that are shar-
ing, adapting, and updating knowledge to create value.
This might sound like hyperbole, but it's not. Consider some additional
ways ordinary citizens can now participate in the global body economique.
Rather than just read a book, you can write one. Just log on to
Wikipedia—a collaboratively created encyclopedia, owned by no one and
authored by tens of thousands of enthusiasts. With five full-time employ-

W I K I N O M I C S • 13
ees, it is ten times bigger than Encyclopedia Britannica and roughly the same
in accuracy.4
It runs on a wild, software that enables users to edit the con-
tent of Web pages. Despite the risks inherent in an open encyclopedia in
which everyone can add their views, and constant battles with detractors
and saboteurs, Wikipedia continues to grow rapidly in scope, quality, and
traffic. The English-language version has more than a million entries, and
there are ninety-two sister sites in languages ranging from Polish and Japa-
nese to Hebrew and Catalan.
Or perhaps your thing is chemistry. Indeed, if you're a retired, unem-
ployed, or aspiring chemist, Procter & Gamble needs your help. The pace
of innovation has doubled in its industry in the past five years alone, and
now its army of 7,500 researchers is no longer enough to sustain its lead.
Rather than hire more researchers, CEO A. G. Lafley instructed business
unit leaders to source 50 percent of their new product and service ideas
from outside the company. Now you can work for P&G without being on
their payroll. Just register on the InnoCentive network where you and
ninety thousand other scientists around the world can help solve tough
R&D problems for a cash reward. InnoCentive is only one of many revo-
lutionary marketplaces matching scientists to R&D challenges presented
by companies in search of innovation. P&G and thousands of other com-
panies look to these marketplaces for ideas, inventions, and uniquely qual-
ified minds that can unlock new value in their markets.
Media buffs are similarly empowered. Rather than consume the TV
news, you can now create it, along with thousands of independent citizen
journalists who are turning the profession upside down. Tired of the famil-
iar old faces and blather on network news? Turn off your TV, pick up a
video camera and some cheap editing software, and create a news feature for
Current TV, a new national cable and satellite network created almost en-
tirely by amateur contributors. Though the contributors are unpaid volun-
teers, the content is surprisingly good. Current TV provides online tutorials
for camera operation and storytelling techniques, and their guidelines for
creating stories help get participants started. Viewers vote on which stories
go to air, so only the most engaging material makes prime time.
Finally, a young person in India, China, Brazil, or any one of a number
of emerging Eastern European countries can now do what their parents
only dreamed of by joining the global economy on an equal footing. You

14 » W I K I N O M I C S
might be in a call center in Bangalore that takes food orders for a drive-
through restaurant in Los Angeles. Or you could find yourself working in
Foxconn's new corporate city in the Schenzen province of China, where a
decade ago farmers tilled the land with oxen. Today 180,000 people work,
live, learn, and play on Foxconn's massive high-tech campus, designing and
building consumer electronics for teenagers around the globe.
For incumbents in every industry this new cornucopia of participa-
tion and collaboration is both exhilarating and alarming. As New Para-
digm executive David Ticoll argues, "Not all examples of self-organization
are benign, or exploitable. Within a single industry the development of
opportunities for self-organized collaboration can be beneficial, neutral,
or highly competitive to individual firms, or some combination of at least
two of these." Publishers found this out the hard way. Blogs, wikis, chat
rooms, search engines, advertising auctions, peer-to-peer downloading,
and personal broadcasting represent new ways to entertain, communi-
cate, and transact. In each instance the traditionally passive buyers of ed-
itorial and advertising take active, participatory roles in value creation.
Some of these grassroots innovations pose dire threats to existing busi-
ness models.
Publishers of music, literature, movies, software, and television are
like proverbial canaries in a coal mine—the first casualties of a revolution
that is sweeping across all industries. Many enfeebled titans of the indus-
trial economy feel threatened. Despite heroic efforts to change, they re-
main shackled by command-and-control legacies. Companies have spent
the last three decades remolding their operations to compete in a hyper-
competitive economy—ripping costs out of their businesses at every op-
portunity; trying to become more "customer-friendly"; assembling global
production networks; and scattering their bricks-and-mortar R&D organi-
zations around the world.
Now, to great chagrin, industrial-era titans are learning that the real
revolution is just getting started. Except this time the competition is no
longer their arch industry rivals; it's the uberconnected, amorphous mass
of self-organized individuals that is gripping their economic needs firmly
in one hand, and their economic destinies in the other. "We the People" is
no longer just a political expression—a hopeful ode to the power of "the
masses"; it's also an apt description of how ordinary people, as employees,

W I K I N O M I C S 1
1
1 15
consumers, community members, and taxpayers now have the power to in-
novate and to create value on the global stage.
For smart companies, the rising tide of mass collaboration offers vast
opportunity. As the Goldcorp story denotes, even the oldest of old econ-
omy industries can harness this revolution to create value in unconven-
tional ways. Companies can reach beyond their walls to sow the seeds of
innovation and harvest a bountiful crop. Indeed, firms that cultivate nim-
ble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators are positioned to
form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than
hierarchically organized businesses.
For individuals and small producers, this may be the birth of a new
era, perhaps even a golden one, on par with the Italian renaissance or the
rise of Athenian democracy. Mass collaboration across borders, disciplines,
and cultures is at once economical and enjoyable. We can peer produce an
operating system, an encyclopedia, the media, a mutual fund, and even
physical things like a motorcycle. We are becoming an economy unto
ourselves—a vast global network of specialized producers that swap and
exchange services for entertainment, sustenance, and learning. A new eco-
nomic democracy is emerging in which we all have a lead role.
Promise and Peril
Experience shows that the first wave of Internet-enabled change was tainted
by irrational exuberance. A sober analysis of today's trends reveals that this
new participation is both a blessing and a curse. Mass collaboration can
empower a growing cohort of connected individuals and organizations to
create extraordinary wealth and reach unprecedented heights in learning
and scientific discovery. If we are wise, we will harness this capability to
create opportunities for everyone and to carefully steward the planet's nat-
ural resources. But the new participation will also cause great upheaval, dis-
location, and danger for societies, corporations, and individuals that fail to
keep up with relentless change.
As with all previous economic revolutions, the demands on individu-
als, organizations, and nations will be intense, and at times traumatic, as
old industries and ways of life give way to new processes, technologies,
and business models. The playing field has been ripped wide open, and the

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over them if another national bank shall ever seek incorporation at
their hands.

CHAPTER LXXVIII.
NULLIFICATION ORDINANCE IN SOUTH
CAROLINA.
It has been seen that the whole question of the American system,
and especially its prominent feature of a high protective tariff, was
put in issue in the presidential canvass of 1832; and that the long
session of Congress of that year was occupied by the friends of this
system in bringing forward to the best advantage all its points, and
staking its fate upon the issue of the election. That issue was against
the system; and the Congress elections taking place
contemporaneously with the presidential were of the same character.
The fate of the American system was sealed. Its domination in
federal legislation was to cease. This was acknowledged on all
hands; and it was naturally expected that all the States, dissatisfied
with that system, would be satisfied with the view of its speedy and
regular extinction, under the legislation of the approaching session
of Congress; and that expectation was only disappointed in a single
State—that of South Carolina. She had held aloof from the
presidential election—throwing away her vote upon citizens who
were not candidates—and doing nothing to aid the election of
General Jackson, with whose success her interests and wishes were
apparently identified. Instead of quieting her apprehensions, and
moderating her passion for violent remedies, the success of the
election seemed to inflame them; and the 24th of November, just a
fortnight after the election which decided the fate of the tariff, she
issued her ordinance of nullification against it, taking into her own
hands the sudden and violent redress which she prescribed for
herself. That ordinance makes an era in the history of our Union,
which requires to be studied in order to understand the events of

the times, and the history of subsequent events. It was in these
words:
"ORDINANCE.
"An ordinance to nullify certain acts of the Congress of the
United States, purporting to be laws laying duties and imposts
on the importation of foreign commodities.
"Whereas the Congress of the United States, by various acts,
purporting to be acts laying duties and imposts on foreign
imports, but in reality intended for the protection of domestic
manufactures, and the giving of bounties to classes and
individuals engaged in particular employments, at the expense
and to the injury and oppression of other classes and
individuals, and by wholly exempting from taxation certain
foreign commodities, such as are not produced or manufactured
in the United States, to afford a pretext for imposing higher and
excessive duties on articles similar to those intended to be
protected, hath exceeded its just powers under the constitution,
which confers on it no authority to afford such protection, and
hath violated the true meaning and intent of the constitution,
which provides for equality in imposing the burdens of taxation
upon the several States and portions of the confederacy: And
whereas the said Congress, exceeding its just power to impose
taxes and collect revenue for the purpose of effecting and
accomplishing the specific objects and purposes which the
constitution of the United States authorizes it to effect and
accomplish, hath raised and collected unnecessary revenue for
objects unauthorized by the constitution.
"We, therefore, the people of the State of South Carolina, in
convention assembled, do declare and ordain, and it is hereby
declared and ordained, that the several acts and parts of acts of
the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the
imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign
commodities, and now having actual operation and effect within

the United States, and, more especially, an act entitled 'An act in
alteration of the several acts imposing duties on imports,'
approved on the nineteenth day of May, one thousand eight
hundred and twenty-eight, and also an act entitled 'An act to
alter and amend the several acts imposing duties on imports,'
approved on the fourteenth day of July, one thousand eight
hundred and thirty-two, are unauthorized by the constitution of
the United States, and violate the true meaning and intent
thereof, and are null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this
State, its officers or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and
obligations, made or entered into, or to be made or entered
into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by the said
acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in
affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void.
"And it is further ordained, that it shall not be lawful for any
of the constituted authorities, whether of this State or of the
United States, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the
said acts within the limits of this State; but it shall be the duty
of the legislature to adopt such measures and pass such acts as
may be necessary to give full effect to this ordinance, and to
prevent the enforcement and arrest the operation of the said
acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States
within the limits of this State, from and after the 1st day of
February next, and the duty of all other constituted authorities,
and of all persons residing or being within the limits of this
State, and they are hereby required and enjoined to obey and
give effect to this ordinance, and such acts and measures of the
legislature as may be passed or adopted in obedience thereto.
"And it is further ordained, that in no case of law or equity,
decided in the courts of this State, wherein shall be drawn in
question the authority of this ordinance, or the validity of such
act or acts of the legislature as may be passed for the purpose
of giving effect thereto, or the validity of the aforesaid acts of
Congress, imposing duties, shall any appeal be taken or allowed
to the Supreme Court of the United States, nor shall any copy of

the record be permitted or allowed for that purpose; and if any
such appeal shall be attempted to be taken, the courts of this
State shall proceed to execute and enforce their judgments,
according to the laws and usages of the State, without
reference to such attempted appeal, and the person or persons
attempting to take such appeal may be dealt with as for a
contempt of the court.
"And it is further ordained, that all persons now holding any
office of honor, profit, or trust, civil or military, under this State
(members of the legislature excepted), shall, within such time,
and in such manner as the legislature shall prescribe, take an
oath well and truly to obey, execute, and enforce this ordinance,
and such act or acts of the legislature as may be passed in
pursuance thereof, according to the true intent and meaning of
the same; and on the neglect or omission of any such person or
persons so to do, his or their office or offices shall be forthwith
vacated, and shall be filled up as if such person or persons were
dead or had resigned; and no person hereafter elected to any
office of honor, profit, or trust, civil or military (members of the
legislature excepted), shall, until the legislature shall otherwise
provide and direct, enter on the execution of his office, or be in
any respect competent to discharge the duties thereof, until he
shall, in like manner, have taken a similar oath; and no juror
shall be empannelled in any of the courts of this State, in any
cause in which shall be in question this ordinance, or any act of
the legislature passed in pursuance thereof, unless he shall first,
in addition to the usual oath, have taken an oath that he will
well and truly obey, execute, and enforce this ordinance, and
such act or acts of the legislature as may be passed to carry the
same into operation and effect, according to the true intent and
meaning thereof.
"And we, the people of South Carolina, to the end that it may
be fully understood by the government of the United States,
and the people of the co-States, that we are determined to
maintain this our ordinance and declaration, at every hazard, do

further declare that we will not submit to the application of
force, on the part of the federal government, to reduce this
State to obedience; but that we will consider the passage, by
Congress, of any act authorizing the employment of a military or
naval force against the State of South Carolina, her
constitutional authorities or citizens; or any act abolishing or
closing the ports of this State, or any of them, or otherwise
obstructing the free ingress and egress of vessels to and from
the said ports, or any other act on the part of the federal
government, to coerce the State, shut up her ports, destroy or
harass her commerce, or to enforce the acts hereby declared to
be null and void, otherwise than through the civil tribunals of
the country, as inconsistent with the longer continuance of
South Carolina in the Union; and that the people of this State
wilt thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further
obligation to maintain or preserve their political connection with
the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to
organize a separate government, and do all other acts and
things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.
"Done in convention at Columbia, the twenty-fourth day of
November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and thirty-two, and in the fifty-seventh year of the declaration of
the independence of the United States of America."
This ordinance placed the State in the attitude of open, forcible
resistance to the laws of the United States, to take effect on the first
day of February next ensuing—a period within which it was hardly
possible for the existing Congress, even if so disposed, to ameliorate
obnoxious laws; and a period a month earlier than the
commencement of the legal existence of the new Congress, on
which all reliance was placed. And, in the mean time, if any attempt
should be made in any way to enforce the obnoxious laws except
through her own tribunals sworn against them, the fact of such
attempt was to terminate the continuance of South Carolina in the
Union—to absolve her from all connection with the federal

government—and to establish her as a separate government, not
only unconnected with the United States, but unconnected with any
one State. This ordinance, signed by more than a hundred citizens of
the greatest respectability, was officially communicated to the
President of the United States; and a case presented to him to test
his patriotism, his courage, and his fidelity to his inauguration oath—
an oath taken in the presence of God and man, of Heaven and
earth, "to take care that the laws of the Union were faithfully
executed." That President was Jackson; and the event soon proved,
what in fact no one doubted, that he was not false to his duty, his
country, and his oath. Without calling on Congress for extraordinary
powers, he merely adverted in his annual message to the attitude of
the State, and proceeded to meet the exigency by the exercise of
the powers he already possessed.

CHAPTER LXXIX.
PROCLAMATION AGAINST NULLIFICATION.
The ordinance of nullification reached President Jackson in the
first days of December, and on the tenth of that month the
proclamation was issued, of which the following are the essential
and leading parts:
"Whereas a convention assembled in the State of South
Carolina have passed an ordinance, by which they declare 'that
the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United
States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and
imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and now
having actual operation and effect within the United States, and
more especially' two acts for the same purposes, passed on the
29th of May, 1828, and on the 14th of July, 1832, 'are
unauthorized by the constitution of the United States, and
violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null and
void, and no law,' nor binding on the citizens of that State, or its
officers: and by the said ordinance, it is further declared to be
unlawful for any of the constituted authorities of the State or of
the United States to enforce the payment of the duties imposed
by the said acts within the same State, and that it is the duty of
the legislature to pass such laws as may be necessary to give
full effect to the said ordinance:
"And whereas, by the said ordinance, it is further ordained,
that in no case of law or equity decided in the courts of said
State, wherein shall be drawn in question the validity of the said
ordinance, or of the acts of the legislature that may be passed
to give it effect, or of the said laws of the United States, no
appeal shall be allowed to the Supreme Court of the United

States, nor shall any copy of the record be permitted or allowed
for that purpose, and that any person attempting to take such
appeal shall be punished as for a contempt of court:
"And, finally, the said ordinance declares that the people of
South Carolina will maintain the said ordinance at every hazard;
and that they will consider the passage of any act, by Congress,
abolishing or closing the ports of the said State, or otherwise
obstructing the free ingress or egress of vessels to and from the
said ports, or any other act of the federal government to coerce
the State, shut up her ports, destroy or harass her commerce,
or to enforce the said acts otherwise than through the civil
tribunals of the country, as inconsistent with the longer
continuance of South Carolina in the Union; and that the people
of the said State will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from
all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political
connection with the people of the other States, and will
forthwith proceed to organize a separate government, and do all
other acts and things which sovereign and independent States
may of right do:
"And whereas the said ordinance prescribes to the people of
South Carolina a course of conduct in direct violation of their
duty as citizens of the United States, contrary to the laws of
their country, subversive of its constitution, and having for its
object the destruction of the Union—that Union which, coeval
with our political existence, led our fathers, without any other
ties to unite them than those of patriotism and a common
cause, through a sanguinary struggle to a glorious
independence—that sacred Union, hitherto inviolate, which,
perfected by our happy constitution, has brought us, by the
favor of Heaven, to a state of prosperity at home, and high
consideration abroad, rarely, if ever, equalled in the history of
nations: To preserve this bond of our political existence from
destruction, to maintain inviolate this state of national honor
and prosperity, and to justify the confidence my fellow-citizens
have reposed in me, I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United

States, have thought proper to issue this my proclamation,
stating my views of the constitution and laws applicable to the
measures adopted by the convention of South Carolina, and to
the reasons they have put forth to sustain them, declaring the
course which duty will require me to pursue, and, appealing to
the understanding and patriotism of the people, warn them of
the consequences that must inevitably result from an
observance of the dictates of the convention.
"Strict duty would require of me nothing more than the
exercise of those powers with which I am now, or may hereafter
be, invested, for preserving the peace of the Union, and for the
execution of the laws. But the imposing aspect which opposition
has assumed in this case, by clothing itself with State authority,
and the deep interest which the people of the United States
must all feel in preventing a resort to stronger measures, while
there is a hope that any thing will be yielded to reasoning and
remonstrance, perhaps demanded, and will certainly justify, a
full exposition to South Carolina and the nation of the views I
entertain of this important question, as well as a distinct
enunciation of the course which my sense of duty will require
me to pursue.
"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. It is true, they add, that to justify this
abrogation of a law, it must be palpably contrary to the
constitution; but it is evident, that to give the right of resisting
laws of that description, coupled with the uncontrolled right to
decide what laws deserve that character, is to give the power of
resisting all laws. For as, by the theory, there is no appeal, the

reasons alleged by the State, good or bad, must prevail. If it
should be said that public opinion is a sufficient check against
the abuse of this power, it may be asked why it is not deemed a
sufficient guard against the passage of an unconstitutional act
by Congress. There is, however, a restraint in this last case,
which makes the assumed power of a State more indefensible,
and which does not exist in the other. There are two appeals
from an unconstitutional act passed by Congress—one to the
judiciary, the other to the people and the States. There is no
appeal from the State decision in theory, and the practical
illustration shows that the courts are closed against an
application to review it, both judges and jurors being sworn to
decide in its favor. But reasoning on this subject is superfluous,
when our social compact, in express terms, declares that the
laws of the United States, its constitution, and treaties made
under it, are the supreme law of the land; and, for greater
caution, adds 'that the judges in every State shall be bound
thereby, any thing in the constitution or laws of any State to the
contrary notwithstanding.' And it may be asserted without fear
of refutation, that no federative government could exist without
a similar provision. Look for a moment to the consequence. If
South Carolina considers the revenue laws unconstitutional, and
has a right to prevent their execution in the port of Charleston,
there would be a clear constitutional objection to their collection
in every other port, and no revenue could be collected any
where; for all imposts must be equal. It is no answer to repeat,
that an unconstitutional law is no law, so long as the question of
its legality is to be decided by the State itself; for every law
operating injuriously upon any local interest will be perhaps
thought, and certainly represented, as unconstitutional, and, as
has been shown, there is no appeal.
"If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the
Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The excise law
in Pennsylvania, the embargo and non-intercourse law in the
Eastern States, the carriage tax in Virginia, were all deemed

unconstitutional, and were more unequal in their operation than
any of the laws now complained of; but fortunately none of
those States discovered that they had the right now claimed by
South Carolina. The war, into which we were forced to support
the dignity of the nation and the rights of our citizens, might
have ended in defeat and disgrace, instead of victory and honor,
if the States who supposed it a ruinous and unconstitutional
measure, had thought they possessed the right of nullifying the
act by which it was declared, and denying supplies for its
prosecution. Hardly and unequally as those measures bore upon
several members of the Union, to the legislatures of none did
this efficient and peaceable remedy, as it is called, suggest itself.
The discovery of this important feature in our constitution was
reserved to the present day. To the statesmen of South Carolina
belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that State will
unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice.
"If the doctrine of a State veto upon the laws of the Union
carries with it internal evidence of its impracticable absurdity,
our constitutional history will also afford abundant proof that it
would have been repudiated with indignation had it been
proposed to form a feature in our government.
"In our colonial state, although dependent on another power,
we very early considered ourselves as connected by common
interest with each other. Leagues were formed for common
defence, and, before the declaration of independence, we were
known in our aggregate character as the United Colonies of
America. That decisive and important step was taken jointly. We
declared ourselves a nation by a joint, not by several acts, and
when the terms of our confederation were reduced to form, it
was in that of a solemn league of several States, by which they
agreed that they would collectively form one nation for the
purpose of conducting some certain domestic concerns and all
foreign relations. In the instrument forming that Union is found
an article which declares that 'every State shall abide by the

determinations of Congress on all questions which, by that
confederation, should be submitted to them.'
"Under the confederation, then, no State could legally annul a
decision of the Congress, or refuse to submit to its execution;
but no provision was made to enforce these decisions. Congress
made requisitions, but they were not complied with. The
government could not operate on individuals. They had no
judiciary, no means of collecting revenue.
"But the defects of the confederation need not be detailed.
Under its operation we could scarcely be called a nation. We
had neither prosperity at home, nor consideration abroad. This
state of things could not be endured, and our present happy
constitution was formed, but formed in vain, if this fatal doctrine
prevail. It was formed for important objects that are announced
in the preamble made in the name and by the authority of the
people of the United States, whose delegates framed, and
whose conventions approved it. The most important among
these objects, that which is placed first in rank, on which all the
others rest, is 'to form a more perfect Union.' Now, is it possible
that even if there were no express provision giving supremacy
to the constitution and laws of the United States over those of
the States—can it be conceived that an instrument made for the
purpose of 'forming a more perfect Union' than that of the
confederation, could be so constructed by the assembled
wisdom of our country, as to substitute for that confederation a
form of government dependent for its existence on the local
interest, the party spirit of a State, or of a prevailing faction in a
State? Every man of plain, unsophisticated understanding, who
hears the question, will give such an answer as will preserve the
Union. Metaphysical subtlety, in pursuit of an impracticable
theory, could alone have devised one that is calculated to
destroy it.
"The constitution declares that the judicial powers of the
United States extend to cases arising under the laws of the

United States, and that such laws, the constitution and treaties
shall be paramount to the State constitutions and laws. The
judiciary act prescribes the mode by which the case may be
brought before a court of the United States: by appeal, when a
State tribunal shall decide against this provision of the
constitution. The ordinance declares there shall be no appeal;
makes the State law paramount to the constitution and laws of
the United States; forces judges and jurors to swear that they
will disregard their provisions; and even makes it penal in a
suitor to attempt relief by appeal. It further declares that it shall
not be lawful for the authorities of the United States, or of that
State, to enforce the payment of duties imposed by the revenue
laws within its limits.
"Here is a law of the United States, not even pretended to be
unconstitutional, repealed by the authority of a small majority of
the voters of a single State. Here is a provision of the
constitution which is solemnly abrogated by the same authority.
"On such expositions and reasonings, the ordinance grounds
not only an assertion of the right to annul the laws of which it
complains, but to enforce it by a threat of seceding from the
Union, if any attempt is made to execute them.
"This right to secede is deduced from the nature of the
constitution, which, they say, is a compact between sovereign
States, who have preserved their whole sovereignty, and,
therefore, are subject to no superior; that, because they made
the compact, they can break it when, in their opinion, it has
been departed from, by the other States. Fallacious as this
course of reasoning is, it enlists State pride, and finds advocates
in the honest prejudices of those who have not studied the
nature of our government sufficiently to see the radical error on
which it rests.
"The people of the United States formed the constitution,
acting through the State legislatures in making the compact, to
meet and discuss its provisions, and acting in separate

conventions when they ratified those provisions; but, the terms
used in its construction show it to be a government in which the
people of all the States collectively are represented. We are one
people in the choice of the President and Vice-President. Here
the States have no other agency than to direct the mode in
which the votes shall be given. Candidates having the majority
of all the votes are chosen. The electors of a majority of States
may have given their votes for one candidate, and yet another
may be chosen. The people, then, and not the States, are
represented in the executive branch.
"In the House of Representatives, there is this difference: that
the people of one State do not, as in the case of President and
Vice-President, all vote for the same officers. The people of all
the States do not vote for all the members, each State electing
only its own representatives. But this creates no material
distinction. When chosen, they are all representatives of the
United States, not representatives of the particular State from
which they come. They are paid by the United States, not by
the State, nor are they accountable to it for any act done in the
performance of their legislative functions; and however they
may in practice, as it is their duty to do, consult and prefer the
interests of their particular constituents, when they come in
conflict with any other partial or local interest, yet it is their first
and highest duty, as representatives of the United States, to
promote the general good.
"The constitution of the United States, then, forms a
government, not a league; and whether it be formed by
compact between the States, or in any other manner, its
character is the same. It is a government in which all the people
are represented, which operates directly on the people
individually, not upon the States—they retained all the power
they did not grant. But each State, having expressly parted with
so many powers as to constitute, jointly with the other States, a
single nation, cannot, from that period, possess any right to
secede, because such secession does not break a league, but

destroys the unity of a nation; and any injury to that unity is not
only a breach which would result from the contravention of a
compact, but it is an offence against the whole Union. To say
that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say
that the United States are not a nation; because it would be a
solecism to contend that any part of a nation might dissolve its
connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without
committing any offence. Secession, like any other revolutionary
act, may be morally justified by the extremity of oppression;
but, to call it a constitutional right, is confounding the meaning
of terms; and can only be done through gross error, or to
deceive those who are willing to assert a right, but would pause
before they made a revolution, or incur the penalties
consequent on a failure.
"Fellow-citizens of my native State, let me not only admonish
you, as the First Magistrate of our common country, not to incur
the penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a father would
over his children whom he saw rushing to certain ruin. In that
paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my
countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either
deceived themselves, or wish to deceive you. Mark under what
pretences you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and
treason, on which you stand! First, a diminution of the value of
your staple commodity, lowered by over production in other
quarters, and the consequent diminution in the value of your
lands, were the sole effect of the tariff laws.
"The effect of those laws was confessedly injurious, but the
evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were
taught to believe, that its burdens were in proportion to your
exports, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your
pride was roused by the assertion that a submission to those
laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was
equal, in patriotic merit, to the oppositions our fathers offered
to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told this
opposition might be peaceably, might be constitutionally made;

that you might enjoy all the advantages of the Union, and bear
none of its burdens. Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your
State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury,
were used to prepare you for the period when the mask, which
concealed the hideous features of disunion, should be taken off.
It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects
which, not long since, you would have regarded with horror.
Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state; look
forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead!
Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter
into this dangerous course. The great political truth was
repeated to you, that you had the revolutionary right of resisting
all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably
oppressive; it was added that the right to nullify a law rested on
the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy! This
character which was given to it, made you receive with too
much confidence the assertions that were made of the
unconstitutionality of the law, and its oppressive effects. Mark,
my fellow-citizens, that, by the admission of your leaders, the
unconstitutionality must be palpable, or it will not justify either
resistance or nullification! What is the meaning of the word
palpable, in the sense in which it is here used? That which is
apparent to every one; that which no man of ordinary intellect
will fail to perceive. Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of
that description? Let those among your leaders who once
approved and advocated the principle of protective duties,
answer the question; and let them choose whether they will be
considered as incapable, then, of perceiving that which must
have been apparent to every man of common understanding, or
as imposing upon your confidence, and endeavoring to mislead
you now. In either case they are unsafe guides in the perilous
path they urge you to tread. Ponder well on this circumstance,
and you will know how to appreciate the exaggerated language
they address to you. They are not champions of liberty
emulating the fame of our revolutionary fathers; nor are you an

oppressed people, contending, as they repeat to you, against
worse than colonial vassalage.
"You are free members of a flourishing and happy Union.
There is no settled design to oppress you. You have indeed felt
the unequal operation of laws which may have been unwisely,
not unconstitutionally passed; but that inequality must
necessarily be removed. At the very moment when you were
madly urged on to the unfortunate course you have begun, a
change in public opinion had commenced. The nearly
approaching payment of the public debt, and the consequent
necessity of a diminution of duties, had already produced a
considerable reduction, and that, too, on some articles of
general consumption in your State. The importance of this
change was underrated, and you were authoritatively told that
no further alleviation of your burdens was to be expected, at
the very time when the condition of the country imperiously
demanded such a modification of the duties as should reduce
them to a just and equitable scale. But, as if apprehensive of
the effect of this change in allaying your discontents, you were
precipitated into the fearful state in which you now find
yourselves.
"I adjure you, as you honor their memory; as you love the
cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives; as you
prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and
your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the
archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its convention;
bid its members to reassemble, and promulgate the decided
expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can
conduct you to safety, prosperity and honor. Tell them that,
compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that
brings with it an accumulation of all. Declare that you will never
take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country
shall float over you; that you will not be stigmatized when dead,
and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of
the first attack on the constitution of your country. Its

destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace, you may
interrupt the course of its prosperity, you may cloud its
reputation for stability, but its tranquillity will be restored, its
prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character
will be transferred, and remain an eternal blot on the memory
of those who caused the disorder.
"Fellow-citizens of the United States, the threat of unhallowed
disunion, the names of those, once respected, by whom it is
uttered the array of military force to support it, denote the
approach of a crisis in our affairs, on which the continuance of
our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps
that of all free governments, may depend. The conjuncture
demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my
intentions, but of my principles of action; and, as the claim was
asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws of the Union,
and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my
opinions in relation to the origin and form of our government,
and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was
created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in
the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties,
which has been expressed, I rely, with equal confidence, on
your undivided support in my determination to execute the
laws, to preserve the Union by all constitutional means, to
arrest, if possible, by moderate, but firm measures, the
necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of Heaven
that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the
shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it
be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the
United States.
"Fellow-citizens: The momentous case is before you. On your
undivided support of your government depends the decision of
the great question it involves, whether your sacred Union will be
preserved, and the blessings it secures to us as one people shall
be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with
which that decision will be expressed, will be such as to inspire

new confidence in republican institutions, and that the
prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to
their defence, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to
our children."

CHAPTER LXXX.
MESSAGE ON THE SOUTH CAROLINA
PROCEEDINGS.
In his annual message to Congress at the opening of the session
1832-'33, the President had adverted to the proceedings in South
Carolina, hinting at their character as inimical to the Union,
expressing his belief that the action in reducing the duties which the
extinction of the public debt would permit and require, would put an
end to those proceedings; and if they did not, and those proceedings
continued, and the executive government should need greater
powers than it possessed to overcome them, he promised to make a
communication to Congress, showing the state of the question,—
what had been done to compose it,—and asking for the powers
which the exigency demanded. The proceedings not ceasing, and
taking daily a more aggravated form in the organization of troops,
the collection of arms and of munitions of war, and in declarations
hostile to the Union, he found himself required, early in January, to
make the promised communication; and did so in a message to both
Houses, of which the following are the essential parts which belong
to history and posterity:
"Since the date of my last annual message, I have had
officially transmitted to me by the Governor of South Carolina,
which I now communicate to Congress, a copy of the ordinance
passed by the convention which assembled at Columbia, in the
State of South Carolina, in November last, declaring certain acts
of Congress therein mentioned, within the limits of that State, to
be absolutely null and void, and making it the duty of the
legislature to pass such laws as would be necessary to carry the
same into effect from and after the 1st of February next.

"The consequences to which this extraordinary defiance of
the just authority of the government might too surely lead, were
clearly foreseen, and it was impossible for me to hesitate as to
my own duty in such an emergency.
"The ordinance had been passed, however, without any
certain knowledge of the recommendation which, from a view of
the interests of the nation at large, the Executive had
determined to submit to Congress; and a hope was indulged
that, by frankly explaining his sentiments, and the nature of
those duties which the crisis would devolve upon him, the
authorities of South Carolina might be induced to retrace their
steps. In this hope, I determined to issue my proclamation of
the 10th of December last, a copy of which I now lay before
Congress.
"I regret to inform you that these reasonable expectations
have not been realized, and that the several acts of the
legislature of South Carolina, which I now lay before you, and
which have, all and each of them, finally passed, after a
knowledge of the desire of the administration to modify the laws
complained of, are too well calculated, both in their positive
enactments, and in the spirit of opposition which they obviously
encourage, wholly to obstruct the collection of the revenue
within the limits of that State.
"Up to this period, neither the recommendation of the
Executive in regard to our financial policy and impost system,
nor the disposition manifested by Congress promptly to act
upon that subject, nor the unequivocal expression of the public
will, in all parts of the Union, appears to have produced any
relaxation in the measures of opposition adopted by the State of
South Carolina; nor is there any reason to hope that the
ordinance and laws will be abandoned.
"I have no knowledge that an attempt has been made, or that
it is in contemplation, to reassemble either the convention or
the legislature; and it will be perceived that the interval before

the 1st of February is too short to admit of the preliminary steps
necessary for that purpose. It appears, moreover, that the State
authorities are actively organizing their military resources, and
providing the means, and giving the most solemn assurances of
protection and support to all who shall enlist in opposition to the
revenue laws.
"A recent proclamation of the present Governor of South
Carolina has openly defied the authority of the Executive of the
Union, and general orders from the head quarters of the State
announced his determination to accept the services of
volunteers, and his belief that, should their country need their
services, they will be found at the post of honor and duty, ready
to lay down their lives in her defence. Under these orders, the
forces referred to are directed to 'hold themselves in readiness
to take the field at a moment's warning;' and in the city of
Charleston, within a collection district and a port of entry, a
rendezvous has been opened for the purpose of enlisting men
for the magazine and municipal guard. Thus, South Carolina
presents herself in the attitude of hostile preparation, and ready
even for military violence, if need be, to enforce her laws for
preventing the collection of the duties within her limits.
"Proceedings thus announced and matured must be
distinguished from menaces of unlawful resistance by irregular
bodies of people, who, acting under temporary delusion, may be
restrained by reflection, and the influence of public opinion,
from the commission of actual outrage. In the present instance,
aggression may be regarded as committed when it is officially
authorized, and the means of enforcing it fully provided.
"Under these circumstances, there can be no doubt that it is
the determination of the authorities of South Carolina fully to
carry into effect their ordinance and laws after the 1st of
February. It therefore becomes my duty to bring the subject to
the serious consideration of Congress, in order that such
measures as they, in their wisdom, may deem fit, shall be

seasonably provided; and that it may be thereby understood
that, while the government is disposed to remove all just cause
of complaint, as far as may be practicable consistently with a
proper regard to the interests of the community at large, it is,
nevertheless, determined that the supremacy of the laws shall
be maintained.
"In making this communication, it appears to me to be proper
not only that I should lay before you the acts and proceedings
of South Carolina, but that I should also fully acquaint you with
those steps which I have already caused to be taken for the due
collection of the revenue, and with my views of the subject
generally, that the suggestions which the constitution requires
me to make, in regard to your future legislation, may be better
understood.
"This subject, having early attracted the anxious attention of
the Executive, as soon as it was probable that the authorities of
South Carolina seriously meditated resistance to the faithful
execution of the revenue laws, it was deemed advisable that the
Secretary of the Treasury should particularly instruct the officers
of the United States, in that part of the Union, as to the nature
of the duties prescribed by the existing laws.
"Instructions were accordingly issued, on the sixth of
November, to the collectors in that State, pointing out their
respective duties, and enjoining upon each a firm and vigilant,
but discreet performance of them in the emergency then
apprehended.
"I herewith transmit copies of these instructions, and of the
letter addressed to the district attorney, requesting his co-
operation. These instructions were dictated in the hope that, as
the opposition to the laws, by the anomalous proceeding of
nullification, was represented to be of a pacific nature, to be
pursued, substantially, according to the forms of the
constitution, and without resorting, in any event, to force or
violence, the measures of its advocates would be taken in

conformity with that profession, and, on such supposition, the
means afforded by the existing laws would have been adequate
to meet any emergency likely to arise.
"It was, however, not possible altogether to suppress
apprehension of the excesses to which the excitement prevailing
in that quarter might lead; but it certainly was not foreseen that
the meditated obstruction to the laws would so soon openly
assume its present character.
"Subsequently to the date of those instructions, however, the
ordinance of the convention was passed, which, if complied with
by the people of that State, must effectually render inoperative
the present revenue laws within her limits.
"This solemn denunciation of the laws and authority of the
United States has been followed up by a series of acts, on the
part of the authorities of that State, which manifest a
determination to render inevitable a resort to those measures of
self-defence which the paramount duty of the federal
government requires; but, upon the adoption of which, that
State will proceed to execute the purpose it has avowed in this
ordinance, of withdrawing from the Union.
"On the 27th of November, the legislature assembled at
Columbia; and, on their meeting, the Governor laid before them
the ordinance of the convention. In his message, on that
occasion, he acquaints them that 'this ordinance has thus
become a part of the fundamental law of South Carolina;' that
'the die has been at last cast, and South Carolina has at length
appealed to her ulterior sovereignty as a member of this
confederacy, and has planted herself on her reserved rights. The
rightful exercise of this power is not a question which we shall
any longer argue. It is sufficient that she has willed it, and that
the act is done; nor is its strict compatibility with our
constitutional obligation to all laws passed by the general
government, within the authorized grants of power, to be drawn
in question, when this interposition is exerted in a case in which

the compact has been palpably, deliberately, and dangerously
violated. That it brings up a conjuncture of deep and
momentous interest, is neither to be concealed nor denied. This
crisis presents a class of duties which is referable to yourselves.
You have been commanded by the people, in their highest
sovereignty, to take care that, within the limits of this State,
their will shall be obeyed.' 'The measure of legislation,' he says,
'which you have to employ at this crisis, is the precise amount
of such enactments as may be necessary to render it utterly
impossible to collect, within our limits, the duties imposed by
the protective tariffs thus nullified.' He proceeds: 'That you
should arm every citizen with a civil process, by which he may
claim, if he pleases, a restitution of his goods, seized under the
existing imposts, on his giving security to abide the issue of a
suit at law, and, at the same time, define what shall constitute
treason against the State, and, by a bill of pains and penalties,
compel obedience, and punish disobedience to your own laws,
are points too obvious to require any discussion. In one word,
you must survey the whole ground. You must look to and
provide for all possible contingencies. In your own limits, your
own courts of judicature must not only be supreme, but you
must look to the ultimate issue of any conflict of jurisdiction and
power between them and the courts of the United States.'
"The Governor also asks for power to grant clearances, in
violation of the laws of the Union; and, to prepare for the
alternative which must happen, unless the United States shall
passively surrender their authority, and the Executive,
disregarding his oath, refrain from executing the laws of the
Union, he recommends a thorough revision of the militia
system, and that the Governor 'be authorized to accept, for the
defence of Charleston and its dependencies, the services of two
thousand volunteers, either by companies or files;' and that
they be formed into a legionary brigade, consisting of infantry,
riflemen, cavalry, field and heavy artillery; and that they be
'armed and equipped, from the public arsenals, completely for

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