A small one. South Carolina's challenge to Federal authority was based on the economic depression that had impacted South Carolina throughout the 1820's and fear by the low country elite that the increasing power of the Federal government could one day endanger slavery. Tied to this economic depression, was the fact that a large number of citizens born in South Carolina relocated to the more profitable western lands which had been opened to the breaking of the powerful Southwestern Native Nations during the War of 1812 and the relocation after.