Hayne, saw in the situation what he took to be a chance to deliver a telling blow for his own discontented section. On the 19th of January he got the floor, and at the f.a.g-end of a long day he held his colleagues" attention for an hour.
The thing that Hayne had in mind to do primarily was to draw the West to the side of the South, in common opposition to the East. He therefore vigorously attacked the Foote resolution, agreeing with Benton that it was an expression of Eastern jealousy and that its adoption would greatly r.e.t.a.r.d the development of the West. He laid much stress upon the common interests of the Western and Southern people and openly invited the one to an alliance with the other. He deprecated the tendencies of the Federal Government to consolidation and declared himself "opposed, in any shape, to all unnecessary extension of the powers or the influence of the Legislature or Executive of the Union over the States, or the people of the States."
Throughout the speech ran side by side the twin ideas of strict construction and state rights; in every sentence breathed the protest of South Carolina against the protective tariff.
Just as the South Carolinian began speaking, a shadow darkened the doorway of the Senate chamber, and Daniel Webster stepped casually inside. The Ma.s.sachusetts member was at the time absorbed in the preparation of certain cases that were coming up before the Supreme Court, and he had given little attention either to Foote"s resolution or to the debate upon it. What he now heard, however, quickly drove Carver"s Lessee _vs._ John Jacob Astor quite out of his mind.
Aspersions were being cast upon his beloved New England; the Const.i.tution was under attack; the Union itself was being called in question. Webster"s decision was instantaneous: Hayne must be answered--and answered while his arguments were still hot.
"Seeing the true grounds of the Const.i.tution thus attacked," the New Englander subsequently explained at a public dinner in New York, "I raised my voice in its favor, I must confess, with no preparation or previous intention. I can hardly say that I embarked in the contest from a sense of duty. It was an instantaneous impulse of inclination, not acting against duty, I trust, but hardly waiting for its suggestions. I felt it to be a contest for the integrity of the Const.i.tution, and I was ready to enter into it, not thinking, or caring, personally, how I came out." In a speech characterized by Henry Cabot Lodge as "one of the most effective retorts, one of the strongest pieces of destructive criticism, ever uttered in the Senate," Webster now defended his section against the charges of selfishness, jealousy, and sn.o.bbishness that had been brought against it, and urged that the Senate and the people be made to hear no more utterances, such as those of Hayne, tending "to bring the Union into discussion, as a mere question of present and temporary expediency."
The debate was now fairly started, and the word quickly went round that a battle of the giants was impending. Each foeman was worthy of the other"s steel. Hayne was representative of all that was proudest and best in the South Carolina of his day. "Nature had lavished on him," says Benton, "all the gifts which lead to eminence in public, and to happiness in private, life." He was tall, well-proportioned, graceful; his features were clean-cut and expressive of both intelligence and amiability; his manner was cordial and unaffected; his mind was vigorous and his industry unremitting. Furthermore, he was an able lawyer, a fluent orator, a persuasive debater, an adroit parliamentarian. Upon entering the Senate at the early age of thirty-two, he had won prompt recognition by a powerful speech in opposition to the tariff of 1824; and by 1828, when he was reelected, he was known as the South"s ablest and boldest spokesman in the upper chamber.
Webster was an equally fitting representative of rugged New England.
Born nine years earlier than Hayne, he struggled up from a boyhood of physical frailty and poverty to an honored place at the Boston bar, and in 1812, at the age of thirty, was elected to Congress. To the Senate he brought, in 1827, qualities that gave him at once a preeminent position. His ma.s.sive head, beetling brow, flashing eye, and stately carriage attracted instant attention wherever he went. His physical impressiveness was matched by lofty traits of character and by extraordinary powers of intellect; and by 1830 he had acquired a reputation for forensic ability and legal ac.u.men which were second to none.
When, therefore, on the 21st of January, Hayne rose to deliver his _First Reply_, and Webster five days later took the floor to begin his _Second Reply_--probably the greatest effort in the history of American legislative oratory--the little chamber then used by the Senate, but nowadays given over to the Supreme Court, presented a spectacle fairly to be described as historic. Every senator who could possibly be present answered at roll call. Here were Webster"s more notable fellow New Englanders--John Holmes of Maine, Levi Woodbury of New Hampshire, Horatio Seymour of Vermont. There were Mahlon d.i.c.kerson and Theodore Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, and John M. Clayton of Delaware. Here, John Tyler of Virginia, John Forsyth of Georgia, William R. King of Alabama; there, Hugh L. White and Felix Grundy of Tennessee, and Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. From the President"s chair Hayne"s distinguished fellow South Carolinian, Calhoun, looked down upon the a.s.semblage with emotions which he vainly strove to conceal.
During the later stages of the discussion people of prominence from adjoining States filled the hotels of the city and bombarded the senators with requests for tickets of admission to the senate galleries. Lines were formed, and when the doors were thrown open in the morning every available inch of s.p.a.ce was instantly filled with interested and excited spectators. So great was the pressure that all rules governing the admission of the public were waived. On the day of Webster"s greatest effort ladies were admitted to the seats of the members, and the throng overflowed through the lobbies and down the long stairways, quite beyond hearing distance. In the House of Representatives the Speaker remained at his post, but the attendance was so scant that no business could be transacted.
Hayne"s speech--begun on the 21st and continued on the 25th of January--was the fullest and most forceful exposition of the doctrines of strict construction, state rights, and nullification that had ever fallen upon the ear of Congress. It was no mere piece of abstract argumentation. Hayne was not the man to shrink from personalities, and he boldly accused the New England Federalists of disloyalty and Webster himself of complicity in "bargain and corruption." Thrusting and parrying, he stirred his supporters to wild enthusiasm and moved even the solemn-visaged Vice President to smiles of approval. The nationalists winced and wondered whether their champion would be able to measure up with so keen an antagonist. Webster sat staring into s.p.a.ce, breaking his reverie only now and then to make a few notes.
The debate reached a climax in Webster"s powerful _Second Reply_, on the 26th and 27th of January. Everything was favorable for a magnificent effort: the hearing was brilliant, the theme was vital, the speaker was in the prime of his matchless powers. On the desk before the New Englander as he arose were only five small letter-paper pages of notes. He spoke with such immediate preparation merely as the labors of a single evening made possible. But it may be doubted whether any forensic effort in our history was ever more thoroughly prepared for, because Webster _lived_ his speech before he spoke it.
The origins of the Federal Union, the theories and applications of the Const.i.tution, the history and bearings of nullification--these were matters with which years of study, observation, professional activity, and a.s.sociation with men had made him absolutely familiar. If any living American could answer Hayne and his fellow partizans, Webster was the man to do it.
Forty-eight in the total of seventy-three pages of print filled by this speech are taken up with a defense of New England against the Southern charges of sectionalism and disloyalty. Few utterances of the time are more familiar than the sentences bringing this part of the oration to a close: "Mr. President, I shall enter on no encomium of Ma.s.sachusetts; she needs none. There she is. Behold her, and judge for yourselves. There is her history; the world knows it by heart....
There is Boston, and Concord, and Lexington, and Bunker Hill; and there they will remain forever." If this had been all, the speech would have been only a spirited defense of the good name of a section and would hardly have gained immortality. It was the Union, however, that most needed defense; and for that service the orator reserved his grandest efforts.
From the opening of the discussion Webster"s object had been to "force from Hayne or his supporters a full, frank, clear-cut statement of what nullification meant; and then, by opposing to this doctrine the Const.i.tution as he understood it, to show its utter inadequacy and fallaciousness either as const.i.tutional law or as a practical working scheme."[10] In the Southerner"s _First Reply_ Webster found the statement that he wanted; he now proceeded to demolish it. Many pages of print would be required to reproduce, even in substance, the arguments which he employed. Yet the fundamentals are so simple that they can be stated in a dozen lines. Sovereignty, under our form of government, resides in the people of the United States. The exercise of the powers of sovereignty is entrusted by the people partly to the National Government and partly to the state Governments. This division of functions is made in the federal Const.i.tution. If differences arise, as they must, as to the precise nature of the division, the decision rests--not with the state legislatures, as Hayne had said--but with the federal courts, which were established in part for that very purpose. No State has a right to "nullify" a federal law; if one State has this right, all must have it, and the result can only be conflicts that would plunge the Government into chaos and the people ultimately into war. If the Const.i.tution is not what the people want, they can amend it; but as long as it stands, the Const.i.tution and all lawful government under it must be obeyed.
The incomparably eloquent peroration penetrated to the heart of the whole matter. The logic of nullification was disunion. Fine theories might be spun and dazzling phrases made to convince men otherwise, but the hard fact would remain. Hayne, Calhoun, and their like were playing with fire. Already they were boldly weighing "the chances of preserving liberty when the bonds that unite us together shall be broken asunder"; already they were hanging over the precipice of disunion, to see whether they could "fathom the depth of the abyss below." The last powerful words of the speech were, therefore, a glorification of the Union:
"While the Union lasts, we have high, exciting, gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate the veil. G.o.d grant that in my day, at least, that curtain may not rise.... When my eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the broken and dishonored fragments of a once glorious Union; on States dissevered, discordant, belligerent; on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and lingering glance, rather, behold the gorgeous ensign of the Republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original l.u.s.tre, not a stripe erased or polluted, nor a single star obscured, bearing for its motto no such miserable interrogatory as "What is all this worth?" nor those other words of delusion and folly "Liberty first and Union afterward"; but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to every American heart--"Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!""
Undaunted by the flood of eloquence that for four hours held the Senate spellbound, Hayne replied in a long speech that touched the zenith of his own masterful powers of argumentation. He conceded nothing. Each State, he still maintained, is "an independent sovereignty"; the Union is based upon a compact; and every party to the compact has a right to interpret for itself the terms of the agreement by which all are bound together. In a short, crisp speech, traversing the main ground which he had already gone over.
Webster exposed the inconsistencies and dangers involved in this argument; and the debate was over. The Foote resolution, long since forgotten, remained on the Senate calendar four months and was then tabled. Webster went back to his cases; the politicians turned again to their immediate concerns; the humdrum of congressional business was resumed; and popular interest drifted to other things.
Both sides were well satisfied with the presentation of their views.
Certainly neither was converted to the position of the other. The debate served, however, to set before the country with greater clearness than ever before the two great systems of const.i.tutional interpretation that were struggling for mastery, and large numbers of men whose ideas had been hazy were now led to adopt thoughtfully either the one body of opinions or the other. The country was not yet ready to follow the controversy to the end which Webster clearly foresaw--civil war. But each side treasured its vitalized and enriched arguments for use in a more strenuous day.
Advantage in the great discussion lay partly with Hayne and partly with his brilliant antagonist. On the whole, the facts of history were on the side of Hayne. Webster attempted to argue from the intent of the framers of the Const.i.tution and from early opinion concerning the nature of the Union; but a careful appraisal of the evidence hardly bears out his contentions. On economic matters also, notably the operation of the protective tariff, he trod uncertain ground. He realized this fact and as far as possible kept clear of economic discussion. The South had real grievances, and Webster was well enough aware that they could not be argued out of existence.
On the other hand, the Northerner was vastly superior to his opponent in his handling of the theoretical issues of const.i.tutional law; and in his exposition of the practical difficulties that would attend the operation of the principle of nullification he employed a fund of argument that was simply unanswerable. The logic of the larger phases of the situation lay, too, with him. If the Union for which he pleaded was not the Union which the Fathers intended to establish or even that which actually existed in the days of Washington and the elder Adams, it was at all events the Union in which, by the close of the fourth decade under the Const.i.tution, a majority of the people of the United States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster"s arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they put into popular convictions that until then were vague and inarticulate--convictions which, as has been well said, "went on broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a force sufficient to sustain the North and enable her to triumph in the terrible struggle which resulted in the preservation of national life." It was the _Second Reply_ to Hayne which, more than any other single event or utterance between 1789 and 1860, "compacted the States into a nation."
CHAPTER VIII
TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION
It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his State--and, for aught one could tell, his section--was about to put into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming controversy.
South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the Virginian"s leadership was never fully accepted, and even before the Republican party had elsewhere submitted to the inevitable nationalization the South Carolina membership was openly arrayed on the side of a protective tariff, the National Bank, and internal improvements. Calhoun and Cheves were for years among the most ardent exponents of broad const.i.tutional construction; Hayne himself was elected to the Senate in 1822 as a nationalist, and over another candidate whose chief handicap was that he had proposed that his State secede rather than submit to the Missouri Compromise.
After 1824 sentiment rapidly shifted. The cause appeared to be the tariff; but in reality deeper forces were at work. South Carolina was an agricultural State devoted almost exclusively to the raising of cotton and rice. Soil and climate made her such, and the "peculiar inst.i.tution" confirmed what Nature already had decreed. But the planters were now beginning to feel keenly the compet.i.tion of the new cotton lands of the Gulf plains. As production increased, the price of cotton fell. "In 1816," writes Professor Turner, "the average price of middling uplands...was nearly thirty cents, and South Carolina"s leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the South saw in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the South Carolinians denounced the tariff as unconst.i.tutional."[11]
Men of the Clay-Adams school argued that the tariff stimulated industry, doubled the profits of agriculture, augmented wealth, and hence promoted the well-being of the nation as a whole. The Southern planter was never able to discover in the protective system any real advantage for himself, but as long as the tariffs were moderate he was influenced by nationalistic sentiment to accept them. The demand for protection on the part of the Northern manufacturers seemed, however, insatiable. An act of 1824 raised the duties on cotton and woolen goods. A measure of 1827 which applied to woolens the ruinous principle already applied to cottons was pa.s.sed by the House and was laid on the table in the Senate only by the casting vote of Vice President Calhoun. The climax was reached in the Tariff Act of 1828, which the Southerners themselves loaded with objectionable provisions in the vain hope of making it so abominable that even New England congressmen would vote against it.
A few years of such legislation sufficed to rouse the South to a deep feeling of grievance. It was no longer a question of reasonable concession to the general national good. A vast artificial economic system had been set up, whose benefits accrued to the North and whose burdens fell disproportionately upon the South. The tone and temper of the manufacturing sections and of the agricultural West gave no promise of a change of policy. The obvious conclusion was that the planting interests must find some means of bringing pressure to bear for their own relief.
The means which they found was nullification; and it fell to South Carolina, whose people were most ardent in their resentment of anything that looked like discrimination, to put the remedy to the test. The Legislature of this State had made an early beginning by denouncing the tariff of 1824 as unconst.i.tutional. In 1827 Robert J.
Turnbull, one of the abler political leaders, published under the t.i.tle of _The Crisis_ a series of essays in which he boldly proclaimed nullification as the remedy. In the following summer Calhoun put the nullification doctrine into its first systematic form in a paper--the so-called _Exposition_--which for some time was known to the public only as the report of a committee of the Legislature.
By 1829 the State was sharply divided into two parties, the nationalists and the nullifiers. All were agreed that the protective system was iniquitous and that it must be broken down. The difference was merely as to method. The nationalists favored working through the customary channels of legislative reform; the nullifiers urged that the State interpose its authority to prevent the enforcement of the objectionable laws. For a time the leaders wavered. But the swing of public sentiment in the direction of nullification was rapid and overwhelming, and one by one the representatives in Congress and other men of prominence fell into line. Hayne and McDuffie were among the first to give it their support; and Calhoun, while he was for a time held back by his political aspirations and by his obligations as Vice President, came gradually to feel that his political future would be worth little unless he had the support of his own State.
As the election of 1828 approached, the hope of the discontented forces centered in Jackson. They did not overlook the fact that his record was that of a moderate protectionist. But the same was true of many South Carolinians and Georgians, and it seemed not at all impossible that, as a Southern man and a cotton planter, he should undergo a change of heart no less decisive than that which Hayne and Calhoun had experienced. Efforts to draw him out, however, proved not very successful. Lewis saw to it that Jackson"s utterances while yet he was a candidate were safely colorless; and the single mention of the tariff contained in the inaugural address was susceptible of the most varied interpretations. The annual message of 1829 indicated opposition to protection; on the other hand, the presidential message of the next year not only a.s.serted the full power of Congress to levy protective duties but declared the abandonment of protection "neither to be expected or desired." Gradually the antiprotectionist leaders were made to see that the tariff was not a subject upon which the President felt keenly, and that therefore it was useless to look to him for effective support.
Even the adroit efforts which were made to get from the incoming executive expressions that could be interpreted as endors.e.m.e.nts of nullification were successfully fended off. For some months the President gave no outward sign of his disapproval. With more than his usual deliberateness, Jackson studied the situation, awaiting the right moment to speak out with the maximum of effect.
The occasion finally came on April 13, 1830, at a banquet held in Washington in celebration of Jefferson"s birthday. The Virginia patron of democracy had been dead four years, and Jackson had become, more truly than any other man, his successor. Jacksonian democracy was, however, something very different from Jeffersonian, and never was the contrast more evident than on this fateful evening. During the earlier part of the festivities a series of prearranged toasts, accompanied by short speeches, put before the a.s.semblage the Jeffersonian teachings in a light highly favorable--doubtless unwarrantably so--to the ultra state rights theory. Then followed a number of volunteer toasts. The President was, of course, accorded the honor of proposing the first--and this gave Jackson his chance. Rising in his place and drawing himself up to his full height, he raised his right hand, looked straight at Calhoun and, amid breathless silence, exclaimed in that crisp, harsh tone that had so often been heard above the crashing of many rifles: "Our Union! It must be preserved!"
An account of the scene which is given by Isaac Hill, a member of the Kitchen Cabinet and an eyewitness, is interesting:
A proclamation of martial law in South Carolina and an order to arrest Calhoun where he sat could not have come with more blinding, staggering force. All hilarity ceased. The President, without adding one word in the way of speech, lifted up his gla.s.s as a notice that the toast was to be quaffed standing. Calhoun rose with the rest. His gla.s.s so trembled in his hand that a little of the amber fluid trickled down the side. Jackson stood silent and impa.s.sive. There was no response to the toast. Calhoun waited until all sat down. Then he slowly and with hesitating accent offered the second volunteer toast: "The Union! Next to Our Liberty Most Dear!" Then, after a minute"s hesitation, and in a way that left doubt as to whether he intended it for part of the toast or for the preface to a speech, he added: "May we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States and by distributing equally the benefit and burden of the Union."
The nullifiers had carefully planned the evening"s proceedings with a purpose to strengthen their cause with the country. They had not reckoned on the President, and the dash of cold water which he had administered caused them more anguish than any opposition that they had yet encountered. The banquet broke up earlier than had been expected, and the diners went off by twos and threes in eager discussion of the scene that they had witnessed. Some were livid with rage; some shook their heads in fear of civil war; but most rejoiced in the splendid exhibition of executive dignity and patriotic fervor which the President had given. Subsequently it transpired that Jackson had acted on no mere impulse and that his course had been carefully planned in consultation with Van Buren and other advisers.
Throughout the summer and autumn of 1830 both the State Rights and Union parties in South Carolina worked feverishly to perfect their organizations. The issue that both were making ready to meet was nothing less than the election of a convention to nullify the tariff laws. Those upholding nullification lost no opportunity to consolidate their forces, and by the close of the year these were clearly in the majority, although the unionist element contained many of the ablest and most respected men in the State. Calhoun directed the nullifier campaign, though he did not throw off all disguises until the summer of the following year.
Though Jackson made no further public declarations, the views which he expressed in private were usually not slow to reach the public ear. In a letter to a committee of the Union party in response to an invitation to attend a Fourth of July dinner the President intimated that force might properly be employed if nullification should be attempted. And to a South Carolina Congressman who was setting off on a trip home he said: "Tell them [the nullifiers] from me that they can talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts" content.
But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find." When Hayne heard of this threat he expressed in Benton"s hearing a doubt as to whether the President would really hang anybody. "I tell you, Hayne," the Missourian replied, "when Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes."
Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become its avowed leader. Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make.
Above all things he wanted to be President. He was not the author of nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late how much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be bettered by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy.
Circ.u.mstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually into the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement. The tide of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the breach with Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western democracy; and his resentment of Van Buren"s rise to favor prompted words and acts which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian.
His party"s enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for reelection in 1832 and of "Little Van" as a candidate for the vice presidency--and, by all tokens, for the presidency four years later--was the last straw. Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back into the role of an extremist, sectional leader. There was no need of further concealment; and in midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous _Address to the People of South Carolina_, and this restatement of the _Exposition_ of 1828 now became the avowed platform of the nullification party. The _Fort Hill Letter_ of August 28, 1832, addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and clearer presentation of the same body of doctrine.
Matters were at last brought to a head by a new piece of tariff legislation which was pa.s.sed in 1832 not to appease South Carolina but to take advantage of a comfortable state of affairs that had arisen in the national treasury. The public lands were again selling well, and the late tariff laws were yielding lavishly. The national debt was dwindling to the point of disappearance, and the country had more money than it could use. Jackson therefore called upon Congress to revise the tariff system so as to reduce the revenue, and in the session of 1831-32 several bills to that end were brought forward. The scale of duties finally embodied in the Act of July 14, 1832, corrected many of the anomalies of the Act of 1828, but it cut off some millions of revenue without making any substantial change in the protective system. Virginia and North Carolina voted heavily for the bill, but South Carolina and Georgia as vigorously opposed it; and the nullifiers refused to see in it any concession to the tariff principles for which they stood. "I no longer consider the question one of free trade," wrote Calhoun when the pa.s.sage of the bill was a.s.sured, "but of consolidation." In an address to their const.i.tuents the South Carolina delegation in Congress declared that "protection must now be regarded as the settled policy of the country," that "all hope from Congress is irrevocably gone," and that it was for the people to decide "whether the rights and liberties which you received as a precious inheritance from an ill.u.s.trious ancestry shall be tamely surrendered without a struggle, or transmitted undiminished to your posterity."
In the disaffected State events now moved rapidly. The elections of the early autumn were carried by the nullifiers, and the new Legislature, acting on the recommendation of Governor Hamilton, promptly called a state convention to consider whether the "federal compact" had been violated and what remedy should be adopted. The 162 delegates who gathered at Columbia on the 19th of November were, socially and politically, the elite of the State: Hamiltons, Haynes, Pinckneys, Butlers--almost all of the great families of a State of great families were represented. From the outset the convention was practically of one mind; and an ordinance of nullification drawn up by a committee of twenty-one was adopted within five days by a vote of 136 to 26.
The tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were declared "null, void, and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens." None of the duties in question were to be permitted to be collected in the State after February 1, 1833. Appeals to the federal courts for enforcement of the invalidated acts were forbidden, and all officeholders, except members of the Legislature, were required to take an oath to uphold the ordinance. Calhoun had laboriously argued that nullification did not mean disunion. But his contention was not sustained by the words of the ordinance, which stated unequivocally that the people of the State would not "submit to the application of force on the part of the federal Government to reduce this State to obedience." Should force be used, the ordinance boldly declared--indeed, should _any_ action contrary to the will of the people be taken to execute the measures declared void--such efforts would be regarded as "inconsistent with the longer continuance of South Carolina in the Union," and "the people of this State" would "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 to do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."
In accordance with the instructions of the convention, the Legislature forthwith rea.s.sembled to pa.s.s the measures deemed necessary to enforce the ordinance. A replevin act provided for the recovery of goods seized or detained for payment of duty; the use of military force, including volunteers, to "repel invasion" was authorized; and provision was made for the purchase of arms and ammunition. Throughout the State a martial tone resounded. Threats of secession and war were heard on every side. Nightly meetings were held and demonstrations were organized. Blue c.o.c.kades with a palmetto b.u.t.ton in the center became the most popular of ornaments. Medals were struck bearing the inscription: "John C. Calhoun, First President of the Southern Confederacy." The Legislature, rea.s.sembling in December, elected Hayne as Governor and chose Calhoun--who now resigned the vice presidency--to take the vacant seat in the Senate. In his first message to the Legislature Webster"s former antagonist declared his purpose to carry into full effect the nullification ordinance and the legislation supplementary to it, and expressed confidence that, if the sacred soil of the State should be "polluted by the footsteps of an invader," no one of her sons would be found "raising a parricidal arm against our common mother."
Thus the proud commonwealth was panoplied for a contest of wits, and perchance of arms, with the nation. Could it hope to win? South Carolina had a case which had been forcibly and plausibly presented.
It could count on a deep reluctance of men in every part of the country to see the nation fall into actual domestic combat. There were, however, a dozen reasons why victory could not reasonably be looked for. One would have been enough--the presence of Andrew Jackson in the White House.