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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 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 nature of the union under the constitution is thus described :“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. The candidates having the majority of all the

. votes are chosen. The electors of a majority of the 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 individuaily, 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, can not, from that period, possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation ;

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and any injury to that unity is not only a breach which would resalt from the contravention of a compact, but it is an offense 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 com. mitting any offense. 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.

“ Because the union was formed by compact, it is said the parties to that compact may, when they feel themselves aggrieved, depart from it; but it is precisely because it is a compact, that they can not.

A conpact is an agreement or binding obligation. It may, by its terms, have a sanction or penalty for its breach, or it may not. If it contains no sanction, it may be broken with no other consequence than moral guilt ; if it have a sanction, then the breach incurs the designated or implied penalty. A league between independent nations, generally, has no sanction other than a moral one; or if it should contain a penalty, as there is no common superior, it cannot be enforced. A government, on the contrary, always has a sanction, express or implied; and, in our case, it is both necessarily implied and expressly given. An attempt, by force of arms, to destroy a government, is an offense, by whatever means the constitutional compact may have been formed; and such government has the right, by the law of self-defense, to pass acts to punish the offender, unless that right is modified, restrained, or resumed, by the constitutional act."

“The assumed right of secession," he repeated, “rests on the alleged undivided sovereignty of the states, and on their having formed, in this sovereign capacity, a compact, which is called the constitution, from which, because they made it, they have the right to secede.” This position he deemed erroneous, saying: “The states severally have not retained their entire sovereignty. It has been shown that, in becoming parts of a nation, not members of a league, they surrendered many of their parts of sovereignty. The right to make treaties, declare war, levy taxes, exereise exclusive judicial and legislative powers, were all of them functions of sovereign power. The states, then, for all these important powers, were no longer sovereign. The allegiance of their citizens was transferred, in the first instance, to the government of the United States ; they became American citizens, and owed obedience to

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the constitution of the United States, and to the laws made in conformi. ty with the powers it vested in congress.'

The president admonishes the Carolinians not to incur the penalty of the laws, and tells them they have been deluded by men who were either deceived themselves, or wished to deceive others; who had led the people to the brink of insurrection and treason, under the pretense, that the diminution of the price of their staple commodity, and the consequent diminution in the value of their lands, caused by over production in other quarters, were the sole effect of the tariff. And he mentioned the various arts and arguments and appeals of these men to induce them to enter this dangerous course.

Again addressing his “ fellow-citizens of the United States,” he says: " 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 of the United States."

The views expressed in the foregoing exposition of the nature and powers of the general government, are, as will be seen, the opposite of those claimed for the president by his friends in the "great debate” in the senate, in 1830. They are substantially those maintained by Mr. Webster and other opposition senators; and they differ in no particular, it is believed, from the opinions expressed in that debate by senator Livingston, who was at this time secretary of state, and who had the credit of having prepared the proclamation. The authority so unqualifiedly denied to the supreme court by Messrs. Hayne, Benton, Rowan,and other administration senators, is here fully acknowledged as well as ably maintained.

Immediately after the adjournment of the South Carolina convention, on the 27th of November, 1832, the legislature assembled, and passed the laws necessary to give effect to the ordinance. These laws prohibited the collection of the revenue by the officers of the United States, and placed at the command of the governor the militia of the state, to resist the enforcement of the laws. Arms and ammunition were ordered to be purchased, and all needful preparation was made for that purpose.

The proclamation of the president met a most unwelcome reception in that state. It was denounced as a “declaration of war by Andrew Jackson against the state of South Carolina ;” the “edict of a dictator;" a "federal manifesto, palmed upon us as Andrew Jackson's, by Livingston or Van Buren, or some other intriguer behind the dictator's throne;" and the people of the state were exhorted to “take up arms” as the “only course which honor and duty prescribed” for the defense of the state. The proclamation was received with equal disfavor by the legislature. In the house of representatives, Mr. Preston said: “We should hurl back instant scorn and defiance for this impotent missile of despicable malignity. Of answer to its paltry sophisms and disgraceful invectives, it is utterly unworthy. But the country and the world should know how perfectly we despise and defy him; and they should be told that before they plant such principles as his upon our free soil, the bones of many an enemy shall whiten our shores—the carcasses of many a caitiff and traitor blacken our air.” The governor was requested to issue a proclamation, warning the people not to be seduced by the president from their allegiance; "exhorting them to disregard his vain menaces, and to be prepared to sustain the dignity, and protect the liberty of the state."

The governor of the state at this time was Mr. Hayne, who had just been elected, and whose place in the senate of the United States had been supplied by the appointment of Mr. Calhoun, who had for this purpose resigned the office of vice-president in the latter part of December. A proclamation was accordingly issued by Gov. Hayne. It opposes that of the president by a constitutional exposition similar to that contained in his speeches in 1830; and, claiming for the states “ nullification as the rightful remedy," he requires the people of the state to protect their liberties, "if need be, with their lives and fortunes ;" concluding with an invocation to "that great and good Being, who, as a 'father, careth for his children,' to inspire them with that holy zeal in a good cause, which is the best safeguard of their rights and liberties.”

Orders were also issued for increasing the military force of the state; and the governor was authorized to accept the services of volunteers, who were to be ready to take the field at a moment's warning, “to snp

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press insurrection, repel invasion, or support the civil authorities in the execution of the laws.” The “union party” men, however, were determined to sustain the general government.

The belligerent proceedings of the Carolina legislature were followed, on the 16th of January, 1833, by a message of the president to congress, communicating the proceedings of South Carolina, and suggesting the adoption of such measures as the crisis seemed to demand. A bill was reported by the judiciary committee, empowering the president to employ the land and naval forces of the union, to enforce the collection of the revenue, if resistance should be offered.

While preparations were making for the expected conflict, measures were in progress designed to avert the dreaded calamity. The state of Virginia assumed the office of mediator. Resolutions were adopted by the legislature, requesting South Carolina to rescind her nullifying ordinance, or at least to suspend its operation until the close of the first session of the next congress; requesting congress gradually and speedily to reduce the revenue from duties on imports to the standard of the necessary expenditures of the government; and reässerting the doctrines of state sovereignty and state rights as set forth in the resolutions of 1798, which neither sanctioned the ordinance of South Carolina, nor countenanced all the principles of the proclamation, many of which, they said, were in direct conflict with them. It was also resolved to appoint a commissioner to proceed to South Carolina, with the resolutions, and communicate them to the governor, to be laid before the legislature; and to expostulate with the public authorities and people of that state for the preservation of the peace of the union. Benjamin Watkins Leigh was appointed to the mission.

Another measure having in view the conciliation of the southern opponents of the tariff, was a new attempt to modify the tariff. The secre. tary of the treasury in his report to congress urged a reduction of the duties to the revenue standard ; and in the house, the subject was referred to the committee of

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means. On the 27th of December, Mr. Verplanck, chairman, reported a bill, proposing a gradual reduction of duties, within two years, to little more than half the rates under former tariffs. The discussion of this bill continued until late in Feb. ruary, less than two weeks before the close of the session; having undergone so many amendments as almost to have lost its identity. Although there was little prospect of its passage at this session, the friends of a protecting tariff feared that another attempt would be made in the next congress, and perhaps with success, to destroy protection.

Under this apprehension, and while the “bill to provide further for the collection of the duties on imports,” or “force bill,” was still pend

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