CHAPTER 15.

Nullification: Ordinance of South Carolina nullifying Acts of Congress; Address of Convention in South Carolina to the people of the United States; Jackson's proclamation on the nullification question_December 11, 1832; Inaugural address of Gov. Robert Y. Hayne of South Carolina; Gov. Hayne's Proclamation Dec. 20, 1832.

When Henry Clay's Compromise Bill looking to an accommodation of Nullification troubles in South Carolina passed Congress and was signed by Jackson, that leader instantly became the most popular man that ever lived in America down to that time. The Bill passed the Senate by a vote of 29 to 16 and the House by a vote of 119 to 85 and Jackson did not hesitate about signing it; and so the dangerous issue between South Carolina and the United States passed harmlessly away. The bill was not the bill introduced by Mr. Verplanck which was the administration bill, but Mr. Clay's bill.

Jackson's popularity soared skyward when his great Nullification Proclamation was issued, but when that danger had passed by and the compromise tariff act had become a law, the public saw in Jackson the savior of the country a second time as his victory at New Orleans had been the first. He will be known in years to come by his Nullification Proclamation more than by all his other acts, military or civil, combined. It alone will forever fix his place among the great men of the Country.

In order that the reader may have a clear and connected view of the chain of events which inaugurated Nullification and led on to its settlement without bloodshed or war, we will start the narrative with South Carolina's Ordinance to nullify certain Acts of Congress, passed by a State Convention on Nov. 24, 1832. This Convention met Nov. 19, 1832, and in six days had made history of far-reaching and very dangerous importance. Governor James Hamilton was President of the Convention. He was born in Charleston, South Carolina, May 8, 1786; completed academic studies, studied law and was admitted to the bar and

began practice in Charleston; served in the War of 1812 as Major; was mayor of Charleston; served several terms in the State House of Representatives; elected to the Seventeenth Congress, to fill the vacancy caused by the resignation of William Lowndes, as a State Rights Free Trader; re-elected to the Eighteenth, Nineteenth, and Twentieth Congresses (March 4, 1821-March 3, 1829); was governor of South Carolina 1830-1832; moved to Texas and drowned while on his way from New Orleans to Galveston, November 15, 1857.

This ordinance in full except the names of the Delegates of the Convention which were signed to it, is as follows:

"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 burthens 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 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, cr any act of the Legislature passed in pursuance thereof, unless e 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 acts 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 constituted 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 harrass 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 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 to 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.

"James Hamilton, Jr. 'President of the convention, and Delegate from St. Peters."

The convention in order to lay its views before all other states of the Union, and to justify South Carolina's cause as far as may be, issued an address to the people of the United States after its Ordinance had been duly passed and made public.

"ADDRESS TO THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES.

"To the people of Massachusetts, Virginia, New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Maryland, Connecticut, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, New Jersy, Georgia, Delaware, Rhode Island, Kentucky, Tennessee, Ohio, Louisiana, Indiana, Mississippi, Illinois, Alabama and Missouri.

"We, the people of South Carolina, assembled in convention, have solemnly and deliberately declared, in our paramount sovereign capacity, that the act of Congress, approved the 19th day of May, 1828, and the act approved the 14th of July, 1832, altering and amending the several acts imposing duties and imports, are unconstitutional, and, therefore, absolutely void and of no binding force within the limits of this state; and for the purpose of carrying this declaration into full and complete effect, we have invested the Legislature with ample powers, and made it the duty of all the functionaries and all the citizens of the state, on their allegiance, to co-operate in enforcing the aforesaid declaration.

"In resorting to this important measure, to which we have been impelled by the most sacred of all the duties which a free people can owe either to the memory of their ancestors or to the claims of their posterity, we feel that it is due to the intimate political relation which exists between South Carolina and the other states of this confederacy, that we should present a clear and distinct exposition of the principles on which we have acted, and of the causes by which we have been reluctantly constrained to assume this attitude of sovereign resistance in relation to the usurpations of the Federal Government.

"For this purpose, it will be necessary to state, briefly, what we conceive to be the relation created by the Federal Constitution between the States and the General Government; and also what we conceive to be the true character and practical operation of the system of protecting duties, as it effects our rights, our interests, and our liberties.

"We hold, then, that on their separation from the Crown of Great Britain, the several colonies became free and independent states, each enjoying the separate and independent right of selfgovernment; and that no authority can be exercised over them, or within their limits, but by their consent, respectively given as states. It is equally true, that the constitution of the United States is a compact formed between the several states acting as sovereign communities; that the Government created by it is a joint agency of the states, appointed to execute the powers enumerated and granted by that instrument; that all its acts, not intentionally authorized, are themselves essentially null and void, and that the states have the right, in the same sovereign capacity in which they adopted the Federal Constitution, to pronounce, in the last result authoritative judgment on the usurpations of the Federal Government, and to adopt such measures as they may deem necessary and expedient to arrest the operation of the unconstitutional acts of that Governemtn within their respective limits. Such we deem to be the inherent rights of the statesrights, in the very nature things, absolutely inseparable from sovereignty. Nor is the duty of a state, to arrest an unconstitutional and oppressive act of the Federal Government less imperative, than the right is incontestible. Each state, by rati