these limits, even a federal officer will set at nought their decrees, repeal their solemn ordinances, proclaim their citizens to be traitors, and reduce them to subjection by military force; and if driven to desperation, they should seek a refuge in secession, they are to be told that they have bound themselves to those who have perpetrated or permitted these enormities, in the iron bonds of a perpetual Union.' "If these principles could be established, then indeed would the days of our liberty be numbered, and the republic will have found a master. If South Carolina had not already taken her stand against the usurpation of the Federal Government, here would have been an occasion, when she must have felt herself impelled, by every impulse of patriotism and every sentiment of duty, to stand forth in open defiance of the arbitrary decrees of the Executive, when a sovereign state is denounced, her authority derided, the allegiance of her citizens denied, and she is threatened with military power to reduce her to obedience to the will of one of the functionaries of the Federal Government, by whom she is commanded to tear from her archives' her most solemn decrees. Surely the time has come when it must be seen whether the people of the several states have indeed lost the spirit of the revolution, and whether they are to become the willing instruments of an unhallowed despotism. In such a sacred cause, South Carolina will feel that she is striking not for her own, but the liberties of the Union and the rights of man; and she confidently trusts that the issue of this contest will be an example to freemen and a lesson to rulers throughout the world. "Fellow-citizens: In the name and behalf of the State of South Carolina, I do once more solemnly warn you against all attempts to seduce you from your primary allegiance to the state. I charge you to be faithful to your duty as citizens of South Carolina, and earnestly exhort you to disregard those vain menaces' of military force, which, if the President, in violation of all his constitutional obligations, and of your most sacred rights, should be tempted to employ, it would become your solemn duty, at all hazards, to resist. I require you to be fully prepared to sustain the dignity and protect the liberties of the state, if need be, with 'your lives and fortunes.' And may that great and good Being, who, as a 'father careth for his children,' inspire us with that holy zeal in a good cause, which is the best safeguard of our rights and liberties. (L. S.) "In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the state to be hereunto affixed, and have signed the same with my hand. Done at Columbia, this 20th day of Deccember, in the year of our Lord, 1832, and in the independence of the United States, the Fifty-seventh. "Robert Y. Hayne. "By the Governor: "Samuel Hammond, Secretary of State." CHAPTER 16. Jackson's paper read to his Cabinet September The two events in the history of Andrew Jackson, which conclusively stamp him as a man superlatively fearless in the discharge of what he considered his duty, are the removal of the Government deposits from the United States bank, and the issuing of the Proclamation to the Nullifiers of South Carolina. His personal friends and advisors and his Cabinet were divided on removing the deposits. Jackson, without hesitation, promptly assumed all responsibility for the removal, and he let it be known all over the country that no one but himself had any responsibility connected with it. His bitter hatred for the bank as a public institution, and his professed and freely expressed opinion that the bank was a corrupting agency, not only in Congress, but wherever its activities reached, called from him always and everywhere the declaration that it must be destroyed for the peace and happiness of the Country. "Removing the Deposits" was an inaccurate statement of what General Jackson did. He did, in fact, remove no deposits at all; but the Revenue Collectors were instructed to put no more money in the bank, and the money already there was to be drawn out as the necessities of the Government called for. Jackson never dodged responsibilities, great or small, and removing the deposits was one of the greatest and most far reaching any public official ever assumed in civil life. His logic was simple, and, to him, conclusive. He reasoned that the Government's money put in the bank belonged to the people of the United States, and that Congress was supposed to be the representative of the people, acting always for their good, and that the people's money should not be allowed to be used to corrupt their representatives and cause them to betray their constituencies, and that the bank should be deprived of all means of bringing this about. In other words, removing the deposits was a part of the program laid out by Old Hickory to destroy the bank. He held that destroying the bank had been one of the issues submitted to the Secretary of War, August 1, 1831 to October 5, 1836 in Jackson's Cabinet. National Portrait Gallery. LOUIS MCLANE, 1786-1857. Tenth Secretary of the Treasury, Jackson's Cabinet, August 8, 1831 to May 29, 1833; Secretary of State May 29, 1833 to June 2, 1834; from National Portrait Gallery; Member of Congress from Delaware 1817-1827, United States Senator 1827-1829; Minister to England 1829-1831 and Baltimore and Ohio R. R. 1837-1847. 1845-1846; President of people in his election the second time, and that the overwhelming majority he received-Clay got only forty-eight electoral votesconclusively proved that the people wanted the bank destroyed, and that removing the deposits as a means to its destruction, was in accordance with the wishes of the voters who re-elected him. As stated, his advisors and supporters were divided on the question, and looking at it in the calm light of history, it appears now that there was ample room for a division of opinion. Thomas H. Benton in his "Thirty Years View" makes this striking comment on Jackson's act. "I was in the State of Virginia when the Globe newspaper arrived, towards the end of September, bringing this Paper which the President had read to his Cabinet, and the further information that he had carried his announced design into effect. I felt an emotion of the moral sublime to behold such an instant of civic heroism. Here was a President, not bred up in the political profession, taking a great step upon his own responsibility, from which many of his advisors shrunk; and magnanimously, in the act itself, releasing all from the peril that he encountered, boldly taking the whole upon himself. I say peril, for if the bank should conquer, there was an end to the political prospects of every public man concurring in the removal. He believed the act to be necessary, and, believing that, he did the act, leaving the consequences to God and the Country. "I feel that a great blow had been struck and that a great contest must come off, which could only be crowned with success by acting up to the spirit with which it had commenced, and I repaired to Washington, on the approach of the session, with a full determination to stand by the President, which I believe to be standing by the Country; and do my part in justifying his conduct, and in the exposing and resisting the powerful combination which it was certain would be formed against him." The President said: "Having carefully and anxiously considered all the facts and arguments which have been submitted to him relative to a removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States, the President deems it his duty to communicate in this manner to his Cabinet the final conclusions of his own mind and the reasons on which they are founded, in order to put them in durable form and to prevent misconceptions. "The President's convictions of the dangerous tendencies of the Bank of the United States, since signally illustrated by its own acts, were so overpowering when he entered on the duties of Chief Magistrate that he felt it his duty, notwithstanding the objections of the friends by whom he was surrounded, to avail himself of the first occasion to call the attention of Congress and the people to the question of its re-charter. The opinions expressed in his annual message of December, 1829, were reiterated in those |