And

to secede.

In all this there was nothing new. But South threatens Carolina went further than any of her predecessors in nullification. "We, the people of South Carolina," concluded the ordinance of the convention, “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 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 forthwith pro

ceed to organize a separate government."

Resolution of

ment.

If the state was resolute, the general government was no less so. The president was in his element. govern- A crisis which he was eminently adapted to meet had arrived. It called forth all his independence, all his nationality. Other men more than one of his predecessors would have doubted the course to be pursued ; they would have staid to inquire into the powers of the Constitution, or to count the resources of the government; nay, had they been consistent, they would have inclined to the support, rather than to the overthrow, of the South Carolina doctrine. Jackson did not waver an instant. He took his own connsel, as he was wont to do, and declared for the nation against the state; then ordered troops and a national vessel to the support of the government officers in South Carolina. "No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed,”—thus the president declared in a proclamation; "but such a state of things is hourly apprehended; and it is the intent of this instrument to proclaim not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution, to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, shall be performed, . but to warn the citizens of South Car

olina

that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very state whose right they affect to support," (December.) The appeal to the South Carolinians was the more forcible in coming from one of themselves, as it were; Jackson being a native of their state. Addressing Congress in an elaborate message, (January 16, 1833,) the president argued down both nullification and secession, maintaining that the result of each is the same; since a state in which, by a usurpation of power, the constitutional authority of the federal government is openly defied and set aside, wants only the form to be independent of the Union." He then proceeded to recount the measures which he had taken, and to propose those which he considered it necessary for Congress to take. Congress responded, after some delay, by an enforcing act, the pri mary object of which was to secure the collection of the customs in the South Carolina ports. To this Calhoun, who had resigned the vice presidency in order to represent South Carolina in the Senate, opposed himself in vain; while Webster argued against him as he had done against Hayne two years before, (February.)

Resolu

states.

The government did not stand alone. One after tion of another the states, by legislative or by individual proceedings, came out in support of the national principle. The principle of state sovereignty, that might have found support but for the extremity to which it had been pushed, seemed to be abandoned. South Carolina was left to herself, even by her neighbors, usually prone to take the same side. Only Virginia came forward, appealing to the government as well as to South Carolina to be done with strife. As if to show her sympathy for the cause of the state, Virginia appointed a commissioner to convey her sentiments to the people of South Carolina. Otherwise the states ranged themselves distinctly, though not all actively, on the side of the nation.

Tariff

But on one point there was a decided reservation compro- with many of the states. The tariff was openly mise. condemned by North Carolina, Alabama, and Georgia; the last state proposing a southern convention, to take some measures of resistance to the continuance of a system so unconstitutional. Henry Clay took the matter up in the Senate. He had been the advocate of the Missouri Compromise, and now, in consultation with others, brought forward a tariff compromise. This proposed that the duties on all imports exceeding twenty per cent. should be reduced to that rate by successive diminutions through the next ten years, (till June 30, 1842.) Unlike the Missouri question, the tariff question was disposed of without protracted struggles. The advocates of protection opposed the compromise as a financial measure, but far graver objections were brought against it as a political Webster considered it as "yielding great principles to faction," and others thought with him that it was no time to waive the national supremacy at the moment that a state was in open rebellion against it. But the compromise became a law, (March 2.) "The lightning,” as one of Clay's correspondents wrote to him, was "drawn out from the clouds lowering over the country," and South Carolina returned to her former position. But that was full of insubordination, and the clouds still lowered.

measure.

The pres

The president never ceased to regret that he had ident's not done as he threatened, and arrested Calhoun regret. for high treason. It was a regret in which many shared, believing that the time had come to test the strength of the national government, and that the trial of its second officer, on the charge of conspiring against it, would have been a better opportunity of settling the relations between the nation and the state than could be found in enforcing acts or compromises.

CHAPTER VI.

ANTI-SLAVERY.

Calhoun's CALHOUN, escaping trial, went home to tell his basis. people that the south could not be united against the north on the tariff question. "The basis of southern union,” he said, "must be shifted to the slave question.”

Two periods

in the antislavery

movement.

This question had then (1833) entered upon its later phase. In the history of the movement against slavery in the United States, two periods are easily observed. The first is from the beginning of the government to the year 1831, during which antislavery meant opposition to an evil from which all parts of the country were suffering, and to the relief of which all must contribute. Slavery was to be removed gradually, and with compensation to the owners of slaves who might be emancipated. As a general rule, societies were the instruments to be employed in bringing about the desired results, the subject being too delicate, or too vast, or both, for individual action. All this changes in the second period, from 1831 forward. Slavery is the sin for which those only who tolerate it are to pay the penalty; it is to be wiped out at once, and without compensating those who have upheld it; and as its abolition is to be effected only at great risks and in defiance of powerful traditions, it must be the work of individuals, who, though combined in associations, are mostly engaged in individual action.

It was a natural consequence of this contrast that while the South coöperated in anti-slavery movements before 1831, it set itself against them afterwards. Of one hundred and forty-four anti-slavery societies in 1826, one hundred and six were southern. Of the comparatively few, ten years later, all were northern.

Southampton

massacre.

The dividing line between the two marked by the Southampton massacre.

periods is This hap

pened in the Virginia county of that name in August, 1831. Its leader was a slave of fanatic character, named Turner; its first victims were sixty whites, its last one hundred blacks, who fell before the state militia and United States troops sent against them. In December of the same year, the legislature of Virginia, discussing the massacre, went on to discuss its cause, and the possibility of removing it by emancipation. Various plans were proposed, and though none was adopted, though all were opposed by the eastern members, the tone of the debate was generally anti-slavery. "The hour of the eradication of the evil is advancing," said T. J. Randolph, a grandson of Jefferson; "it must come." It was the last time that any southern legislature, or assembly of any kind, suffered slavery to be treated in this style.

Lundy and

Already the changed character of the anti-slavery movement had appeared. Benjamin Lundy, a meGarrison. chanic of Quaker parentage, began his journal, entitled Genius of Universal Emancipation, in 1821, and three years later, removed its office from Ohio to Maryland. There, at Baltimore, in a slaveholding community, he continued to urge the immediate abolition of slavery, and, not content with his labors as a journalist, travelled north and south to meet men face to face, and increase the number of his fellow-laborers. In Boston, he found a a young printer, William L. Garrison, working in the