Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/412

 380 The " South Carolina Exposition." [isas south of the Potomac river and west of Pennsylvania Adams failed to receive a single electoral vote. In all New England Jackson received but one. Politically the South and West were now arrayed against the East. The Middle States were, however, divided ; for New York and Pennsylvania were carried by Jackson ; and New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland by Adams. In South Carolina, meantime, resistance to the tariff of 1828 had come to a head. The political leaders, turning with one accord to the Vice-President, John C. Calhoun, urged him to prepare a memorandum on the subject to be considered by the State legislature in its winter session. Calhoun complied, and wrote for them what has ever since been known as the "South Carolina Exposition" of 1828. This famous document opens with the assertion that the Tariff Act of 1828 is uncon- stitutional, oppressive, and unequal; it states the reasons on which each of these charges is based, and then proceeds to discuss the right of the State to declare the Act null and void within her boundaries. The government of the United States, Calhoun declared, was formed by the States and not by the people. The Constitution is a compact or contract, to which each State is a party. Each State, therefore, has a right to judge for itself of any infraction of the Constitution by Congress; and, in case of a deliberate, dangerous, and palpable exercise of power not granted, has a right to interpose to stop the progress of the evil. How to use this power of interposition a State alone can decide. Interposition is, indeed, a last resort; but if, in the opinion of a State, it becomes necessary, the proper course for a State to follow is to call a convention in order to declare the Acts in question null and void and not binding on her citizens. This would force the Federal government to pause, and either to compromise or to submit the question in dispute to a convention of all the States. Should three-fourths of the States thus assembled in convention decide against the protesting State, a disputed power would be converted into an expressly granted power ; and the aggrieved State would then have to submit or secede from the Union. Calhoun held that the Tariff Act undoubtedly presented a case calling for such inter- position ; but, considering that a great political revolution had taken place, and that Andrew Jackson would soon be in the presidential chair, he thought it would be well for South Carolina to withhold her veto till one more session of Congress had closed. So fully did the "Exposition" set forth the attitude of the leaders that the legislature promptly adopted it in the form of a report from the committee, and passed resolutions which were sent to the legislature of each State in the Union. Nor was South Carolina alone in her opposition. In 1828 (December 20) Georgia addressed a long memorial to the anti-tariff States, and bade her governor, in the event of the failure of the present Congress to repeal or modify the tariff, appoint delegates to meet a convention of the Southern States in order "to deliberate upon and devise