Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/104

 trading facilities and commercial conditions generally, and less about tariff and anti-tariff.

Another writer maintained that the disciples of disunion were generally young men, particularly young men whose families had once been wealthy but had been reduced, by the silent but powerful effect of the statute on the equal distribution of estates, to the alternative of active industry or positive want.

A leading Union editor said that the howlings of many of the publications, in different parts of the state, about the American system, internal improvements, tariff, and northern manufactures ought to be regarded as a mere hoax, trumped up by a few artful, designing, though disappointed politicians, who were willing to sacrifice the interests of their fellow-citizens and to jeopardize the state for the sake of their own personal aggrandizement, "to gratify an unhallowed ambition, a fiendish lust of power." With the exception of John C. Calhoun and a few others, the Nullifiers did rely more on bombast and appeals to the emotions than upon sound reasoning. As yet, however, Calhoun had no prominent place in the nullification campaign.