Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/145

 South, and its constitutional and confederate rights. During the fall the state seems to have given itself up to the business of politics. Dinners and meetings were reported from all quarters. The convention met at Columbia on December 5. The roll showed a representation of from one to nine delegates from each of thirty associations. A committee was appointed to prepare an address to the people of the state on the object of the associations, and provision was made for the printing of ten thousand copies. A committee on tracts and one on contributions were put to work. Preparations to distribute tracts were discussed and an enthusiastic proprietor of stage lines offered to transmit gratuitously all packages sent by the State Rights associations.

The Union men were equally active. They promptly denoimced the State Rights associations as Jacobinical, and compared the officers of the Charleston association to Marat and Robespierre. The whole movement was called an imperium in imperio designed to subvert all law and government, and was spoken of, indeed, as the actual