Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/147

 group to those who favored the immediate call would have made a constitutional majority. The Union presses, however, continuing to keep up a bold front, answered the Nullifiers now with argument, now with irony and sarcasm. Each party, thinking that nothing succeeds like success, claimed that it was in the ascendant and that the other was dead or dying.

It was pointed out that a Union which had flourished for half a century was rudely menaced with dissolution for an alleged palpable violation of the national Constitution; but when it was recollected that a Calhoun, a McDuffie, a Hayne, and a Hamilton had been the alternate defenders and defamers of the national Constitution, the sober-minded patriot should solemnly pause and distrust the views of such men, who would now demolish the political accomplishments of a Washington, a Madison, a Jefferson, and a Franklin, to furnish speculative statesmen with materials and opportunities for uprearing a more splendid structure on their ruins. The editor who reasoned thus thought that the excitement in regard to the tariff could be allayed by a little sound reasoning