Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/179

160 went to the hall of the House, organized, and adopted a resolution that it was inexpedient for South Carolina to participate in the presidential campaign. The sixty-six who remained and voted for the Jackson resolutions authorized the appointment of eleven delegates to the Baltimore convention of the next May. The ninety-six of the opposition asserted that their chief reason for objection was that the Submission men were trying to use the presidential campaign as a means of diverting attention from the crucial issue.

A plot of the two caucuses shows a distribution virtually the same as that of the previous year on the convention question. With but few exceptions in the state it is quite probable that the party division as to nullification applied also to the question of the presidency.

The State Rights men had planned to issue a stinging rebuke to the President in the form of a set of resolutions denouncing his June 14 letter, and the reports of the committees on federal relations were made according to this understanding. But the President's message, satisfactory to the