Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/201

182 grounds. If he were sincere, the doctrine might be classed among the aberrations of genius from the beaten track of reason and common-sense. "It is the property of great minds to give birth to great errors; genius is proverbially the subject of strange hallucinations. Great men have had their followers amidst the wildest vagaries of their philosophic madness." So, possibly, had it been with Calhoun; misled by the charms of hypothesis, he had ushered nullification into existence with the public sanction of his name, and worshipers were at once found for this monstrous creation of his political frenzy. But perhaps this conclusion was reached in a spirit of too great charity. The only other explanation, then, must be that Calhoun saw the full meaning of the theory and stooped to a deception to accomplish some purpose of unhallowed ambition or misguided patriotism. Was there not reason to believe that he knew full well that nullification was essentially revolutionary in its nature and that it was nothing more nor less that disunion in disguise?

The Union men also answered that surely a state could not be both "in and out" of the Union with respect to certain powers clearly delegated