Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/214

Rh by one party would be attended and overpowered by the opposition. Again, if an apparently nonpartisan meeting was called, it would break up into two meetings before much business had been transacted.

In some localities the State Rights men seemed to be prepared to go faster than the main body of the party. As early as April some went so far as to propose a spontaneous election of delegates to a convention at once, without waiting for the adjournment of Congress or the meeting of an extra session of the state legislature. The party as a whole recognized that this would be unconstitutional, and instead promoted local petitioning to the legislature for a convention and general campaigning for the October elections of assemblymen. The convention became ostensibly the issue again, but most State Rights men meant by it a convention for nullification and nothing else. Others there were, however, who wanted the question to be left freely and openly to an unpledged convention, to the decision of which, whether for nullification, a southern convention, or unqualified submission, every citizen should yield assent.