Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/217

198 and that, if that appeal should be disregarded, they ought to consider the grave question whether actual secession would be preferable to a longer continued endurance, the Nullification party seized upon this as an occasion to assert that the Unionists were the ones who were really advocating secession and the breaking up of the Union, while they, the Nullifiers, were the true lovers of the Union, anxious to preserve it, and prepared with a plan which would do so. The Union presses justly ridiculed this attempt to shift the charge of secession.

The Nullifiers also argued against a southern convention on the ground that it would violate the constitutional prohibition of compacts between states. The Union men answered this objection by pointing out what would probably be the character and course of such a southern convention. It would assemble for deliberation as to the best mode of effecting a repeal of the tariff act; and it would apprise the tariff states of the determination of the anti-tariff members of the Union to withdraw from the compact and form