Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/231

212 of the Union. Nullification was to them incompatible with the federal Constitution and utterly at war with the very nature of the government, fatal to the uniformity of its operation, destructive of its efficiency, and calculated to produce irremediable anarchy and confusion. They must therefore oppose it.

The State Rights party then claimed that the Union leaders had pledged themselves to go with the state when she should decide to nullify; the Union men answered that they had given no such promise, but had pledged themselves to go with the state if she actually seceded from the Union. But suppose South Carolina, through the State Rights majority, should attempt to force the Union minority by pains and penalties to disobey the laws of the United States before she had absolved her citizens from their allegiance to the Union. The Union men protested that she would be placing her sons between treason on the one hand and confiscation on the other, and that such a course would inevitably lead to a civil war.

On November 19 the convention met at Columbia and within a few days adopted a series of important documents as the expression of the