Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/251

232 district attorney at Charleston that in the case of Slocum v. Mayberry the Supreme Court had decided that the courts of the United States had exclusive jurisdiction over all seizures made on land or water for a breach of the laws of the United States, and that any intervention of a state authority, which, by taking the thing seized out of the hands of the United States officer, might obstruct the exercise of this jurisdiction, was unlawful.

When the President sent his military spy to Charleston he privately expressed great astonishment that the people of South Carolina "should be so far deluded by the wild theory and sophistry of a few ambitious demagogues as to place themselves in the attitude of rebellion against their government, and become the destroyers of their own prosperity and liberty." There appeared to him in all their proceedings nothing but madness and folly. "The duty of the Executive," he said, "is a plain one; the laws will be executed and the Union preserved by all the constitutional and legal means he is invested with, and I rely with great confidence on the support of every