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Rh would be not a little diminished because of the triumph it would afford the Nullifiers; for they "would ascribe to their own miserable sophistry and corrupting intrigues this abandonment of a system which, without their conventional and legislative usurpations, was already expiring, from the conviction which for a considerable time past" had "been spreading among the people even in the tariff states, that its foundations" were "built upon selfishness and monopolizing cupidity." The State Rights party then pointed out that the position of the Union party meant that it stood for an "unlimited central consolidated government," with the states absolutely at its mercy. In order further to prove that the Union party was in league with the central government, the State Rights presses made much of a story that, according to the confessions of Union men themselves, the President's proclamation and all of his