Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/30

 stances the people would not wait for sale day, but held special meetings; and in some cases the local districts of a congressional district met together in convention. Some of these anti-tariff meetings attracted special attention as being "the largest and most respectable meetings ever held in the district." The Abbeville meeting, in Calhoun's district, was anticipated as one which, perhaps more distinctly than any other yet held, would embody the feeling of the interior and announce the course likely to be pursued by that section. Expectations were not disappointed. It was estimated that 5,000 were present, and resolutions were passed which strongly denounced the tariff. Although the protestants looked to state sovereignty for relief, they intrusted the subject to the legislature. They expressed a willingness to join in the non-intercourse plan, a contemplated southern agreement to use no northern manufactures, but they had no faith in it as a permanent policy.