Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/306

Rh The Verplanck bill, which embodied too rapid a reduction for the manufacturers, was finally superseded by the Clay Compromise bill; this measure was more acceptable to the North and yet conceded enough to pacify the Nullifiers. This provided for a slow reduction of the duties for a period of ten years, when they were to reach in general a 20 per cent level. The Wilkins force bill, before Congress at the same time, of course received more denunciation from the Nullifiers than the Clay bill received praise. Though they often declared that should Congress pass the bill, which might well be entitled "a bill to dissolve the Union," South Carolina would surely secede. Congress did pass it, together with the compromise tariff.

As matters neared a crisis in Congress, the president of the South Carolina convention, ex-Governor James Hamilton, Jr., summoned it to convene again on March 11 at Columbia, to consider the Virginia mediation offered through Benjamin W. Leigh, and such measures as Congress might then have adopted. The call was