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 and lead to disunion. But these Union watchdogs, who raised the preliminary warning and later became leaders of the Union party, were now making much more stir than was warranted by anything the press disclosed.

Throughout the year 1828 the Charleston Courier bristled with denunciations of anything and everything that could be interpreted as tending toward disunion. Early in the year "Hamilton" published a series of twenty-eight articles in answer to Turnbull's The Crisis, which, with kindred publications, "Hamilton" said, had made the term "disunion" familiar to the ears of the people—a term which he held should never have found its way into the political vocabulary, but should be forever regarded as of evil omen. "Hamilton" denounced these essays as enkindling animosity, sowing dissension between the South and the North, and weakening the ties that bound them together. He did not refer to particular expressions, but to the general tone of the essays and to the inferences which they suggested. He thought it impossible to rise from their perusal without the impression that the authors regarded the dissolution of the Union as an event, not only probable, but hardly to be deprecated. He said