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312 desperadoes." It was a "relapse into down right barbarism."

Union speakers defended the force bill and belittled the compromise tariff. The party papers noticed every apparent lagging of spirit among the ranks of the opposition. Calhoun's first speech on the force bill was picked to pieces by an editor who, after only a partial examination, pointed out twelve errors as to history and matters of fact. The debates of Calhoun and Webster, in the Senate in February of 1833, on the nature of the government were printed; Webster was held to have given the correct view, while that of Calhoun was ridicided as being full of "strange fallacies," "meretricious charms of error," "delusions of sophistry," and in many places almost "childishly fallacious and contradictory." The anomalous position of the late state convention was much ridiculed and the question was ironically asked whether the state was still "on her sovereignty."