Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/351

332 he was born here he was resolved to die, and no persecution should drive him from the soil of Carolina, where "the Star Spangled Banner should be his shroud, pure and spotless, he hoped; but even if stained with blood, still it should be his shroud."

Meantime the Nullifiers persistently claimed that there was nothing in the oaths to which exception could be taken. Their papers day after day printed them as the best argument that there was nothing objectionable in them. Their editors argued that neither oath was at all different from that in half the states of the Union. They protested that the people of the interior were being aroused by misrepresentation. Some belittled the paper belligerency of the Union party and pronounced it simply a scheme to frighten the opposition into calling an extra session of the legislature to repeal the military oath. Others believed that the agitation was waged as a war cry, needed by the leaders, men anxious to run for Congress, to keep the party together.