Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/353

334 for a mandamus to Colonel B. F. Hunt, who commanded the Sixteenth Regiment of the South Carolina Militia, requiring him to give a commission to Edward McCrady as first Lieutenant in the Washington Light Infantry, a company of the Sixteenth Regiment, The Judge held that Colonel Hunt was warranted in refusing the commission because McCrady had refused to take the oath prescribed in the tenth section of the militia act. An appeal was immediately made to the court of appeals. The lawyers on the Union side announced that they expected to carry it from that court to the federal court, if necessary. The case was brought before the court of appeals in Charleston on March 31, but as one of the three judges was not able to attend, the case was ordered to be reargued at the next session of the court in Columbia in May.

During April and May the papers were filled with the arguments before the court. Every part of them was picked to pieces, and some references were made to the court by the Nullifiers which the Union presses cited as efforts to intimidate the judges." On June 2, after a hearing