Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/372

Rh Thus the Nullifiers had a two-thirds majority in both houses and could adopt their oath as an amendment to the constitution. Their popular vote, however, was somewhat short of a two-thirds majority of the votes cast. The Union papers immediately pointed out this fact and urged that while so large a minority was opposed to measures which they believed would deprive them of "all the rights that a patriot held sacred," their oppressors should "take timely warning, lest an insulted and injured people follow that course which none but slaves would for a moment hesitate to pursue." They asserted that in spite of a provision in the constitution that two-thirds of both branches of the legislature of two