Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/51

 administration in various parts of the state ventured to hold a few meetings during the year, but the fall elections showed that not only Charleston, but the state at large, was overwhelmingly for Jackson. In Charleston the administration party made a desperate fight, but while the highest vote for a Jackson man elected as representative to the state legislatiure was 1,510, and the lowest number of votes for a winning candidate was 1,096, the highest vote for an administration candidate was 706.

In denying that it was a Disunion sheet, the Mercury always made the point that it sought merely to bring the Union back to the constitutional basis, and that if the Union were ever broken the blame would be on the North— with those who trampled the Constitution under foot and who, forgetting that the states of the South were coequal sovereignties with the others, seemed determined to exploit them as colonies at their own discretion and pleasure. In September, when it was seen that the state was decidedly against disunionism in any phase, the Mercury announced that the South did not really think of disunion, but that the real issue was simply as to how the violations of the Constitution were to be