Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/52

 remedied and how Congress could be induced to abandon forever the doctrine of implied powers.

As a matter of fact, very few if any of the small number of men who did talk disunion actually contemplated a recourse to it. And even those few saw that they must hide behind at least a pretendedly peaceable remedy, and one with little apparent implication of disunion. Nullification would serve.

The doctrine of nullification was brought to conspicuous notice by James Hamilton, Jr., at a Walterboro gathering, on October 12, 1828. "Our reliance, then, is on the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98—and upon these we put our citadel where no man can harm it." Nullification, he said, might be applied by the state either through its legislature or by a convention of the people in their sovereignty, and need not result in a dissolution of the Union, unless that was willed by their opponents. If the tariff were declared null and void within South Carolina, one of three courses would be open to the general government: first, to submit to this mode of redress, by leaving the people of South Carolina to themselves, with a hope that solitude would