Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/85

 sections, the nullification papers boasted that their doctrines were rapidly extending to all parts of the Union. This had its effect on many of the doubtful and the timid in South Carolina, and encouraged the leaders to press more boldly their demands for action. Siurely, they argued, now when the cause seemed on the way to victory, its parent state. South Carolina, should not falter.

Others thought that the debate decided nothing except that "orthodoxy is my doxy, and heterodoxy is your doxy." Some of the Nullifiers admitted that the debate on abstract principles left the issue an open one until decided by a concrete case. This they thought to be at hand, and they held it the duty of South Carolina to force the issue. It would be a glorious achievement if the people of South Carolina asserted and maintained her sovereignty. But if they meanly shrank from the contest, awed by imaginary fears, and submitted to all the wrongs heaped upon them, unmitigated oppression would be their present doom, and future infamy their merited reward. The October elections must decide her fate.