Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/99

 At the same time that such sentiments were expressed, the people of the North were warned not to be deceived into thinking that the people of the South and of South Carolina who opposed the tariff were but a paltry few, "a desperate and imprincipled faction, a small number of noisy and restless demagogues"; instead of a faction, it was "the whole people arrayed against federal usurpations." One Union editor believed that there were not 150 individuals in South Carolina, outside of Charleston, who did not deprecate the tariff system as unjust, unequal, and oppressive.

The Columbia Times editors showed themselves to be heartily with the South, but at the same time professed to love and venerate the Union, to have a "holy, all but superstitious reverence" for it, and to believe that most of the people felt the same way. They asserted that South Carolina did not aim at disunion; yet merely to arouse attention, they said, they believed in talking about disunion, and opened their columns to writers who tried to show that the South had all the resources necessary to resist invasion by the North, and to support a government when separate. The position this sheet now consistently held was