Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 14.djvu/242

 236 Southern Historical Society Papers.

would be civil war ; or should it be by withdrawing from the Union? The position taken in the Proclamation, that a "resisting" State could not " retain its place in the Union," would seem to indicate very clearly that General Jackson regarded secession as the only proper remedy. Later experience has shown that secession is but the precursor of war. In the broad glare of that experience, who will now deny that nuUification, that is to say, the right of a State to say. Veto — I forbid— and to require the general government to refer the question to a Convention of all the States, is not the best and wisest, the most statesmanlike and patriotic method of exercising the " indefeasible right of resistance to unconstitutional acts."

But in 1832 the right of secession was almost as universally ad- mitted as that "the constitution recognized slavery as a fact which the States exclusively had the right to deal with." Men near to General Jackson and recognized as his mouth-pieces, asserted the right of secession, but denied the right of nullification, because, they argued, a State could not be m and out of the Union at the same time.

To these Calhoun replied, in that same letter to Hamilton, as fol- lows :

" There are many who acknowledge the right of a State to secede, but deny its right to nullify. * * The difficulty, it seems, is that a State cannot be i7i and oul of the Union at the same time. This is, indeed, true, if applied to secession, the throwing off of the a2i- thoriiy of the Union its-elf. To nullify the Constitution, if I may be pardoned a solecism, would, indeed, be tantamount to disunion, and, as applied to such an act, it would be true that a State could not be in and out of the Union at the same time, but the act would be seces- sion. But to apply it to nullification, properly understood, the object of which, instead of resisting or diminishing the powers of the Union, is to preserve them as they are, neither increased nor dimin ished, and thereby the Union itself, (for the Union may be as effec- tually destroyed by increasing as by diminishing its powers, by consolidation as by disunion itself), would be, I would say, had I not great respect for many who do thus apply it, egregious trifling with a grave and deeply important constitutional subject."

In i83i-'2 the protective system had been pushed to such extremes as to produce an almost universal sentiment in the staple or slave- holding states, that the Union, established for the general welfare, had become a curse to them. That sentiment had reached a point where, the right of secession being thus generally admitted, even