legislature, at its assembling, in December, 1800. After referring to the distribution which had been ordered to be made among the people, of Mr. Madison's celebrated report, of '99, he says: In connection with this subject, it is proper to add, that, since your last session, the sedition ried into effect, in this commonwealth, by the decision of a federal court. I notice this event, not with a view of censuring or criticising it. The transaction has gone to the world, and the impartial will judge of it as it deserves. I notice it for the purpose of remarking that the decision was executed with the same order and tranquil submission, on the part of the people, as could have been shown by them, on a similar occasion, to any the most necessary, constitutional, and popular acts of the government." " been so frequently referred to, in the course of this debate, as an example to justify the present proceedings of South Carolina, that I may be excused for saying something of them. What, then, was the conduct of Virginia, in the memorable era of '98 and '99? She solemnly protested against the alien and sedition acts, as 'pal-law, one of the acts complained of, has been carpable and alarming infractions of the constitution;' she communicated that protest to the other States of the Union, and earnestly appealed to them to unite with her in a like declaration, that this deliberate and solemn expression of the opinion of the States, as parties to the constitutional compact, should have its proper effect on the councils of the nation, in procuring a revision and repeal of the obnoxious acts. This was 'the head and front of her offending'-no more. The whole object of the proceedings was, by the peaceful force of public opinion, embodied through the organ of the State legislatures, to obtain a repeal of the laws in question, not to oppose or arrest their execution, while they remained unrepealed. That this was the true spirit and real purpose of the proceeding, is abundantly manifested by the whole of the able debate which took place in the legislature of the State, on the occasion. All the speakers, who advocated the resolutions which were finally adopted, distinctly placed them on that legitimate, constitutional ground. I need only refer to the emphatic declaration of John Taylor, of Caroline, the distinguished mover and able champion of the resolutions. He said the appeal was to public opinion; if that is against us, we must yield.' The same sentiment was avowed and maintained by every friend of the resolutions, throughout the debate. "But, sir, the real intentions and policy of Virginia were proved, not by declarations and speeches merely, but by facts. If there ever was a law odious to a whole people, by its daring violation of the fundamental guaranties of public liberty, the freedom of speech and freedom of the press, it was the sedition law to the people of Virginia. Yet, amid all this indignant dissatisfaction, after the solemn protest of the legislature, in '98, and the renewal of that protest, in '99, this most odious and arbitrary law was peaceably carried into execution, in the capital of the State, by the prosecution and punishment of Callender, who was fined and imprisoned for daring to canvass the conduct of our public men (as Lyon and Cooper had been elsewhere), and was still actually imprisoned, when the legislature assembled, in December, 1800. Notwithstanding the excited sensibility of the public mind, no popular tumult, no legislative interference, disturbed, in any manner, the full and peaceable execution of the law. The Senate will excuse me, I trust, for calling their attention to a most forcible commentary on the true character of the Virginia proceedings of '98 and '99 (as illustrated in this transaction), which was contained in the official communication of Mr. Monroe, then Governor of the State, to the Mr. Webster, in denying the derivation of nullification and secession from the constitution, said: "The constitution does not provide for events which must be preceded by its own destruction. Secession, therefore, since it must bring these consequences with it, is revolutionary. And nullification is equally revolutionary. What is revolution? Why, sir, that is revolution which overturns, or controls, or successfully resists the existing public authority; that which arrests the exercise of the supreme power; that which introduces a new paramount authority into the rule of the state. Now, sir, this is the precise object of nullification. It attempts to supersede the supreme legislative authority. It arrests the arm of the Executive Magistrate. It interrupts the exercise of the accustomed judicial power. Under the name of an ordinance, it declares null and void, within the State, all the revenue laws of the United States. Is not this revolutionary? Sir, so soon as this ordinance shall be carried into effect, a revolution will have commenced in South Carolina. She will have thrown off the authority to which her citizens have, heretofore, been subject. She will have declared her own opinions and her own will to be above the laws, and above the power of those who are intrusted with their administration. If she makes good these declarations, she is revolutionized. As to her, it is as distinctly a change of the supreme power as the American Revolution, of 1776. That revolution did not subvert government, in all its forms. It did not subvert local laws and municipal administrations. It only threw off the dominion of a power claiming to be superior, and to have a right, in many important respects, to exercise legislative authority. Thinking this authority to have been usurped or abused, the American colonies, now the United States, bade it defiance, and freed themselves from it, by means of a revolution. But that revolution left them with their own municipal laws still, and the forms of local government. If Carolina now shall effectually resist the laws of Congress-if she shall be her own judge, take her remedy into her own hands, obey the laws of the Union when she pleases, and disobey them when she pleases-she will relieve herself from a paramount power, as distinctly as did the American colonies, in 1776. In other words, she will achieve, as to herself, a revolution." The speaker then proceeded to show what nullification was, as reduced to practice in the ordinance, and other proceedings of South Carolina; and said: result of the gentleman's opinions, or rather the very text of his doctrine, is, that no act of Congress can bind all the States, the constitutionality of which is not admitted by all; or, in other words, that no single State is bound, against its own dissent, by a law of imposts. This was precisely the evil experienced under the old confederation, and for remedy of which this constitution was adopted. The leading object in establishing this government, an object forced on the country by the condition of the times, and the absolute necessity of the law, was to give to Congress power to lay and collect imposts without the consent of particular States. "But, sir, while practical nullification in The revolutionary debt remained unpaid; the South Carolina would be, as to herself, actual national treasury was bankrupt; the country and distinct revolution, its necessary tendency was destitute of credit; Congress issued its must also be to spread revolution, and to break | requisitions on the States, and the States negup the constitution, as to all the other States. lected them; there was no power of coercion It strikes a deadly blow at the vital principle of but war; Congress could not lay imposts, or the whole Union. To allow State resistance to other taxes, by its own authority; the whole the laws of Congress to be rightful and proper, general government, therefore, was little more to admit nullification in some States, and yet than a name. The articles of confederation, as not expect to see a dismemberment of the en- to purposes of revenue and finance, were nearly tire government, appears to me the wildest illu- a dead letter. The country sought to escape sion and the most extravagant folly. The gen- from this condition, at once feeble and disgracetleman seems not conscious of the direction or ful, by constituting a government which should the rapidity of his own course. The current of have power of itself to lay duties and taxes, and his opinions sweeps him along, he knows not to pay the public debt, and provide for the genwhither. To begin with nullification, with the eral welfare; and to lay these duties and taxes avowed intent, nevertheless, not to proceed to in all the States, without asking the consent secession, dismemberment, and general revolu- of the State goverments. This was the very tion, is as if one were to take the plunge of power on which the new constitution was to deNiagara, and cry out that he would stop half-pend for all its ability to do good; and, without way down. In the one case, as in the other, it, it can be no government, now or at any time. the rash adventurer must go to the bottom of Yet, sir, it is precisely against this power, so the dark abyss below, were it not that that absolutely indispensable to the very being of abyss has no discovered bottom. the government, that South Carolina directs her ordinance. She attacks the government in its authority to raise revenue, the very mainspring of the whole system; and, if she succeed, every movement of that system must inevitably cease. It is of no avail that she declares that she does not resist the law as a revenue law, but as a law for protecting manufactures. It is a revenue law; it is the very law by force of which the revenue is collected; if it be arrested in any State, the revenue ceases in that State; it is, in a word, the sole reliance of the government for the means of maintaining itself and performing its duties." "Nullification, if successful, arrests the power of the law, absolves citizens from their duty, subverts the foundation both of protection and obedience, dispenses with oaths and obligations of allegiance, and elevates another authority to supreme command. Is not this revolution? And it raises to supreme command four-andtwenty distinct powers, each professing to be under a general government, and yet each setting its laws at defiance at pleasure. Is not this anarchy, as well as revolution? Sir, the constitution of the United States was received as a whole, and for the whole country. If it cannot stand altogether, it cannot stand in parts; and, if the laws cannot be executed every where, they cannot long be executed any where. The gentleman very well knows that all duties and imposts must be uniform through out the country. He knows that we cannot have one rule or one law for South Carolina, and another for other States. He must see, therefore, and does sce-every man sees-that the only alternative is a repeal of the laws throughout the whole Union, or their execution in Carolina as well as elsewhere. And this repeal is demanded, because a single State interposes her veto, and threatens resistance! The Mr. Webster condensed into four brief and pointed propositions his opinion of the nature of our federal government, as being a UNION in contradistinction to a LEAGUE, and as acting upon INDIVIDUALS in contradistinction to STATES, and as being, in these features discriminated from the old confederation. "1. That the constitution of the United States is not a league, confederacy, or compact, between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacities; but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people, and creating direct relations between itself and individuals. "2. That no State authority has power to dissolve these relations; that nothing can dissolve them but revolution; and that, consequently, there can be no such thing as secession without revolution. We, who hear and see it, can ourselves hardly yet believe it. Even after all that had preceded it, this ordinance struck the country with amazement. It was incredible and inconceivable, that South Carolina should thus plunge headlong into resistance to the laws, on a matter of opinion, and on a question in which the preponderance of opinion, both of the present "3. That there is a supreme law, consisting day and of all past time, was so overwhelmingof the constitution of the United States, acts of ly against her. The ordinance declares that Congress passed in pursuance of it, and trea- Congress has exceeded its just power, by laying ties; and that, in cases not capable of assuming duties on imports, intended for the protection the character of a suit in law or equity, Con- of manufactures. This is the opinion of South gress must judge of, and finally interpret, this Carolina; and on the strength of that opinion supreme law, so often as it has occasion to pass she nullifies the laws. Yet has the rest of the acts of legislation; and, in cases capable of as-country no right to its opinions also? Is one suming, and actually assuming, the character of a suit, the Supreme Court of the United States is the final interpreter. "4. That an attempt by a State to abrogate, annul, or nullify an act of Congress, or to arrest its operation within her limits, on the ground that, in her opinion, such law is unconstitutional, is a direct usurpation on the just powers of the general government, and on the equal rights of other States; a plain violation of the constitution, and a proceeding essentially revolutionary in its character and tendency." Mr. Webster concluded his speech, an elaborate and able one, in which he appeared in the high character of patriot still more than that of orator, in which he intimated that some other cause, besides the alleged one, must be at the bottom of this desire for secession. He was explicit that the world could hardly believe in such a reason, and that we ourselves who hear and see all that is said and done, could not believe it. He concluded thus: State to sit sole arbitress? She maintains that those laws are plain, deliberate, and palpable violations of the constitution; that she has a sovereign right to decide this matter; and, that, having so decided, she is authorized to resist their execution, by her own sovereign power; and she declares that she will resist it, though such resistance should shatter the Union into atoms." Mr. Davis, of Massachusetts, had been still more explicit, in the expression of the belief already given (in the extract from his speech contained in this work), that the discontent in South Carolina had a root deeper than that of the tariff; and General Jackson intimated the same thing in his message to the two Houses on the South Carolina proceedings, and in which he alluded to the ambitious and personal feelings which might be involved in them. Certainly it was absolutely incomprehensible that this doctrine of nullification and secession, prefigured in the Roman secession to the sacred mount, and "Sir, the world will scarcely believe that this the Jewish disruption of the twelve tribes, should whole controversy, and all the desperate mea- be thus enforced, and impressed, for that cause sures which its support requires, have no other of the tariff alone; when, to say nothing of the foundation than a difference of opinion, upon a intention of the President, the Congress and the provision of the constitution, between a majority of the people of South Carolina, on one side, country to reduce it, Mr. Calhoun himself had and a vast majority of the whole people of the provided for its reduction, satisfactorily to himUnited States on the other. It will not credit self, in the act called a "compromise;" to which the fact, it will not admit the possibility, that, he was a full contracting party. It was imposin an enlightened age, in a free, popular repub-sible to believe in the soleness of that reason, in lic, under a government where the people govern, as they must always govern, under such the presence of circumstances which annulled it; systems, by majorities, at a time of unprecedented happiness, without practical oppression, without evils, such as may not only be pretended, but felt and experienced; evils not slight or temporary, but deep, permanent, and intolerable; a single State should rush into conflict with all the rest, attempt to put down the power of the Union by her own laws, and to support those laws by her military power, and thus break up and destroy the world's last hope. And well the world may be incredulous. and Mr. Calhoun himself, in a part of his speech which had been quoted, seemed to reveal a glimpse of two others--slavery, about which there was at that time no agitation-and the presidency, to which patriotic Southern men could not be elected. The glimpse exhibited of the first of these causes, was in this sentence: "The contest (between the North and the South) will, in fact, be a contest between power and liberty, and such he considered the present; a contest in which the weaker section, with its peculiar labor, productions and situation, has at stake all that is dear to freemen." Here is a distinct declaration that there was then a contest between the two sections of the Union, and that that contest was between power and liberty, in which the freedom and the slave property of the South were at stake. This declaration at the time attracted but little attention, there being then no sign of a slavery agitation; but to close observers it was an ominous revelation of something to come, and an apparent laying an anchor to windward for a new agitation on a new subject, after the tariff was done with. The second intimation which he gave out, and which referred to the exclusion of the patriotic men of the South from the presidency was in this sentence: 'Every Southern man, true to the interests of his section, and faithful to the duties which Providence has allotted him, will be forever excluded from the honors and emoluments of this government, which will be reserved for those only who have qualified themselves, by political prostitution, for admission into the Magdalen asylum." This was bitter; and while revealing his own feelings at the prospect of his own failure for the presidency (which from the brightness of the noon-day sun was dimning down to the obscurity of dark night), was, at the same time, unjust, and contradicted by all history, previous and subsequent, of our national elections; and by his own history in connection with them. The North had supported Southern men for President a long succession of them-and even twice concurred in dropping a Northern President at the end of a single term, and taking a Southern in his place He himself had had signal proofs of good will from the North in his two elections to the vice-presidency; in which he had been better supported in the North than in the South, getting the whole party vote in the former while losing part of it in the latter. It was evident then, that the protective tariff was not the sole, or the main cause of the South Carolina discontent; that nullification and secession were to continue, though their ostensible cause ceased; that resistance was to continue on a new ground, upon the same principle, until a new and impossible point was attained. This was declared by Mr. Calhoun in his place, on the day of the passage of the "compromise" bill, and on hearing that the "force bill" had finally passed the House of Representatives. He then stood up, and spoke thus: "He had said, that as far as this subject was concerned, he believed that peace and harmony would follow. But there is another connected with it, which had passed this House, and which had just been reported as having passed the other, which would prevent the return of quiet. He considered the measure to which he referred as a virtual repeal of the constitution; and, in fact, worse than a positive and direct repeal; as it would leave the majority without any shackles on its power, while the minority, hoping to shelter itself under its protection, and having still some respect left for the instrument, would be trammelled without being protected by its prothat the bill will be a practical assertion of one visions. It would be idle to attempt to disguise theory of the constitution against another-the theory advocated by the supporters of the bill, that ours is a consolidated government, in which the States have no rights, and in which, in fact, they bear the same relation to the whole community as the counties do to the States; and against that view of the constitution which considers it as a compact formed by the States as States, and not between the individual citizens. separate communities, and binding between the No man of candor, who admitted that our constitution is a compact, and was formed and is binding in the manner he had just stated, but must acknowledge that this bill utterly overthrows and prostrates the constitution; and that it leaves the government under the control of the will of an absolute majority. "If the measure be acquiesced in, it will be the termination of that long controversy which continued under various fortunes until the prebegan in the convention, and which has been sent day. But it ought not-it will not-it cannot be acquiesced in-unless the South is dead to the sense of her liberty, and blind to she never will cease resistance until the act is those dangers which surround and menace them; erased from the statute book. To suppose that the entire power of the Union may be placed in the hands of this government, and that all the various interests in this widely extended country may be safely placed under the will of an unchecked majority, is the extreme of folly and madness. The result would be inevitable, that power would be exclusively centered in the all the south of it would be held as subjected dominant interest north of this river, and that provinces, to be controlled for the exclusive benefit of the stronger section. Such a state of things could not endure; and the constitution and liberty of the country would fall in the contest, if permitted to continue. "He trusted that that would not be the case, but that the advocates of liberty every where, as well in the North as in the South; that those who maintained the doctrines of '98, and the sovereignties of the States; that the republican party throughout the country would rally against this attempt to establish, by law, doctrines which must subvert the principles on which free institutions could be maintained." Here was a new departure, upon a new point, as violent as the former complaint, looking to the same remedy, and unfounded and impossible. This force bill, which was a repeal of the constitution, in the eyes of Mr. Calhoun, was a mere revival of formerly existing statutes, and could have no operation, if resistance to the tariff laws ceased. Yet, nullification and secession were to proceed until it was erased from th statute book; and all the morbid views of the constitution, and of the Virginia resolutions of '98 and '99, were to hold their places in Mr. Calhoun's imagination, and dominate his conduct in all his political action, until this statute was erased. But it is due to many of his friends and followers, to say that, while concurring in his complaints against the federal government, and in his remedies, they dissented from his It became a question between them which had the upper hand of the other-in their own language-which was master of the other—on that occasion. Mr. Calhoun declared that he had Mr. Clay down-had him on his back—was his master. Mr. Clay retorted: He my master! I would not own him for the meanest of my slaves. Of course, there were calls to order about that time; but the question of mastery, and the causes which produced the passage of the act, were still points of contestation between them, and came up for altercation in other forms. Mr. Calhoun claimed a controling influence for the military attitude of South Carolina, and its intimidating effect upon the federal government. Mr. Clay ridiculed this idea of intimidation, and said the little boys that muster in the streets with their tiny wooden swords, had as well pretend to terrify the grand army of Bonaparte: and afterwards said he would tell how it happened, which was thus: His friend from Delaware (Mr. John M. Clayton), said to him one day-these South Carolinians act very badly, but they are good fellows, and it is a pity to let Jackson hang them. This was after Mr. Clay had brought in fourd them in the constitution, shown to be his bill, and while it lingered without the least there by the '98-'99 Virginia resolutions; the apparent chance of passing-paralyzed by the manly sense of McDuffie, and some others, revehement opposition of the manufacturers: and jected that sophistry, and found their justifica- he urged Mr. Clay to take a new move with his tion wholly in the revolutionary right of self-bill-to get it referred to a committee—and by defence from intolerable oppression. source of derivation of these remedies. He CHAPTER LXXXV. SECRET HISTORY OF THE "COMPROMISE" OF 1833. MR. CALHOUN and Mr. Clay were early, and long, rival aspirants for the Presidency, and antagonistic leaders in opposite political systems; and the coalition between them in 1833 was only a hollow truce (embittered by the humiliations to which Mr. Calhoun was subjected in the protective features of the "compromise") and only kept alive for a few years by their mutual interest with respect to General Jackson and Mr. Van Buren. A rupture was foreseen by every observer; and in a few years it took place, and in open Senate, and in a way to give the key to the secret motives which led to that compromise. them got into a shape in which it could pass. Mr. Clay did so-had the reference made-and a committee appointed suitable for the measure -some of strong will, and earnest for the bill, and some of gentle temperament, inclined to easy measures on hard occasions. They were: Messrs. Clay, Calhoun, Clayton, Dallas, Grundy, Rives. This was the movement, and the inducing cause on one side: now for the cause on the other. Mr. Letcher, a representative from Kentucky, was the first to conceive an idea of some compromise to release South Carolina from her position; and communicated it to Mr. Clay; who received it at first coolly and doubtfully. Afterwards, beginning to entertain the idea, he mentioned it to Mr. Webster, who repulsed it entirely, saying-"It would be yielding great principles to faction; and that the time had come to test the strength of the constitution and the government." After that he was no more consulted. Mr. Clay drew up his bill, and |