Then Webster swept grandly forward to that famous peroration ending with the words which in time became the inspiring motto of the whole American people: "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable!"[1485]
Immediately after the debate between Hayne and Webster, Nullification gathered force in South Carolina. Early in the autumn of 1830, Governor Stephen Decatur Miller spoke at a meeting of the Sumter district of that State. He urged that a State convention be called for the purpose of declaring null and void the Tariff of 1828. Probably the National courts would try to enforce that law, he said, but South Carolina would "refuse to sustain" it. Nullification involved no danger, and if it did, what matter!—"those who fear to defend their rights, have none. Their property belongs to the banditti: they are only tenants at will of their own firesides."[1486]
Public excitement steadily increased; at largely attended meetings ominous resolutions were adopted. "The attitude which the federal government continues to assume towards the southern states, calls for decisive and unequivocal resistance." So ran a typical declaration of a gathering of citizens of Georgetown, South Carolina, in December, 1830.[1487]
In the Senate, Josiah Stoddard Johnston of Louisiana, but Connecticut-born, made a speech denouncing the doctrine of Nullification, asserting the supremacy of the National Government, and declaring that the Supreme Court was the final judge of the constitutionality of legislation. "It has fulfilled the design of its institution; ... it has given form and consistency to the constitution, and uniformity to the laws."[1488] Nullification, said Johnston, means "either disunion, or civil war; or, in the language of the times, disunion and blood."[1489]
The Louisiana Senator sent his speech to Marshall, who answered that "it certainly is not among the least extraordinary of the doctrines of the present day that such a question [Nullification] should be seriously debated."[1490]
All Nullification arguments were based on the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions. Madison was still living, and Edward Everett asked him for his views. In a letter almost as Nationalist as Marshall's opinions, the venerable statesman replied at great length and with all the ability and clearness of his best years.
The decision by States of the constitutionality of acts of Congress would destroy the Nation, he wrote. Such decision was the province of the National Judiciary. While the Supreme Court had been criticized, perhaps justly in some cases, "still it would seem that, with but few exceptions, the course of the judiciary has been hitherto sustained by the predominant sense of the nation." It was absurd to deny the "supremacy of the judicial power of the U. S. & denounce at the same time nullifying power in a State.... A law of the land" cannot be supreme "without a supremacy in the exposition & execution of the law." Nullification was utterly destructive of the Constitution and the Union.[1491]
This letter, printed in the North American Review,[1492] made a strong impression on the North, but it only irritated the South. Marshall read it "with peculiar pleasure," he wrote Story: "Mr Madison ... is himself again. He avows the opinions of his best days, and must be pardoned for his oblique insinuations that some of the opinions of our Court are not approved. Contrast this delicate hint with the language Mr Jefferson has applied to us. He [Madison] is attacked ... by our Enquirer, who has arrayed his report of 1799 against his letter. I never thought that report could be completely defended; but Mr Madison has placed it upon its best ground, that the language is incautious, but is intended to be confined to a mere declaration of opinion, or is intended to refer to that ultimate right which all admit, to resist despotism, a right not exercised under a constitution, but in opposition to it."[1493]
At a banquet on April 15, 1830, in celebration of Jefferson's birthday, Jackson had given a warning not to be misunderstood except by Nullifiers who had been blinded and deafened by their new political religion. "The Federal Union;—it must be preserved," was the solemn and inspiring toast proposed by the President. Southern leaders gave no heed. They apparently thought that Jackson meant to endorse Nullification, which, most illogically, they always declared to be the only method of preserving the Union peaceably.
Their denunciation of the Tariff grew ever louder; their insistence on Nullification ever fiercer, ever more determined. To a committee of South Carolina Union men who invited him to their Fourth of July celebration at Charleston in 1831, Jackson sent a letter which plainly informed the Nullifiers that if they attempted to carry out their threats, the National Government would forcibly suppress them.[1494]