Excepting only at the outbreak of war could a people be more deeply stirred than were all Americans by the desperate action of South Carolina. In the North great Union meetings were held, fervid speeches made, warlike resolutions adopted. The South, at first, seemed dazed. Was war at hand? This was the question every man asked of his neighbor. A pamphlet on the situation, written by some one in a state of great emotion, had been sent to Marshall, and Judge Peters had inquired about it, giving at the same time the name of the author.
"I am not surprised," answered Marshall, "that he [the author] is excited by the doctrine of nullification. It is well calculated to produce excitement in all.... Leaving it to the courts and the custom house will be leaving it to triumphant victory, and to victory which must be attended with more pernicious consequences to our country and with more fatal consequences to its reputation than victory achieved in any other mode which rational men can devise."[1504] If Nullification must prevail, John Marshall preferred that it should win by the sword rather than through the intimidation of courts.
Jackson rightly felt that his reëlection meant that the country in general approved of his attitude toward Nullification as well as that toward the Bank. He promptly answered the defiance of South Carolina. On December 10, 1832, he issued his historic Proclamation. Written by Edward Livingston,[1505] Secretary of State, it is one of the ablest of American state papers. Moderate in expression, simple in style, solid in logic, it might have been composed by Marshall himself. It is, indeed, a restatement of Marshall's Nationalist reasoning and conclusions. Like the argument in Webster's Reply to Hayne, Jackson's Nullification Proclamation was a repetition of those views of the Constitution and of the nature of the American Government for which Marshall had been fighting since Washington was made President.
As in Webster's great speech, sentences and paragraphs are in almost the very words used by Marshall in his Constitutional opinions, so in Jackson's Proclamation the same parallelism exists. Gently, but firmly, and with tremendous force, in the style and spirit of Abraham Lincoln rather than of Andrew Jackson, the Proclamation makes clear that the National laws will be executed and resistance to them will be put down by force of arms.[1506]
The Proclamation was a triumph for Marshall. That the man whom he distrusted and of whom he so disapproved, whose election he had thought to be equivalent to a dissolution of the Union, should turn out to be the stern defender of National solidarity, was, to Marshall, another of those miracles which so often had saved the Republic. His disapproval of Jackson's rampant democracy, and whimsical yet arbitrary executive conduct, turned at once to hearty commendation.
"Since his last proclamation and message," testifies Story, "the Chief Justice and myself have become his warmest supporters, and shall continue so just as long as he maintains the principles contained in them. Who would have dreamed of such an occurrence?"[1507] Marshall realized, nevertheless, that even the bold course pursued by the President could not permanently overcome the secession convictions of the Southern people.
The Union men of South Carolina who, from the beginning of the Nullification movement, had striven earnestly to stay its progress, rallied manfully.[1508] Their efforts were futile—disunion sentiment swept the State. "With ... indignation and contempt," with "defiance and scorn," most South Carolinians greeted the Proclamation[1509] of the man who, only three years before, had been their idol. To South Carolinians Jackson was now "a tyrant," a would-be "Cæsar," a "Cromwell," a "Bonaparte."[1510]
The Legislature formally requested Hayne, now Governor, to issue a counter-proclamation,[1511] and adopted spirited resolutions declaring the right of any State "to secede peaceably from the Union." One count in South Carolina's indictment of the President was thoroughly justified—his approval of Georgia's defiance of Marshall and the Supreme Court. Jackson's action, declared the resolutions, was the more "extraordinary, that he has silently, and ... with entire approbation, witnessed our sister state of Georgia avow, act upon, and carry into effect, even to the taking of life, principles identical with those now denounced by him in South Carolina." The Legislature finally resolved that the State would "repel force by force, and, relying upon the blessing of God, will maintain its liberty at all hazards."[1512]
Swiftly Hayne published his reply to the President's Proclamation. It summed up all the arguments for the right of a State to decide the constitutionality of acts of Congress, that had been made since the Kentucky Resolutions were written by Jefferson—that "great Apostle of American liberty ... who has consecrated these principles, and left them as a legacy to the American people, recorded by his own hand." It was Jefferson, said Hayne, who had first penned the immortal truth that "Nullification" of unconstitutional acts of Congress was the "rightful remedy" of the States.[1513]
In his Proclamation Jackson had referred to the National Judiciary as the ultimate arbiter of the constitutionality of National laws. How absurd such a claim by such a man, since that doctrine "has been denied by none more strongly than the President himself" in the Bank controversy and in the case of the Cherokees! "And yet when it serves the purpose of bringing odium on South Carolina, 'his native State,' the President has no hesitation in regarding the attempt of a State to release herself from the control of the Federal Judiciary, in a matter affecting her sovereign rights, as a violation of the Constitution."[1514]