“No language could provide with more effect and precision than is here done, for subjecting constitutional questions to the ultimate decision of the Supreme Court.” “And after the Constitution was formed and while the whole country was engaged in discussing its merits, one of its most distinguished advocates, Madison, told the people ‘it was true that in controversies relating to the boundary between the two jurisdictions, the tribunal which is ultimately to decide is to be established under the General Government.’ Mr. Martin who had been a member of the convention, asserted the same thing to the Legislature of Maryland and urged it as a reason for rejecting the Constitution.[7] Mr. Pinckney, himself also a leading member of the convention, declared it to the people of South Carolina; everywhere it was admitted by friends and foes that this power was given to the United States Judiciary in the Constitution.”
We must bear in mind that this discussion was on the power of South Carolina while remaining in the Union to declare the laws of the United States null and void, and her own laws preventing their execution valid. A singular claim that a State could enjoy the benefits of the Union and at the same time disobey its laws; this is nullification which Mr. Webster had to combat. His argument, however, applies equally strongly to the claim of the right of secession. Indeed he says in his speech in reply to Calhoun:
“Therefore, since any State before she can prove her right to dissolve the Union, must show her authority to undo what has been done, no State is at liberty to secede on the ground that the other States have done nothing but accede. She must show that she has a right to reverse what has been ordained, to unsettle and overthrow what has been established, to reject what the people have adopted, and to break up what they have ratified, because these are the terms which express the transactions which have actually taken place. In other words, she must show her right to make a revolution.”
Between Webster’s debate with Hayne, and that with Calhoun three years afterwards, South Carolina had called a convention of its people and passed resolutions declaring the United States tariff laws null and void, and made laws of her own, forbidding and preventing the collection of duties in the State, with threats of secession if an attempt to collect them were made. Measures had also been taken to make a forcible resistance—munitions of war collected and the militia organized and drilled. Fortunately for the country at that crisis Andrew Jackson, the President, was a Southerner and owner of many slaves and true to the Union. He was a man of indomitable will, believed in implicitly and trusted and enthusiastically followed by the great mass of the people. Any policy of his commanded success. He did not hesitate as to his course, he at once issued a proclamation, and sent a message to Congress asking for powers to enforce the tariff laws of the United States and if necessary to remove the custom-houses to safe places. In his proclamation he declared that the Constitution of the United States forms a government, not a league; that it is a government that acts on the people individually and not on the States, and whether it be formed by compact between the States or in any other manner its character is the same. “The States retained all the power of the government,” he said, “they did not grant: but each State, having expressly parted with so many powers as to constitute, jointly with the other States, a single nation, cannot from that period possess any right to secede, because such secession does not break a league, but destroys the unity of a nation.” As a South Carolinian—Jackson supposed he was born in South Carolina, though his biographer, Parton, says it was in North Carolina, near the line—he earnestly pleaded with his fellow-citizens not to resist the laws of the United States.[8] He had previously at a dinner in celebration of Jefferson’s birthday, when nullification sentiments had been advanced, given as his toast: “Our Federal Union: it must be preserved.”
It was generally said and believed that Jackson had threatened to hang Calhoun as high as Haman if the law was resisted. This from Jackson was no idle threat. There had been no other President of such inflexible will. No other general ever assumed the authority he did in the Indian wars and in that of 1812. He had fought those campaigns and gained the battle of New Orleans, suffering at times agony from old wounds received in a street brawl, that would have disabled any ordinary commander. Thrice when in command he had exercised the power of punishing capitally; he had hanged Arbuthnot and Ambrister; again, he had a militiaman shot; and at the close of the war had permitted the execution of six Tennesseeans, though they pleaded in defence, and probably believed, that their time of enlistment had ended. The threat of hanging, however, did not daunt Calhoun, who declared boldly, perhaps pathetically, that Carolina alone would resist, even to death itself.
Mr. Clay, as on other occasions where a great crisis had arisen, effected a compromise. A force bill to collect duties, which South Carolina strenuously opposed, was enacted by large majorities in the Senate and House of Representatives; and a bill was afterwards passed gradually reducing the import duties then levied, which Calhoun and South Carolina assented to.
CHAPTER II.
THE NATIONALITY OF THE CONSTITUTION.