| The Acts of the Legislature for the execution of the Ordinance. |
The legislature immediately passed the acts required by the convention and recommended by the Governor.
The first act, termed the Replevin Act, authorized any consignee of merchandise, or any person lawfully entitled to the possession of merchandise, held or detained for the payment of the duties imposed upon the same by the nullified Acts of Congress, to recover possession of the same, with damages for its detention, by a writ of replevin, that is, by a summary procedure executed by an officer of the Commonwealth; and the Act authorized this officer, on initiation of the plaintiff in replevin, to seize the private property of the person detaining the merchandise to double the value of the latter, in case this person should refuse to deliver the detained merchandise to the sheriff, or should put it out of the sheriff's way, and to hold the property so seized until the merchandise in question should be produced and delivered to the sheriff.
This Act also authorized any person paying the nullified duties to recover the money paid, with interest on the same, by an action, in a court of the Commonwealth, for money had and received; and it authorized any person suffering arrest or imprisonment by order of any United States court, in execution of the nullified Acts, to demand the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and to maintain an action for unlawful arrest and imprisonment.
It declared the sale of any property seized by a United States court, in execution of the nullified Acts, to be illegal, and ordained that such sale should convey no title to the purchaser. It forbade any officer of a court of the Commonwealth to furnish the record, or a copy of the record, or allow a copy of the record to be taken, of any case in which the validity of the nullified Acts or the nullifying Acts should be drawn in question, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment, and it forbade any person to attempt to recapture the goods delivered by the sheriff to the plaintiff in replevin, under threat of the same punishment.
It further forbade the keepers of the jails to receive and detain any person arrested or committed by virtue of any proceeding for enforcing the nullified Acts, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment; and it imposed a similar penalty upon the offence of hiring, letting, or procuring any place to be used as a place of confinement for such person.
Finally, it forbade any person to disobey, obstruct, prevent, or resist any process allowed by this Act, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment; and it threatened every plaintiff, who should bring suit against any officer or person executing or aiding in the execution of the provisions of this Act, with adverse judgment and double costs.
The second Act of the legislature was a measure to provide for the event of the employment of military power by the general Government to enforce the nullified Acts in South Carolina. It authorized the Governor of the Commonwealth to resist the same; and for this purpose to order into service the whole military power of the Commonwealth at his discretion, to purchase arms, accoutrements, and ammunitions, and to appoint his military staff; and it authorized and obligated the Governor to use military power in suppressing opposition to the laws of the Commonwealth by combinations too powerful to be controlled by the civil officers.
The third Act was the test oath, the oath to obey, execute, and enforce the Ordinance of Nullification, and all the acts of the legislature for its enforcement, which every officer of the Commonwealth must take before dealing with any question touching the nullified Acts or the nullifying Acts, and which the Governor might require of any officer whatever.
These were the details and the forms of the issue which South Carolina now offered to the United States. Was it rebellion, or was it constitutional and legal opposition?