"With this impression, I would regard any compromise or adjustment of the proviso, or even its defeat, without meeting the danger in its whole length and breadth, as very unfortunate for us.
"This brings up the question, how can it be so met, without resorting to the dissolution of the Union.
"There is and can be but one remedy short of disunion, and that is to retaliate on our part by refusing to fulfill the stipulations in their (other States) favor, or such as we may select, as the most efficient."
The letter, still proceeding to discuss modes of dissolution or retaliation against Northern States, declares a convention of Southern States indispensable, and their co-operation absolutely essential to success, and says:
"Let that be called, and let it adopt measures to bring about the co-operation, and I would underwrite for the rest. The non- slaveholding States would be compelled to observe the stipulations of the Constitution in our favor, or abandon their trade with us, or to take measures to coerce us, which would throw on them the responsibility of dissolving the Union. Their unbounded avarice would in the end control them."(52)
It is certain that President Jackson's heroic proclamation of December, 1832, aborted the project of nullification under the South Carolina Ordinance, and certain it is, also, that the disappointed leaders of it turned from a protective tariff as a ground for it, to what they regarded as a better excuse, to wit: A slavery agitation, generated out of false alarms in the slave States.
After the tariff compromise of 1833, in which Calhoun sullenly acquiesced, he returned home and immediately announced that the South would never unite against the North on the tariff question, —"That the sugar interest of Louisiana would keep her out,—and consequently the basis of Southern union must be shifted to the slave question," which was then accordingly done.(53)
Jackson, discussing nullification, is reported to have said:
"It was the tariff this time; next time it will be the negro."
This new and dangerous departure was not overlooked. The report and bill of 1835 relating to the use of the mails was only a chapter in execution of the new plan.