Chauncey Samuel Boucher

“ The Union men worked strenuously to prevent their opponents from gaining complete control of another legislature. They pointed out that the Nullifiers would require not only all officers to take this "revolting oath," but that the voters might be called upon next to do so. Then would come the bill defining treason, with its "pains and penalties," the destruction of the appeal court and anything else that might "enter the heads of the most reckless despots that ever ruled a kingdom, republic, or state." ”

“ Some belittled the paper belligerency of the Union party and pronounced it simply a scheme to frighten the opposition into calling an extra session of the legislature to repeal the military oath. Others believed that the agitation was waged as a war cry, needed by the leaders, men anxious to run for Congress, to keep the party together. The Greenville convention, indeed, was said to be nothing more than a means to regain party ascendancy, and the Mercury constantly referred to it as "the late electioneering doings." ”

“ The preamble reviewed the objections of the Union men to the oath and stated that they regarded this attempt to make them violate their obligations to the United States as one of a series of measures devised to destroy the government of the country and to dissolve the Union; they expressed the hope and the belief that their opponents would not be insistent to the point of shedding blood, but if they were driven to it, force would be opposed by force. ”

“ It would not do for the Union party to insist that either the voters or their representatives were to be regarded just as might happen to suit their own purposes; the amendment must be made as the constitution directed, by the legislature, and not according to popular vote. ”

“ The Nullification party declared that the great battle which was to decide whether it were to lose the fruits of all its victories in the cause of state rights was to be fought at the polls in October. Even Judge Johnson had been constrained to admit that the adoption of the proposed amendment of the constitution would remove all legal objections and compel the judges to enforce it. ”

“ In Greenville, the Union hotbed of the interior, there seemed to be more dissatisfaction with the adjustment than elsewhere. It seemed to be so formidable there that the Greenville district delegates in the legislature addressed their constituents on the recent accommodation. They said that they understood that there was much dissatisfaction in the district with the settlement and with their having voted for it. They requested the several beat companies to take a vote on the course they had pursued; if a majority were opposed, they would resign and make room for new representatives. ”

“ The Union papers called attention to some of what they regarded as "mean details of the nefarious military bill." The first section of this act revoked the commissions of the major- and brigadier-generals and gave the legislature power to appoint those officers ad interim. This the legislature did at once, and thus the dominant party dispossessed the only two Union generals in the state, James Blair and James Rogers. The election recurred again to the people, but, it was asked, was not this one move toward robbing the people of their elective franchise? ”

“ The State Rights men claimed that their party polled a smaller vote than two years previously because the excitement was not so great in their party since the compromise of the tariff question, and because the people were not likely to turn out well when the majority in their district was known to be large and there was therefore no spirited opposition (Messenger, November 5) . In the state's delegation to Congress, the Union men gained one more member. ”

“ Judge O'Neall does not deny the right of the people to oontiol their agents, whether legislative, executive, or judicial, but it must be a control exercised in legal form, and he distinguishes very properly between the power of the people, as exhibited in the final right of revolution, and their power as exercised under the constitutional limitations and restrictions which they themselves have imposed. ”

“ As the legislature can do nothing effectual at present, except what it would not be expedient to do, or even to attempt, I think there is nothing to be gained by an extra call while it would be attended with some risk of dissensions among ourselves and injury to our cause from rash measures. ”

“ If they migrated, then "they must take up their household gods and with all the world before them where to choose, and Providence their guide, seek in other climes a resting place where a free man could deign to live. ”

“ From the time of the governor's proclamation the Nullifiers began actively to organize and to campaign for the fall contest. In Charleston the Revolutionary Society and the '76 Association had coalesced and formed the Whig Association, a Nullification, anti-Jackson political organization. ”

“ Section six provided that on April 10 the commission of every militia officer of the state should be vacated. On April 11 an election would take place throughout the state for the purpose of choosing officers to fill the places of those who had been turned out. In some districts Union men would be elected; if they should refuse to accept the office and take the oath prescribed, the colonel would appoint men to fill the vacancies thus occasioned ”