Chauncey Samuel Boucher

“ The Union party had planned to have a party convention at Columbia at the same time that the state convention met. It was expected by Jackson that in case the state convention should determine on secession, the Union party would declare its determination to support the United States to the last extremity. [7] Thus while the Unionists had previously stood merely against nullification, declaring that if the state should secede they would go with her, they now gave grounds for an expectation that they would oppose the state if secession developed out of nullification. ”

“ This satisfied neither the radical Nullifiers, who wanted the convention to prescribe the oath at once, nor the Union men, who wanted the whole matter dropped now and forever. This grant of power by the convention to the legislature to settle the matter was decried by the Union men as a provision to disfranchise, keep out of office, and "chain to the chariot wheels of a crowd of despots who ruled the madness of the hour" nearly half the citizens of the state. ”

“ The Fourth of July furnished the Nullifiers another opportunity to parade every uniform. Their toasts were steeped in the nullification doctrines, and many were very ungenerous toward their enemies, Jackson and the Union party. [26] In their efforts to keep the Nullifiers organized and zealous, Robert Y. Hayne, George McDuffie, William Harper, and other leaders had used such expressions as these: "We must regard ourselves as at the beginning, not the end, of a contest. In less than another year we may be called to arms. ”

“ It has come to this in our opinion, that we of the South are to have no more freedom than we can maintain at the point of the sword and we are determined to be always prepared for that issue whenever it is necessary to make it. ”

“ The present federalism, they believed, had assumed a bolder tone than that of an earlier time, for it had come out in open advocacy of a government without limitation of powers and even dared to place the purse and the sword of the nation in the hands of a single individual, to be used at his discretion. ”

“ As it was, the administration was embarrassed by having its leading measure supported by its bitterest enemies—ultra-federalists and ultra-tariffites—who would be pleased to see the North and the South arrayed against each other. If South Carolina yielded to the Virginia intercession, there was no need for the enforcing act, and if she should not yield, it could have come forward under most favorable circumstances. [20]
After the convention had ended the nullification episode as far as the tariff was concerned, the Nullifiers still continued their military organization. ”

“ The object of this device, as openly avowed by its advocates, was to constitute the ordinance of nullification, instead of the federal Constitution, the paramount law of the land. The Union men especially objected to the clause requiring jurors to take the test oath. [9]
The Union men protested also that such an oath of paramount allegiance to the state would set aside, not only the ordinary obligation to obey the laws of the United States, but that part of the state constitution itself known as the "declaration of supremacy" of the federal Constitution and the oath connected with it. ”

“ It has preserved the Union from dissolution, the Constitution from infraction, and our government from consolidation." "Andrew Jackson: a political lunatic, exempt from responsibility for his acts, and dependent for their propriety or folly entirely upon the sanity of his keepers." "Drayton, Blair, Mitchell, and all other southern advocates of the tariff and bloody bill: may they ever lie hard, have bad dreams, and die of lingering diseases and leave few friends to weep for them when dead." ”

“ In a few districts, however, the Union party made a better showmg than ever before. In Charleston the party decided not to run a candidate, knowing that it would be defeated and thinking that the people had been long enough harassed by political strife. In December the Nullifiers of Charleston easily elected a man to take the place in the state legislature left vacant by the election of Henry L. Pinckney to Congress. ”

“ At any rate, the editors felt called upon to apologize for having given so much space to political matter, and they assured their readers that in the futiure they would devote their columns more to the general news of the day—market prices, miscellaneous productions of history, biography, poetry, tales, anecdotes, and agricultiural essays in an effort to stay the process of exhaustion of the soil which was going on. ”

“ Indivisible sovereignty, the Union men argued, applied only to the prince and not to the people. South Carolina, they said, had actually divided hers (the delegation of it had been divided, was probably what was meant) , yielding a portion of it to the "great community of the Union." ↑ These editors were by no means all ignorant. The editorial columns of some of the up-country papers were far more able than those of some of the Charleston papers. ↑ Patriot, August 31, 1833; Niles' Register, September 7. ↑ Mercury, August 23, 30, September 4, 1833 ”