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Clay returned to the Senate to find his tariff policy attacked by the nullifiers, his internal improvements policy blocked by the President's vetoes, and still a third policy which he and his party firmly supported vigorously attacked by the terrible man in the White House. The National Bank was in danger.
"Sir," said the gentleman, "the President has issued a proclamation against the nullifiers, taken entirely from Mr. Webster's reply to Hayne." In the course of the ensuing session, and not long after Mr. Webster reached the capital it became necessary for the Administration to act. Mr.
For the time, even Calhoun and the nullifiers yielded the first place among his enemies to Clay, Biddle, and the Bank. Biddle was president of the Bank, a handsome, accomplished man, a graceful writer, and a clever, though not always a safe financier. His ready pen first brought him into disfavor.
There were always some nullifiers present who would attempt to resist the enforcement of the laws, and the infliction of the penalties adjudged; but in these cases the personal weight of the judge decided the matter. This resistance would give rise to new arrests and trials, and thus the work became interminable. Another and more refined enjoyment was singing.
He would call for volunteers to maintain the Union, and would soon have a force at his disposal that should invade South Carolina, disperse the State forces, arrest the leading Nullifiers and bring them to trial before the Federal Courts. If the energy of Jackson was a menace to South Carolina, it was a grave embarrassment to the party regularly opposed to him in Congress and elsewhere.
The nullifiers claimed this as a triumph, and formally repealed the ordinance of nullification, as if it had accomplished its object. But, in its real intent, it had failed wretchedly. It had asserted State sovereignty through the State's proper voice of a convention.
He, too, began to say some pretty violent things, and, as he generally meant what he said, the gallant leaders of nullification and other worthy people grew very uneasy. There can be no doubt that the outlook was very threatening, and the nullifiers were extremely likely to be the first to suffer from the effects of the impending storm. Mr.
Jackson was present, and so were Calhoun and the leading Nullifiers. Speeches had to be made and toasts given, the burden of which was a glorification of State Sovereignty and a defence of Nullification. Then Jackson rose and gave his famous toast: "Our Union: it must be preserved." Calhoun tried to counter it by giving: "Our Union, next to our liberties most dear."
It was in this crisis that Calhoun resigned the vice-presidency, and was immediately elected to the United States Senate, where he could fight more advantageously. Then the President sent a message to Congress requesting new powers to put down the nullifiers by force, should the necessity arrive, which were granted, for he was now at the height of his popularity and influence.
Grimké represented at that time the city of Charleston in the State Senate; and in a two days' argument he so triumphantly exposed the sophistries and false pretences of the nullifiers, that his constituents, enraged by it, gathered a mob, and with threats of personal violence attacked his house.
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