t him would compensate for
those defects. Then Mr. Calhoun proceeds to state, that the contest
turned chiefly upon the question of protection or free trade; and the
strife was, which of the two parties should go farthest in the
advocacy of protection. The result was, he says, that the tariff bill
of 1828 was passed,--"that disastrous measure which has brought so
many calamities upon us, and put in peril the liberty and union of the
country," and "poured millions into the treasury beyond the most
extravagant wants of the country."

The passage of this tariff bill was accomplished by the tact of Martin
Van Buren, aided by Major Eaton, Senator from Tennessee. Mr. Van Buren
was the predestined chief of General Jackson's Cabinet, and Major
Eaton was the confidant, agent, and travelling manager of the
Jacksonian wire-pullers, besides being the General's own intimate
friend. The events of that session notified Mr. Calhoun that, however
manageable General Jackson might be, he was not likely to fall into
the custody of the Vice-President. General Jackson's election being
considered certain, the question was alone interesting, who should
possess him for the purposes of the succession. The prospect, as
surveyed that winter from the Vice-President's chair, was not assuring
to the occupant of that lofty seat. If General Jackson could not be
used as a fulcrum for the further elevation of Mr. Calhoun, would it
not be advisable to begin to cast about for another?

The tariff bill of 1828 was passed before the Presidential canvass had
set in with its last severity. There was time for Mr. Calhoun to
withdraw from the support of the man whose nearest friends had carried
it through the Senate under his eyes. He did not do so. He went home,
after the adjournment of Congress, to labor with all his might for the
election of a protectionist, and to employ his leisure hours in the
composition of that once famous paper called the "South Carolina
Exposition," in which protection was declared to be an evil so
intolerable as to justify the nullification of an act founded upon it.
This Exposition was the beginning of our woe,--the baleful egg from
which were hatched nullification, treason, civil war, and the
desolation of the Southern States. Here is Mr. Calhoun's own account
of the manner in which what he correctly styles "_the double
operation_" was "pushed on" in the summer of 1828:--

"This disastrous event [the passage of the tariff bil