m with his
goods far more cheaply than would otherwise be possible. But this
pleasing promise, held out now for some seventy-five years, somehow
failed to quite satisfy the consumer; and where whole classes and
sections were consumers only, from the tariff standpoint, and saw
themselves mulcted for the benefit of classes and sections already
richer than they, they grumbled loudly, and did not always stop with
grumbling. So when in 1828 a tariff was enacted imposing very high
duties on most manufactured articles, and which delighted the hearts of
New England and Middle States manufacturers, it was so obnoxious to
others that the name was fastened to it of "the tariff of abominations,"
and history has never changed that name.

There were hopes of relief under Jackson, but in the confusion of party
issues, and with the tariff supported by the consolidated strength of
the manufacturers--a consolidation powerful enough to make Webster its
spokesman in Congress; a consolidation as definite and resolute as that
of the slave-holders, and destined to be far longer-lived,--no change in
legislation came till 1832, and then the change was immaterial; the
"tariff of abominations" was substantially re-enacted. The South had
been chafing bitterly, and now South Carolina broke into open revolt.
The whole South felt itself aggrieved by the tariff. Its industrial
system was not suited to develop manufactures; it lacked the material
for skilled labor; it lacked the artisan class who create a demand. Its
staple industry was agriculture, the growth of tobacco, rice, sugar, and
above all, cotton, and it went to the North and to Europe for its
manufactured goods. A system of taxation which doubled the price of its
imports without helping its exports, was resented as unjust, and as
hostile to the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution.

South Carolina took the lead, and indeed stood alone, in applying a
remedy more drastic than the disease--nullification. Calhoun's logic
welded and sharpened the weapon which had behind it almost the entire
weight of the State. The precise relation of the States to the Union,
left indeterminate in the Constitution, and debated in every crisis
which had strained the bonds, was now asserted by Calhoun to involve the
right of any State to declare null and void any action of the Federal
Congress which impaired its rights. South Carolina now put the theory
into action. She held near the close of 1832 a conven