w opposition, out of which grew the famous
Hartford Convention. It has been charged and denied that this was a
movement of disunion and rebellion. The exact fact is not important in
our day; it is enough that it was a sign of deep political unrest and
of shallow public faith. Passing by lesser manifestations of the same
character, we come to the eventful nullification proceeding in South
Carolina in the year 1832. Here was a formal legislative repudiation
of Federal authority with a reserved threat of forcible resistance. At
this point disunion was in full flower, and the terms nullification,
secession, treason, rebellion, revolution, coercion, constitute the
current political vocabulary. Take up a political speech of that
period, change the names and dates, and the reader can easily imagine
himself among the angry controversies of the winter of 1860.

Nullification was half-throttled by Jackson's proclamation,
half-quieted by Clay's compromise. But from that time forward the
phraseology and the spirit of disunion became constant factors in
Congressional debate and legislation. In 1850, it broke out to an
extent and with an intensity never before reached. This time it
enveloped the whole country, and many of the wisest and best statesmen
believed civil war at hand. The compromise measures of 1850 finally
subdued the storm; but not till the serious beginning of a secession
movement had been developed and put down, both by the general
condemnation of the whole country, and the direct vote of a union
majority in the localities where it took its rise.

Among these compromise acts of 1850 was the admission of California as
a free-State. The gold discoveries had suddenly filled it with
population, making the usual probation as a Territory altogether
needless. A considerable part of the State lay south of the line of
36, 30', and the pro-slavery extremists had demanded that it should
be divided into two States--one to be a free and the other to be a
slave-State--in order to preserve the political balance between the
sections, in the United States Senate. This being refused, they not
only violently opposed the compromise measures, but organized a
movement for resistance in South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi,
demanding redress, and threatening secession if it were not accorded.
A popular contest on this issue followed in 1851 in these States, in
which the ultra-secession party was signally overthrown. It submitted
sullen