ring to nullification
again," related Dale in his account of the interview, "and I expressed
the hope that things would go right." "They shall go right, sir," the
President fairly shouted, shattering his pipe on the table by way of
further emphasis.

When Jackson heard that the convention at Columbia had taken the step
expected of it, he made the following entry in his diary: "South
Carolina has passed her ordinance of nullification and secession. As
soon as it can be had in authentic form, meet it with a proclamation."
The proclamation was issued December 10, 1832. Parton relates that the
President wrote the first draft of this proclamation under such a glow
of feeling that he was obliged "to scatter the written pages all over
the table to let them dry," and that the document was afterwards
revised by his scholarly Secretary of State, Edward Livingston. With
Jackson supplying the ideas and spirit and Livingston the literary
form, the result was the ablest and most impressive state paper of the
period. It categorically denied the right of a State either to annul a
federal law or to secede from the Union. It admitted that the laws
complained of operated unequally but took the position that this must
be true of all revenue measures. It expressed the inflexible
determination of the Administration to repress and punish every form
of resistance to federal authority. Deep argument, solemn warning, and
fervent entreaty were skillfully combined. But the most powerful
effect was likely to be that produced by the President's flaming
denial--set in bold type in the contemporary prints--of the
Hayne-Calhoun creed: "I consider the power to annul a law of the
United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence
of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the
Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every
principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object
for which it was formed."

Throughout the North this vindication of national dignity and power
struck a responsive chord, and for once even the Adams and Clay men
found themselves in hearty agreement with the President. Bostonians
gathered in Faneuil Hall and New Yorkers in a great meeting in the
Park to shower encomiums upon the proclamation and upon its author.
The nullifiers did not at once recoil from the blow. The South
Carolina Legislature called upon Governor Hayne officially to warn
"the good people of this S