d into an extralegal agreement to postpone the
enforcement of the nullification ordinance until the outcome of the
new tariff debates should be known. The failure of the Verplanck
measure, however, left matters where they were, and civil war in South
Carolina again loomed ominously.

In this juncture patriots of all parties turned to the one man whose
leadership seemed indispensable in tariff legislation--the "great
pacificator," Henry Clay, who after two years in private life had just
taken his seat in the Senate. Clay was no friend of Jackson or of Van
Buren, and it required much sacrifice of personal feeling to lend his
services to a program whose political benefits would almost certainly
accrue to his rivals. Finally, however, he yielded and on the 12th of
February he rose in the Senate and offered a compromise measure
proposing that on all articles which paid more than twenty per cent
the amount in excess of that rate should be reduced by stages until in
1842 it would entirely disappear.

Stormy debates followed on both the Compromise Tariff and the Force
Bill, but before the session closed on the 4th of March both were on
the statute book. When, therefore, the South Carolina convention, in
accordance with an earlier proclamation of Governor Hamilton,
reassembled on the 11th of March, the wind had been taken out of the
nullifiers' sails; the laws which they had "nullified" had been
repealed, and there was nothing for the convention to do but to
rescind the late ordinance and the legislative measures supplementary
to it. There was a chance, however, for one final fling. By a vote of
132 to 19 the convention soberly adopted an ordinance nullifying the
Force Bill and calling on the Legislature to pass laws to prevent the
execution of that measure--which, indeed, nobody was now proposing to
execute.

So the tempest passed. Both sides claimed victory, and with some show
of reason. So far as was possible without an actual test of strength,
the authority of the Federal Government had been vindicated and its
dignity maintained; the constitutional doctrines of Webster acquired a
new sanction; the fundamental point was enforced that a law--that
every law--enacted by Congress must be obeyed until repealed or until
set aside by the courts as unconstitutional. On the other hand, the
nullifiers had brought about the repeal of the laws to which they
objected and had been largely instrumental in turning the tariff
policy of th