nscribed "_John C.
Calhoun, first President of the Southern Confederacy_." Nullification,
thus proclaimed, was the legitimate forerunner of secession.

President Jackson, with his heroic love of the Union, regarded the
movement as only _treason;_ he called it that in his proclamations;
he prepared to collect the duties in Charleston or to confiscate
the cargoes; he warned the nullifiers by the presence of General
Scott there that he would be promptly used to coerce the State into
loyalty; and he seemed eager to find an excuse for arresting,
condemning for treason, and hanging Calhoun, who then went to
Washington as a Senator, resigning the Vice-Presidency.(47)

Jackson tersely said:

"To say that any State may, at pleasure, secede from the Union, is
to say that the United States are not a nation."

The situation was too imminent for Calhoun's nerves. To confront
an indignant nation, led by a fearless, never doubting President,
was a different thing then from what it was in 1860-61 with Buchanan
as President, surrounded as he was by traitors in his Cabinet.
Calhoun and his State backed down, and import duties continued to
be collected in South Carolina, although a gradual reduction of
them was made an excuse for Calhoun and his friends in Congress,
in 1833, to vote for a protective tariff act, so recently before
by them declared unconstitutional.(48)

On a "Force Bill" and a new tariff act being passed (March 15,
1833) the Nullification Ordinance was repealed in South Carolina.
The next Ordinance of Secession of this State (1860) was based on
the principles of the first one and the doctrines of Calhoun,
slavery being the direct, as it had been the indirect, cause of
their first enunciation. We must not anticipate here.

In the debate, in 1833, between Webster and Calhoun, the former,
as in his great reply to Hayne,(49) expounded the Constitution as
a "Charter of Union for all the States."

"The Constitution does not provide for events that must be preceded
by its own destruction.

"That the Constitution is not a league, confederacy, or compact
between the people of the several States in their sovereign capacity,
but a government proper, founded on the adoption of the people,
and creating direct relations between itself and individuals. That
no State authority has power to dissolve these relations. That as
to certain purposes the people of the United States are one people."

Nullification, attempted first