on account of a protective tariff
to foster home and young industries and for needed revenue to carry
on the Federal government, was in two years, by its author, Calhoun,
transferred, for a new cause on which to attempt to justify it--
from the tariff to domestic slavery. Calhoun soon discovered and
admitted that the South could not be united against the North and
for _disunion_ on opposition to a protective tariff. He therefore
promptly sought an opportunity to bring forward in Congress the
slavery question, and to attack the "_agitators_" and opponents of
slavery extension in the North, and to threaten disunion if the
institution of slavery was not permitted to dictate the political
policy of the Republic.

The exact method of reviving in Congress the whole subject of
slavery so soon after nullification had been so signally suppressed
by Jackson is worth briefly stating.

President Jackson, in his Annual Message, December, 1835, called
attention to attempts to use the mails to circulate matter calculated
to excite slaves to insurrection, but he did not recommend any
legislation to prevent it. Mr. Calhoun moved in the Senate that
so much of the message relating to mail transportation of incendiary
publications be referred to a select committee of five.

He was made chairman of this committee, and, on his request, three
others from the South, with but one from the North, were put on
the committee, and he promptly made an elaborate and carefully-
prepared report, going into the whole doctrine of states-rights
and nullification.

In it he said:

"That the States which form our Federal Union are sovereign and
independent communities, bound together by a constitutional _compact_,
and are possessed of all the powers belonging to distinct and
separate States, etc.

"The Compact itself expressly provides that all powers not delegated
are reserved to the States and the people. . . . On returning to
the Constitution, it will be seen that, while the power of defending
the country against _external_ danger is found among the enumerated,
the instrument is wholly silent as to the power of defending the
_internal_ peace and security of the States: and of course reserves
to the States this important power, etc.

"It belongs to slave-holding States, whose institutions are in
danger, and not to _Congress_, as is supposed by the message, to
determine what papers are incendiary and intended to excite
insurrection among the