last of
the Southern tribes had given up its old home for a new one in the
West.

Jackson's collision with Chief Justice Marshall over this question had
very far-reaching effects, which historians have somewhat neglected in
their study of the consequences of his course on other questions. No
statesman, no President, had done so much as the great Chief Justice to
make the general government strong and to restrain the States. Jackson,
disagreeing with some of Marshall's views, never lost an opportunity to
put on the bench a man of his own way of thinking. The result was that
many years later, when, in a great crisis, the supporters of the
national government and the leaders of States about to break away from
the Union looked to the Supreme Court to decide between them, the voice
that came from the august tribunal spoke words which Marshall and Story
would never have uttered, but which the champions of the States heard
with delight.

On these important questions, then, President Jackson acted like an
extreme Jeffersonian Democrat. But the South Carolinians soon found that
if he was ready to keep the general government from interfering with
any right that could reasonably be claimed for a State, he was equally
ready to stand up for the Union when he thought a State was going too
far.

He had nothing to do with the tariff of 1828. In his first message he
suggested that some modifications of it were desirable, and pointed out
that the public debt would soon be paid, and it would be advisable to
reduce certain of the duties. But modification was too mild a word to
suit the South Carolinians. The law was the outcome of the clamor of
many selfish interests, and Congressmen opposed altogether to protection
had helped to make it as bad as possible, hoping that it might in the
end be defeated. When it passed, the South Carolina legislature
vigorously protested, and began at once to debate about the best plan of
resistance. The plan finally preferred was for the State to declare the
law unconstitutional, and therefore null and void, and call on other
States to join in the declaration. If the national government tried to
enforce the law in South Carolina, she would protect her citizens, and
as the final resort withdraw from the Union. The plan was first placed
before the American people in an "Exposition and Protest" adopted by the
South Carolina legislature in 1828; and the real author of that famous
document, though the fact wa