tton-producing region. This cotton was grown by negro slaves. The
North was now a great manufacturing and commercial region. It was also a
great agricultural region. But the labor in the mills, fields, and ships
of the North was all free white labor. So the United States was really
split into two sections: one devoted to slavery and to a few great
staples, as cotton; the other devoted to free white labor and to
industries of many kinds.

[Sidenote: The South and the tariff, 1829.]

[Sidenote: Calhoun's "Exposition."]

304. The Political Situation, 1829.--The South was growing richer
all the time; but the North was growing richer a great deal faster than
was the South. Calhoun and other Southern men thought that this
difference in the rate of progress was due to the protective system. In
1828 Congress had passed a tariff that was so bad that it was called the
Tariff of Abominations (p. 231). The Southerners could not prevent its
passage. But Calhoun wrote an "Exposition" of the constitutional
doctrines in the case. This paper was adopted by the legislature of
South Carolina as giving its ideas. In this paper Calhoun declared that
the Constitution of the United States was a compact. Each state was a
sovereign state and could annul any law passed by Congress. The
protective system was unjust and unequal in operation. It would bring
"poverty and utter desolation to the South." The tariff act should be
annulled by South Carolina and by other Southern states.

[Illustration: DANIEL WEBSTER, 1833.]

[Sidenote: Hayne's speech, 1830.]

[Sidenote: Webster's reply to Hayne.]

305. Webster and Hayne, 1830.--Calhoun was Vice-President and
presided over the debates of the Senate. So it fell to Senator Hayne of
South Carolina to state Calhoun's ideas. This he did in a very able
speech. To him Daniel Webster of Massachusetts replied in the most
brilliant speeches ever delivered in Congress. The Constitution, Webster
declared, was "the people's constitution, the people's government; made
by the people and answerable to the people. The people have declared
that this constitution ... shall be the supreme law." The Supreme Court
of the United States alone could declare a national law to be
unconstitutional; no state could do that. He ended this great speech
with the memorable words, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and
inseparable."

[Sidenote: Tariff of 1832.]

[Sidenote: "Nullified" by South Carolina, 1833.]

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