g made the instrument of concentrating and
intensifying hostile opinion against the federal power. Louisiana, with
her great sugar interest, was a tariff State, and advocated protection
as ardently as it was opposed in the greater part of the North-West, and
in extensive districts of the North. She was not even invited to join
the proposed confederacy. Kentucky, Maryland, and Delaware were decided
in their support of the protective policy, while Tennessee, Missouri,
and North Carolina were divided on the question. Mr. Calhoun himself,
the very prophet of nullification, could not obliterate the memory of
his own former opinions, and it was difficult to induce the people to
cooeperate in overthrowing the Federal Government, simply for adopting a
policy which the very authors of this movement had themselves so
recently thoroughly approved.

Thus, opinion was broken into fragments; and nowhere outside of South
Carolina did it acquire sufficient unanimity and power to impart any
great momentum to the revolutionary design. Besides, in the absence of
clear and deep convictions, the question itself was of such a nature,
that strong passions could not easily spring from it. The interests
involved were not necessarily in conflict; their opposition was more
apparent than real, so that an adjustment could readily be made without
sacrifice of principle. In short, the subject of dispute did not contain
within itself the elements of civil war, capable of development to that
extreme, at the time and under the circumstances when the futile attempt
at separation was made. Doubtless, the sinister exertions of restless
and ambitious men, acting upon ignorant prejudices, might, under some
circumstances, have engendered opinions, even upon the tariff question,
sufficiently strong and violent for the production of civil commotion.
Had the conditions been more favorable to the plot; had the conspirators
of that day been as well prepared as those of 1861; had they been
equally successful in sowing dissatisfaction and hatred in the minds of
the Southern people; had they found in Gen. Jackson the weak and pliant
instrument of treason which James Buchanan afterward became in the hands
of Davis and his coadjutors, the present rebellion might have been
anticipated, and the germ of secession wholly extirpated and destroyed,
in the contest which would then have ensued. The Union would doubtless
have been maintained, and, in the end, strengthened; the f