notably the
operation of the protective tariff, he trod uncertain ground. He
realized this fact and as far as possible kept clear of economic
discussion. The South had real grievances, and Webster was well enough
aware that they could not be argued out of existence.

On the other hand, the Northerner was vastly superior to his opponent
in his handling of the theoretical issues of constitutional law; and
in his exposition of the practical difficulties that would attend the
operation of the principle of nullification he employed a fund of
argument that was simply unanswerable. The logic of the larger phases
of the situation lay, too, with him. If the Union for which he pleaded
was not the Union which the Fathers intended to establish or even that
which actually existed in the days of Washington and the elder Adams,
it was at all events the Union in which, by the close of the fourth
decade under the Constitution, a majority of the people of the United
States had come to believe. It was the Union of Henry Clay, of Andrew
Jackson, of Abraham Lincoln. And the largest significance of Webster's
arguments in 1830 arises from the definiteness and force which they
put into popular convictions that until then were vague and
inarticulate--convictions which, as has been well said, "went on
broadening and deepening until, thirty years afterward, they had a
force sufficient to sustain the North and enable her to triumph in the
terrible struggle which resulted in the preservation of national
life." It was the _Second Reply_ to Hayne which, more than any other
single event or utterance between 1789 and 1860, "compacted the States
into a nation."

CHAPTER VIII

TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION

It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate
chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the
great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and
permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction
of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his
State--and, for aught one could tell, his section--was about to put
into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming
controversy.

South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In
the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly
Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the
Virginian's leadership was never fully accepted, and even before