r revenue but
not a tariff for a protective purpose. Every State, Calhoun declared,
must have the Constitutional right to protect itself against an Act of
Congress which it deemed unconstitutional. Let such a State, in special
Convention, "nullify" the Act of Congress. Let Congress then, unless it
compromised the matter, submit its Act to the people in the form of an
Amendment to the Constitution. It would then require a three-fourths
majority of all the States to pass the obnoxious Act. Last but not
least, if the Act was passed, the protesting State had, Calhoun claimed,
the right to secede from the Union.

Controversy over this tariff raged for fully four years, and had a
memorable issue. In the course of 1830 the doctrine of "nullification"
and "secession" was discussed in the Senate, and the view of Calhoun was
expounded by one Senator Hayne. Webster answered him in a speech which
he meant should become a popular classic, and which did become so. He
set forth his own doctrine of the Union and appealed to national against
State loyalty in the most influential oration that was perhaps ever made.
"His utterance," writes President Wilson, "sent a thrill through all the
East and North which was unmistakably a thrill of triumph. Men were glad
because of what he had said. He had touched the national
self-consciousness, awakened it, and pleased it with a morning vision of
its great tasks and certain destiny." Later there came in the President,
the redoubtable Andrew Jackson, the most memorable President between
Jefferson and Lincoln. He said very little--only, on Jefferson's
birthday he gave the toast, "Our Federal Union; it must be preserved."
But when in 1832, in spite of concessions by Congress, a Convention was
summoned in South Carolina to "nullify" the tariff, he issued the
appropriate orders to the United States Army, in case such action was
carried out, and it is understood that he sent Calhoun private word that
he would be the first man to be hanged for treason. Nullification
quietly collapsed. The North was thrilled still more than by Webster's
oratory, and as not a single other State showed signs of backing South
Carolina, it became thenceforth the fixed belief of the North that the
Union was recognised as in law indissoluble, as Webster contended it was.
None the less the idea of secession had been planted, and planted in a
fertile soil.

General Andrew Jackson, whose other great achievements mus