oath.

There sat Calhoun, drinking in eagerly every word, and, as Letcher
proceeded, he turned pale as death, and, great as he was in intellect,
trembled like an aspen leaf, not from fear or cowardice, but from
the consciousness of guilt. He was the arch traitor, who like
Satan in Paradise, "brought death into the world and all our woe."
Within one week he came into the Senate and voted--voted for every
section of Mr. Clay's bill--and President Jackson was prevailed
upon not to prosecute him for his crime.

During the last days of General Jackson at the Hermitage, while
slowly sinking under the ravages of consumption, he was one day
speaking of his Administration, and with glowing interest he inquired
of the physician:

"What act in my Administration, in your opinion, will posterity
condemn with the greatest severity?"

The physician replied that he was unable to answer, that it might
be the removal of the deposits.

"Oh! no," said the General.

"Then it may be the specie circular?"

"Not at all!"

"What is it, then?"

"I can tell you," said Jackson, rising in his bed, his eyes kindling
up--"I can tell you; posterity will condemn me more because I was
persuaded not to hang John C. Calhoun as a traitor than for any
other act in my life."

Daniel Webster's reply to Hayne was made the key-note of the
resistance by the Administration to Jefferson's assertion adopted
by Calhoun, "Where powers have been assumed which have not been
delegated, nullification is the rightful remedy." President
Jackson's proclamation against this doctrine of nullification--the
germ of secession--was written by Edward Livingston, his Secretary
of State, and it has been said that it followed, throughout, the
doctrine maintained by Mr. Webster in his reply to Hayne, in 1830.
So remarkable was this adoption of Mr. Webster's argument, that
popular opinion at that time regarded it as a manifest, but of
course a very excusable, plagiarism. Mr. Webster, when the
proclamation was issued, was on his way to Washington, ignorant of
what had occurred. At an inn in New Jersey he met a traveler just
from Washington. Neither of them was known to the other. Mr.
Webster inquired the news. "Sir," said the gentleman, "the President
has issued a proclamation against the nullifiers, taken entirely
from Mr. Webster's reply to Hayne." In the course of the ensuing
session, and not long after Mr. Webster reached the capital it
became necessary for t