de national
issues, and Mr. Clay, Speaker of the House of Representatives,
appropriated them to his personal advancement, and was their recognized
leading advocate. Mr. Calhoun could not be second to his Western rival,
but abandoned the policy of protection, internal improvements, and great
national undertakings, and allied himself to the commercial and
plantation interests, which opposed the system, expecting to identify
himself with and to receive the support of the Statists. But the strict
constructionists of Virginia, Georgia, and other States of the old
Jefferson school distrusted him and withheld their confidence and
support.

South Carolina, erratic, brilliant, and impulsive, had never fully
harmonized with the politicians of Virginia in their political
doctrines, but had been inclined to ridicule the rigid and
non-progressive principles of her statesmen, who, always cautious, were
now slow to receive into fellowship and to commit themselves to the new
convert who sought their support. They slighted him, and rejected his
nullification remedies. Instead of following the Palmetto State in her
fanatical party schemes on the alleged issue of free trade, and
supporting her "favorite son" in his theories, they sustained General
Jackson, whose Union sentiments they approved, and who, to the disgust
of Calhoun, became a candidate for reelection in 1832 and received the
votes of almost the whole South.

In this crisis, when the heated partisans of South Carolina in their
zeal for free trade and State rights had made a step in advance of the
more staid and reflecting Statists, and undertook to abrogate and
nullify the laws of the Federal Government legally enacted, they found
themselves unsupported and in difficulty, and naturally turned to their
acknowledged leader for guidance. To contest the Federal Government, and
pioneer the way for his associates to resist and overthrow the
Administration, Mr. Calhoun resigned the office of Vice-President and
accepted that of Senator, where his active mind, fertile in resources,
could, and as he and they believed would extricate them. There was,
however, at the head of the Government in that day a stern, patriotic,
and uncompromising Chief Magistrate, who would listen to no mere
temporizing expedients when the stability of the Union was involved, and
who, while recognizing and maintaining the rights of the States, never
forgot the rights that belonged to the Federal Government. In