e only was this question settled.

Of it Jefferson wrote, as if in prophecy:

"This momentous question, like a fire bell in the night, awakened
and filled me with terror. I considered it the knell of the
Union."(43)

Clay wrote of the height to which the heated debate arose:

"The words civil war and disunion are uttered almost without
emotion."(44)

(40) Later, Arkansas and Michigan (1836-7), Florida and Iowa (March
3, 1845) and Maine and Missouri were, in pairs--slave and free--
admitted as States.

(41) Both died July 4, 1826.

(42) Hildreth, vol. vi., p. 664.

(43) Jefferson's _Works_, vol. vii., p. 159.

(44) Clay's _Priv. Cor._, p. 61.

XIII
NULLIFICATION--1832-3 (1835)

A debate arose in the United States Senate over a resolution of
Senator Foote of Connecticut proposing to limit the sale of the
public lands, which took a wide range. Hayne of South Carolina
elaborately set forth the doctrine of nullification, claiming it
inhered in each State under the Constitution. He boldly announced
that the Union formed was only a _league_ or a _compact_. This
called forth from Webster his celebrated "Reply to Hayne," of
January 26, 1830, in which he assailed and apparently overthrew
the then new doctrine of nullification. He denounced its exercise
as incompatible with a loyal adherence to the Constitution, and
showed historically that the government formed under it was not a
mere "compact" or "_league_" between sovereign or independent States
terminable at will. He then asserted that any attempt of any State
to act on the theory of nullification would inevitably entail civil
war or a dissolution of the Union.

The first real attempt, however, at nullification, or the first
attempt of a State to declare laws of Congress nugatory and of no
binding force when not approved by the State, was made in South
Carolina in 1832, under the leadership of John C. Calhoun, then
Vice-President of the United States, and hitherto a statesman of
so much just renown, and esteemed so moderate and patriotic in his
views on all national questions as to have been looked upon, with
the special approval of the North, as eminently qualified for the
Presidency. He hopefully aspired to it until he quarrelled with
President Jackson; he had been in favor of a protective tariff.

Cotton was, as we have seen, the principal article of export, and
the slaveholding cotton planters conceived the idea that to secure
a market for