l amendment.
Until such nullification, the laws were to be obeyed.

The Calhoun doctrine was something entirely different from this.
According to his doctrine, any single State might order at once a
suspension of the law within her borders, and not until three-fourths of
the States in national convention had overruled the nullification could
the State be forced to obey the obnoxious law. To use Calhoun's own
words, his theory was, that "it belongs to the State, as a member of the
Union, in her sovereign capacity in convention, to determine definitely,
as far as her citizens are concerned, the extent of the obligation which
she has _contracted_; and if, in her opinion, the act exercising the
power in dispute be unconstitutional, to declare it null and void, which
declaration would be obligatory on her citizens." The sum and substance
of this was, as Von Holst has pointed out,[1] to give to one-fourth of
the States the power if they saw fit to deprive the Federal Government
of every power entrusted to it, that is, to alter the constitution at
will.

[Footnote 1: _Constitutional History of the United States_, Vol. I, p.
474, note.]

The right of secession follows as a logical outcome of the theory of
nullification rigidly carried out. Federal laws are general in their
nature, and if binding anywhere, must be binding everywhere. If then, a
minority of States insist on their right of nullification, the federal
government will be obliged either to admit that every act of Congress is
without any force in a State until it has obtained the tacit approval of
the people of that State, or else it will be driven to the necessity of
obtaining the enforcement of the law by arms. Such employment of force
would of course be but the prelude to secession. Indeed, South Carolina,
in her Ordinance of Nullification, declared that she would secede, if
the United States did not repeal the obnoxious laws, or if she should
attempt to enforce the collections of the tariff duties provided for by
the acts in dispute. According to the Unionist view, it is held that in
no case has the individual State the right to resist the operation of a
federal law, much less does it possess the actual power to pass a law
affecting its relation to, or continuance in, the Union. This view is
supported by an interpretation of the constitution that denies to that
instrument the character of a compact between the States and the
National Government. The constitution