the promulgation by that tribunal of its decree enforcing
the authority of the Union against the nullifying edict of a sovereign
State. Virginia did more: she not only affirmed the power of this
tribunal, and sanctioned its decree, but spoke of it in terms of the
highest eulogy, and scouted indignantly the proposition of Pennsylvania
to vest the right of deciding questions of disputed power and
sovereignty in some other tribunal than the Supreme Court of the Union.
The same proposition was treated with the open or silent contempt of
every State in the Union, South Carolina among the number; and
Pennsylvania receded, though she had passed a law commanding the
Governor of the State to prevent by an armed force the execution of the
process emanating under the authority of the Constitution of the
Union--though she placed her act upon the same ground as Carolina, that
the power exercised in that case had never been granted by the
Constitution to any department of the General Government. Thus ended
nullification in the keystone of the arch of the Union. That State,
which has ever sustained the Democracy of the South, in the election of
Jefferson, of Madison, and Monroe, and the cheering voice of whose
public meetings first called out as a candidate for the presidency the
patriot Chief Magistrate who now upholds the banner of the Union,
submitted to the law of the Union. And is nullification constitutional
in Carolina, but unconstitutional in Pennsylvania? Is the one a
_sovereign_ and the other a _subject_ State? Shall the one submit to the
laws of the Union, and not the other? Why, sir, if the people of
Pennsylvania could sustain a distinction so odious, the very shades of
their ancestors would rise from the battlefields of the Revolution, from
Paoli and Germantown, and call their children bondmen of Carolina,
vassals and recreant slaves! I speak not now of the whiskey
insurrection, when, at the order of Washington, the militia of Virginia
and of other States moved against the people of Western Pennsylvania,
under the command of the Governor of Virginia and Carolina, and the
nation approved the deed; but I speak of the period, during the
presidency of Mr. Jefferson, when the State of Pennsylvania passed a law
nullifying the powers of the General Government, under her reserved
right to construe the Constitution at her pleasure, when she was
compelled to yield to the laws of the Union, and her armed force,
assembled by her Gover