Part 6

This, then, is the position in which we stand. A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State Convention; that Convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of this Union. The Governor of that State has recommended to the Legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearances to vessels in the name of the State. No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended; and it is the intent of this instrument to proclaim, not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution "to take care that the laws be faithfully executed," shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law, or of such others as the wisdom of Congress shall devise and entrust to me for that purpose, but to warn the citizens of South Carolina who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger they will incur by obedience to the illegal and disorganizing ordinance of the Convention; to exhort those who have refused to support it to persevere in their determination to uphold the Constitution and laws of their country; and to point out to all the perilous situation into which the good people of that State have been led, and that the course they are urged to pursue is one of ruin and disgrace to the very State whose rights they affect to support.

Fellow citizens of my native State, let me not only admonish you, as the First Magistrate of our common country, not to incur the penalty of its laws, but use the influence that a father would over his children whom he saw rushing to certain ruin. In that paternal language, with that paternal feeling, let me tell you, my countrymen, that you are deluded by men who are either deceived themselves, or wish to deceive you. Mark under what pretences you have been led on to the brink of insurrection and treason, on which you stand! First, a diminution of the value of your staple commodity, lowered by over production in other quarters, and the consequent diminution in the value of your lands, were the sole effect of the tariff laws.

The effect of those laws was confessedly injurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to believe, that its burthens were in proportion to your exports, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your pride was roused by the assertion that a submission to those laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, in patriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition might be peaceably--might be constitutionally made; that you might enjoy all the advantages of the Union, and bear none of its burthens. Eloquent appeals to your passions, to your State pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask, which concealed the hideous features of disunion, should be taken off. It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects which, not long since, you would have regarded with horror. Look back to the arts which have brought you to this state--look forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you, that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive; it was added that the right to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy! This character which was given to it, made you receive, with too much confidence, the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionality of the law and its oppressive effects. Mark, my fellow citizens, that, by the admission of your leaders, the unconstitutionality must be _palpable_, or it will not justify either resistance or nullification! What is the meaning of the word _palpable_, in the sense in which it is here used? that which is apparent to every one; that which no man of ordinary intellect will fail to perceive. Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of that description? Let those among your leaders who once approved and advocated the principle of protective duties, answer the question; and let them choose whether they will be considered as incapable, then, of perceiving that which must have been apparent to every man of common understanding, or as imposing upon your confidence, and endeavoring to mislead you now. In either case, they are unsafe guides in the perilous path they urge you to tread. Ponder well on this circumstance, and you will know how to appreciate the exaggerated language they address to you. They are not champions of liberty emulating the fame of our revolutionary fathers; nor are you an oppressed people, contending, as they repeat to you, against worse than colonial vassalage.

You are free members of a flourishing and happy Union. There is no settled design to oppress you. You have indeed felt the unequal operation of laws which may have been unwisely, not unconstitutionally passed; but that inequality must necessily be removed. At the very moment when you were madly urged on to the unfortunate course you have begun, a change in public opinion had commenced. The nearly approaching payment of the public debt, and the consequent necessity of a diminution of duties, had already produced a considerable reduction, and that, too, on some articles of general consumption in your State. The importance of this change was underrated, and you were authoritatively told that no further alleviation of your burthens were to be expected at the very time when the condition of the country imperiously demanded such a modification of the duties as should reduce them to a just and equitable scale. But, as if apprehensive of the effect of this change in allaying your discontents, you were precipitated into the fearful state in which you now find yourselves.

I have urged you to look back to the means that were used to hurry you on to the position you have now assumed, and forward to the consequences it will produce. Something more is necessary. Contemplate the condition of that country of which you still form an important part. Consider its government uniting in one bond of common interest and general protection so many different States--giving to all their inhabitants the proud title of American citizens, protecting their commerce, securing their literature and their arts; facilitating their intercommunication; defending their frontiers; and making their name respected in the remotest parts of the earth. Consider the extent of its territory; its increasing and happy population; its advance in arts, which render life agreeable; and the sciences, which elevate the mind! See education spreading the lights of religion, morality, and general information into every cottage in this wide extent of our Territories and States? Behold it as the asylum where the wretched and the oppressed find a refuge and support! Look on this picture of happiness and honor, and say--_we, too, are citizens of America!_ Carolina is one of these proud States--her arms have defended--her best blood has cemented this happy Union! And then add, if you can, without horror and remorse, this happy Union we will dissolve; this picture of peace and prosperity we will deface; this free intercourse we will interrupt; these fertile fields we will deluge with blood; the protection of that glorious flag we renounce; the very name of Americans we discard. And for what, mistaken men--for what do you throw away these inestimable blessings? for what would you exchange your share in the advantages and honor of the Union? For the dream of separate independence--a dream interrupted by bloody conflicts with your neighbors, and a vile dependence on a foreign power. If your leaders could succeed in establishing a separation, what would be your situation? Are you united at home--are you free from the apprehension of civil discord, with all its fearful consequences? Do our neighboring republics, every day suffering some new revolution, or contending with some new insurrection--do they excite your envy? But the dictates of a high duty obliges me solemnly to announce that you cannot succeed. The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject--my duty is emphatically pronounced in the Constitution. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution, deceived you--they could not have been deceived themselves. They know that a forcible opposition could alone prevent the execution of the laws, and they know that such opposition must be repelled. Their object is disunion; but be not deceived by names; disunion, by armed force, is _treason_. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences--on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment; on your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims--its First Magistrate cannot, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty; the consequences must be fearful for you, distressing to your fellow citizens here, and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal--it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your revolutionary history, will not abandon that Union, to support which so many of them fought, and bled, and died.

I adjure you, as you honor their memory--as you love the cause of freedom, to which they dedicated their lives--as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its Convention--bid its members to re-assemble, and promulgate the decided expressions of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor. Tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all. Declare that you will never take the field unless the star spangled banner of your country shall float over you; that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Constitution of your country. Its destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace--you may interrupt the course of its prosperity--you may cloud its reputation for stability, but its tranquility will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transferred, and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder.

Fellow citizens of the United States! The threat of unhallowed disunion--the names of those once respected, by whom it is uttered--the array of military force to support it--denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs, on which the continuance of our unexampled prosperity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments, may depend. The conjuncture demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my intentions, but of my principles of action; and the claim was asserted of a right by a State to annul the laws of the Union, and even to secede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our government, and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties, which has been expressed, I rely, with equal confidence, on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws--to preserve the Union by all constitutional means--to arrest, if possible, by moderate but firm measures, the necessity of a recourse to force; and, if it be the will of Heaven, that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.

Fellow-citizens! the momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred Union will be preserved, and the blessings it secures to us as one people, shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed, will be such as to inspire new confidence in republican institutions, and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to their defence, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children.

May the great Ruler of Nations grant that the signal blessings with which he has favored ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see their folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate his designs, he has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, having signed the same with my hand.

Done at the city of Washington, this 10th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and of the independence of the United States the fifty-seventh.

ANDREW JACKSON.

By the President: EDW. LIVINGSTON, _Secretary of State_.

Comment upon the imperishable document just quoted is entirely unnecessary. It speaks for itself in thundering tones that strikes terror to the traitor's heart. Mark the clear and lucid reasoning,[3] the kind, paternal advice, the bold and manly warning that pervades this production, of the true, noble, honored patriot of the Hermitage.

For the purpose of contrasting the administration of Andrew Jackson, during the convulsion of 1832-'33, with that of James Buchanan, during our present similar condition, we will give a brief summary of the course pursued by the former:

On the 24th day of November, previous to the issuing of President Jackson's proclamation, South Carolina had, through her convention, effectually declared herself out of the Union, by an ordinance that was to take effect on the first day of February, 1833. The President, being apprehensive of trouble in collecting the duties imposed by congress in the various ports of South Carolina, and more especially at Charleston, dispatched, through his secretary of the treasury, Louis McLean, confidential orders of the most strict and positive character, to the collectors at the several ports of entry.

He writes to James K. Prinkle, Esq., collector at Charleston, ordering him to use the utmost firmness and vigilence in seeing the laws promptly executed in every particular. He ordered the revenue cutter Alert to proceed to Charleston, and, in writing to Mr. Prinkle, he says, you will, moreover, cause the officers of the cutter (showing that there were others at hand), under your direction, to board all vessels departing from the port of Charleston, and in case any shall be found without having been regularly entered and cleared in the manner required by law, to seize and detain the same, to be prosecuted according to law. The number of assistants and employees were greatly increased, and every precaution taken to prevent a surprise. But as time rolled around South Carolina, not having penetrated the purposes of President Jackson sufficiently to understand his position, felt confident in her final success, and was defiant in her attitude. She began to collect her army that was to defeat the government of the United States. She had appealed to her sister States to aid her in sustaining her position. Dissatisfaction had already began to show itself in various other sections of the country. The President beheld the dangers and felt the responsibility resting upon him, and on the 10th day of December he issued his Proclamation, declaring his unalterable purpose to enforce the laws and collect the duties, and above all to stand by the Constitution and the Union to the last, and warning those who were precipitating their country into a civil war to beware of the consequences and fearful responsibility they would incur by a continuance in their reckless course.

But South Carolina had gone too far to be silenced by any ordinary means. She continued her preparations, still hoping that she could spread disaffection into other portions of the country sufficient to frighten the government into granting her demands, and many of the true friends of the Union trembled for its safety, so wide-spread was the sympathy South Carolina had enlisted. Many members of Congress were ready with their measures of pacification, each anxious to become the instrument of settling the difficulty, and perhaps immortalize his name. The horrors of civil war were as freely discussed as at the present day. Numerous were those who were ready and willing to sacrifice everything, even the dignity of the nation, to avert the dreadful calamity. But where was the brave Jackson? He was at the helm of the great ship of State, and although the storm was raging, and the billows threatening to engulf her or dash her to fragments on the inhospitable shore of anarchy, yet the brave old hero, with the Constitution for his guide and the God of liberty for his counselor, bid defiance to the mutineers who were threateningly assembled around him.

On the 16th day of December he sent a special message to Congress asking for additional legislation for the purpose of meeting the exigency, he reminding them of their sworn duty to protect the Constitution from every encroachment, and appealed to their patriotism, and urged them, as true Americans, to stand firmly by their country. Congress promptly responded to the call, and the President thus prepared continued the collection of customs uninterruptedly, and preserved the honor and dignity of the nation.

South Carolina, after much blustering and threatening, quieted down, and it is to be hoped that many of the leaders of the rebellion lived to see the folly of their acts and the wisdom of the President.

But let us look for a moment at the course James Buchanan has pursued. It is now over a year since men occupying high places in the government began to publicly avow their determination to destroy this government and involve all in one common ruin. Public speeches and the press of the country have all proclaimed the determination of certain partain parties to break up this Union. Conventions have been held and resolutions passed declaring certain States out of the Union. Arsenals have been seized, forts have been taken by bodies of armed men, public property confiscated, and an unarmed steamer, bearing the flag of the nation, has been fired into for attempting to comply with government orders--collectors of customs are arrested and tried for treason for performing their duty. The free navigation of the Mississippi is prevented; American citizens are driven out of several of the States while peaceably attending to their legitimate business, and some of the more unfortunate have suffered tarring and feathering, whipping, scourging and even death at the hands of those acting under authority, or at least within the knowledge of the authorities of the several States; and yet, after all the enumerated outrages, sufficient to disgrace even the half-civilized nation of Morocco, not one word of unqualified rebuke has James Buchanan uttered against those committing these outrages, not only against our government but the very name of humanity. Surrounded by treason in his own cabinet,[4] he has looked quietly on while his Secretary of War supplied the insurgents with government arms. Open and defiant traitors have been his daily counselors, while his imbecile, undecided course gives no one confidence in his future policy. Treason is now openly and boldly perpetrated throughout at least one-third of the entire country without the least restraint from any source whatever.

If there is to be found within the pages of history where the government of a great, powerful and prosperous nation suffered treason to spread over one-third of the entire country, coupled with the open and revolting acts of violence that have characterized this rebellion, without the first attempt to check its destructive progress, it is not within the range of my knowledge.

Although the grounds for argument to show that this government was established by the people collectively of the whole country, (and not by the several States, as claimed by some,) and that it can only be rightfully altered or abolished by a constitutional majority of the same power that established it, would seem to have been entirely gone over, nevertheless we propose to introduce the additional evidence of that noble, honored statesman, and able constitutional expounder, Daniel Webster.

On the 21st day of January, 1830, Mr. Hayne delivered in the Senate of the United States a very able speech advocating the right of the various States to nullify the laws of Congress in certain contingencies, or what might be more properly called the South Carolina doctrine, embracing the right to nullify the laws of Congress, or declare herself out of the Union at pleasure. His speech was considered a complete succces by the advocates of his sentiments, and was thought by them an unanswerable vindication of those principles, and when Mr. Webster undertook the task of replying to Mr. Hayne, he was met with jeers by the friends of nullication; but as the volume of his reasoning began to unfold itself, all eyes were attentively turned toward the speaker. After proceeding to state the grounds upon which was founded the pretended right to nullify the acts of Congress, Mr. Webster said: