The nullification controversy in South Carolina ...

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Preface

To relate the story of the nullification controversy in South Carolina as it is found in the writings of the men who were participants in it, is the object of this monograph. For six years the conflict was bitterly waged and missed being civil war by a narrow margin. So much attention has been given to speculations on the theory of nuUification from the standpoint of political science, that the history of the party contest has been neglected; and even from the theoretical viewpoint a detailed study of the views of the contemporaneous supporters and opponents of the doctrine has been neglected. The effort has been made in this treatise to delineate the various shades of party behefs at all stages of the controversy.

In the search for materials the writer fortunately gained access to files of several of the leading newspapers of the Union and the State Rights parties, representing both the interior and the coastal sections; several valuable pamphlet collections; and the unpublished correspondence and papers of prominent leaders of the opposing viii Preface

factions, and of two men most prominently connected with the administration. For the courtesy and kind assistance rendered by the custodians and owners of these valuable materials, the author desires to express his appreciation. He is especially indebted to Professor Claude H. Van Tyne and Professor Ulrich B. Phillips, both of the University of Michigan, for encouragement and counsel most generously given, and to Professor William E. Dodd, of the University of Chicago, who volunteered to read sections of the proof.

In order to facilitate reading, the original punctuation and capitalization of many quotations have been changed somewhat to make them conform more to present usage.

C. S. Boucher

St. Louis, Mo.

March i, 1916

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I. The Origin of the Conflict (1824-29) i

(1830) 46

Chapter I The Origin Of The Conflict (1824-29)

At the session of the South Carolina legislature which convened in November of 1825, Judge WiUiam Smith introduced a set of anti-bank, antiinternal improvement, and anti-tariff resolutions. They were adopted. Before this session there had appeared in South Carolina scattered evidences of opposition to nationalism, but this episode may be said to mark the beginning of the formidable antinationalist movement in the state.'' South Carolina was not unique in this respect; other southem states were showing signs of a similar movement. In Virginia, Thomas Ritchie had been preaching strict construction and had thereby forfeited some of his popularity in the western counties, while William B. Giles, more to the satisfaction of the eastern counties, was even more outspoken in his anti-nationalistic doctrine.''

' For a review of the position of the state up to this time, see Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, chaps, i-iy.

' See Charles H. Ambler, Thomas Ritchie and Sectionalism in Virginia from 1776 to 1861.

From the time of the South CaroHna resolutions of 1825 against "governmental usurpations" until the South Carolina Exposition of 1828, the people of the state became more and more outraged by the "usurpations," chief among which was the tariff, until most of the people of the state considered not only warrantable, but highly proper, an opposition of a decidedly strong character. But until the fall of 1828 few dared to think, or to admit thinking, of a direct conflict of state and federal authorities. Even then, when the proposition which might bring about such a conflict came, it had to come in the guise of a peaceable measure, if not honestly so.

After the passage of the tariff bill of 1824 numerous anti-tariff meetings were held in various parts of the state. The tariff was denounced as a system of robbery and plunder, destructive to the southern states. Meetings adopted resolutions which pledged the participants to purchase no northern manufactures and no Kentucky horses; men dehghted to talk of sacrifices for the sake of principle. George McDuffie was reported to have pulled off his broadcloth coat and to have given it to his servant, saying that it was fit only for the livery of a slave. Judge Daniel E. Huger is said to have refused to eat Irish potatoes because they were from the North, and General Waddy Thompson was reported as having declared that he would live on snowbirds and make the judicial circuit on foot rather than eat Kentucky pork or ride a Kentucky horse. But in spite of all the talk about the injustice and oppression of the tariff, few questioned its constitutionality. And as for disunion as a measure of resistance, many of the people who later supported it were now horrified at the expression of Dr. Thomas Cooper, president of South Carolina College, that it was time to "calculate the value" of the federal Union.

During 1827 there appeared in the Charleston Mercury a series of articles, later published in pamphlet form, written by Robert J. TurnbuU under the name of "Brutus." The wTiter endeavored to show that Congress and the Supreme Court had made the Constitution "a dead letter" which might "mean ANYTHING or . . . . NOTHING."' The broad-constructionists were severely arraigned, and McDufhe was particularly shown the error of his ways on this point. Sufficient opposition was aroused by the time the

' The Crisis: Thirty-three Essays on the Usurpations of the Federal Government. By Brutus, Charleston, 1827. Eleven essays were added to the series as originally published in the Charleston Mercury.

legislature met in November for that body to feel justified in making an official declaration for the state. Both houses approved a set of resolutions which asserted the right of the people or the legislature of any state "to every extent not limited, to remonstrate against violations of the fundamental compact .... between the people of the different states with each other as separate independent sovereignties." All tariff acts, the object of which was not the raising of revenue nor the regulation of foreign commerce but the promotion of domestic manufactures, were pronounced violations of the Constitution, "in its spirit," which ought to be repealed. They also denied the constitutional power of Congress to construct internal improvements.^

By this time John C. Calhoun saw clearly the danger to which the power of Congress to pass protective tariffs might lead; this power might "make one section tributary to another, and be

' And, having become somewhat exercised over the recent activities of the American Colonization Society, they resolved that, since it was not an object of national interest, Congress had no power in any way to patronize or direct appropriations for its benefit. The South Carolina senators in Congress were "instructed" and the representatives "requested" to act in accordance with these views {Report and Resolutions of the Special Committee of the Senate on the Subject of State Rights. Pamphlet) .

used by the administration and artful and corrupt politicians to buy up partisans and retain power." A meeting of the manufacturing interests at Harrisburg to devise measures to pass a tariff bill then pending set the dangerous example of —

separate representation and association of great geographical interests to promote their prosperity at the expense of other interests .... which of all measures that can be conceived is calculated to give the greatest opportunity to art and corruption and to make two of one

nation It must lead to defeat or oppression or

resistance, or the correction of what perhaps is a great defect in our system; that the separate geographical interests are not sufficiently guarded.'

Calhoun even then was probably contemplating some such remedy as he framed for presentation to the state legislature at the end of the next year. He soon came to feel confident that the tariff was one of the greatest instruments of southern impoverishment, and that ff persisted in it must reduce the South to poverty or compel an entire change of industry.^ By the middle of 1828 he was convinced that the South was so

' Calhoun Correspondence, American Historical Association Report, 1899, Vol. II: Calhoun to J. E. Calhoun, August 26, 1827. ^Calhoun Correspondence: Calhoun to J. E. Calhoun, May 4, alienated because of the tariff system that if a speedy and effective check upon this system were not soon applied a shock might shortly be expected.'

In Congress the South Carolina delegation did much to present the southern reasons for opposing the passage of the tariff act of 1828. At one stage of the debate William Drayton moved to amend the title of the bill so as to read, "An act to increase the duties on certain imports, for the purpose of increasing the profits of certain manufacturers." He hoped thus to make possible an appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States to try the constitutionality of the system, which could not be done if the title remained unchanged.^

In spite of southern opposition the tariff of "abominations" was passed. But this did not settle the matter, for, as the Mercury announced, the "passage of this pernicious measure" did not quell the feehng with which the people of South CaroHna remonstrated against it, and with which it was opposed by her delegates in Congress.^ The

' Calhoun Correspondence: Calhoun to James Monroe, July lo, 1828.

' Charleston Mercury, April 30, 1828. This paper will be referred to hereafter as the Mercury.

3 Mercury, May 28, 1828.

people saw remonstrances proving futile and began to think of the next necessary step. This, then, became the great question of the hour : \Vliat next ? Various views were immediately set forth; while one of the South Carolina representatives at Washington said a complete union of the whole South alone could save South Carolina and the South, other writers in the press of the state looked to the state legislature to decide on the proper course of resistance. At this juncture the Mercury, which later became an ardent nulhfication sheet, took a very sane and moderate position; it merely advocated caution and careful consideration before any step should be taken.'

' Mercury, May 29, 1828. The editor wrote that the citizens of South Carolina felt with grief that the Constitution had been violated and that the great object of the confederacy had been shamefully perverted; that their remonstrances had been disregarded, their rights denied, and the solemn protests of their delegates laughed to scorn; that they had been reduced to a condition almost tantamount to colonial vassalage, and that they were never regarded except for the purpose of discovering in what way they could be rendered serviceable to the interests of others; that the burdens under which they then labored were but the probable forerunners of others still more oppressive, and that the future held for them nothing but wretchedness and embarrassment; that the great sources of their wealth were about to be dried up, and that the dignity of their state and their prosperity as a people were on the eve of leaving them forever. But, in spite of the fact that the people felt all this so deeply, and in spite of the impression nearly every reader of this

By the middle of July communications denouncing the tariff were numerous in the southern papers, and especially in South Carolina many men wrote for publication. These communicated articles were signed with various fantastic names. The nom de plume was sometimes the name of some famous historic character of the state, nation, or world, some doctrine or theory, or was indicative of some class which the writer thought he represented. A man occasionally wrote under more than one name. Some of these anonymous writers wrote long series of articles and became widely known literary characters, though their real identity remained long or permanently unknown to the public. There were

editorial must have been forming before he finished it — that the editor was showing that there was surely but one course left for the South honorably to pursue — the editor concluded with a plea for careful consideration of the question on the part of every citizen before he formed his opinion as to what the policy of the state should be. "Whether," he said, "the spirit of just dissatisfaction which now prevails should be allayed or extended; whether, as we have borne before, we shall magnanimously bear again, or by a convulsive effort shake off the burden which afflicts us; whether by any possible course of conduct, we can avert the misfortunes which threaten us, without incurring the hazard of others still more dreadful and appalUng — are questions which will naturally arise to the mind of every man, and which the people of this state may possibly be called upon to determine."

The Origin of the Conflict g

hundreds of these writers who produced merely one or a few articles of no merit, who wrote simply to see something of their owti in print; others, however, had marked ability which was recognized by the people of the state and country.

"Leonidas," one of these anonymous writers, in July, 1S28, noted a rising spirit of discontent against the tariff bill "now in operation by the usurped powers of the Congress of the United States," and asserted that those who were confident in the belief that this spirit would exhaust itself or be smothered by opposition and intimidation, considered too lightly the genius of the southern states and the principles for the sake of which the awakened people were gathering up their energies to meet the alarming crisis.^

As regards the attitude of the North to the outcry of the South, it seemed to one South Carolina editor impossible for anyone who did not read the northern papers to form the slightest conception of the general tone of contempt, affected pity, and ridicule which they invariably employed toward the southern states, and especially of late toward South Carolina.^

'^ Mercury, July 14, 1828. ^Mercury, July 11, 1828.

lo Nullification Controversy in South Carolina

In the various districts of the state^ the first Monday of each month was designated as "sale day." On that day, when the sheriff's sale was held at the county seat, throngs of farmers and planters journeyed to their respective courthouse towns to attend the sales, do their trading, meet and converse with neighbors of the district, and discuss questions of politics. Meetings were announced for this day, or were spontaneously convened, whenever any subject of importance was being agitated. The people always knew that if any subject became important during any month, there was likely to be a meeting on the next sale day to consider it; prominent leaders were occasionally present to address the people, and at times open debates were held. If there was intense party feeling and sharp division, the parties would meet separately.

On the sale days of August and succeeding months in 1828, meetings were held at various places over the state to express again the opposition of the people to the tariff, and to discuss possible plans of resistance. The tariff was now attracting so much attention that in many in-

' The coastal political divisions, smaller than those of the interior, were called parishes, while those of the interior were called districts.

The Origin of the Conflict ii

stances the people would not wait for sale day, but held special meetings; and in some cases the local districts of a congressional district met together in convention. Some of these anti-tariff meetings attracted special attention as being "the largest and most respectable meetings ever held in the district."' The Abbeville meeting, in Calhoun's district, was anticipated as one which, perhaps more distinctly than any other yet held, would embody the feeling of the interior and announce the course likely to be pursued by that section. Expectations were not disappointed. It was estimated that 5,000 were present, and resolutions were passed which strongly denounced the tariff. Although the protestants looked to state sovereignty for relief, they intrusted the subject to the legislature. They expressed a willingness to join in the non-intercourse plan, a contemplated southern agreement to use no northern manufactures, but they had no faith in it as a permanent policy.^

' Mercury, August 7, 1828, report of anti-tariff meeting at Barnwell; August 9, Orangeburg; August 19, Newberry; September 9, Union, Lexington, York, Greemdlle; October 3, Abbeville; October;, anti-tariff convention of delegates from York, Chester, Lancaster, and Fairfield at Chester; October 14, Pendleton; October 15, St. James', Goosecreek; October 22, Darlington.

'Mercury, October 3, 1828.

In reviewing and indorsing the work of these various meetings, the editor of the Mercury drew a picture which was surely an exaggeration. He contrasted the situation of South Carolina then with her condition a few years earlier, and contended that by the tariff South Carolina had been transformed from a garden to a wilderness.' For these meetings and complaints, however, the participants were censured by "all the presses in the pay of the administration, led on and marshalled by the National Intelligencer.''^ These

' Mercury, August 23, 1S28: "Many can well remember the time when the sails of our commerce whitened every sea; when our planters were well remunerated for their labor; when improvements were daily adding to the size and beauty of our towns; when industry of all kinds was abundantly employed and amply rewarded; and when ease and contentment marked the circumstances and reigned in the hearts of all classes of our people. But that time has passed, and, as we fear, forever.

" Government thought proper to interfere in our concerns and has succeeded at last, by continued acts of injustice and oppression, in blighting the hopes and ruining the prospects of our people. Commerce, which once poured its treasures at our feet, is now driven from our shores. Agriculture, which amply repaid the labor of our planters, now scarcely affords them a bare subsistence. Plantations, once the abode of elegance and wealth, have been deserted and abandoned. Property, once immensely valuable, has fallen to less than half its value. Industry no longer finds employment. Poverty and embarrassment universally prevail, and nothing is to be seen or heard, from the seaboard to the mountains, but the signs of decay and the language of despair. ' '

presses held that the attacks upon the tariff act were mere pretexts to cover deep and traitorous designs of the leaders of the Jackson party looking to the dissolution of the Union, with a view to the erection of a separate empire for Andrew Jackson and themselves. The Mercury answered, however, that the question was really distinct from the presidential issue and that the National Intelligencer was trying to make political capital out of it to defeat Jackson.' The South Carolinians evidently regarded the tariff of 1828 as of greater importance than did many Virginians, who looked upon it as simply an aid to the " manufacture of a President of the United States."^

In view of the accusation of the "administration presses" there arises at once a question as to just what modes of resistance were advocated at this time. In the first place, there was as yet no well-defined, well-organized Disunion or even Nullification party. Certain hints at disunion had been dropped by a few writers, and the resolutions of some of the local meetings had led some of the more sensitive patriots to believe that they had scented a secret movement which might grow

' Mercury, August 23, 1828.

• Charles H. Ambler, Thomas Ritchie, p. 114.

and lead to disunion. But these Union watchdogs, who raised the prehminary warning and later became leaders of the Union party, were now making much more stir than was warranted by anything the press disclosed.

Throughout the year 1828 the Charleston Courier bristled with denunciations of anything and everything that could be interpreted as tending toward disunion. Early in the year "Hamilton" published a series of twenty-eight articles in answer to Turnbull's The Crisis, which, with kindred publications, "Hamilton" said, had made the term "disunion" familiar to the ears of the people — a term which he held should never have found its way into the political vocabulary, but should be forever regarded as of evil omen. "Hamilton" denounced these essays as enkindling animosity, sowing dissension between the South and the North, and weakening the ties that bound them together. He did not refer to particular expressions, but to the general tone of the essays and to the inferences which they suggested. He thought it impossible to rise from their perusal without the impression that the authors regarded the dissolution of the Union as an event, not only probable, but hardly to be deji'recated. He said that it would not only be impossible ever to bring I he government back to the principles "Brutus" (TurnbuU) styled pure, but that it would not be desirable if possible, for such a government could not last a twelvemonth. Such principles could not bind the parts together; the very interests and prejudices which, in the view of "Brutus," forbade a closer union were the premises on which "Hamilton" relied to demonstrate its necessity.'

The Charleston City Gazette, as early as June 19, 1828, observed that the "question of disunion" was "at last seriously and openly submitted to the consideration of the people of South Carolina," and that the people were asked, not only to calculate the advantages of the Union, but to resist its laws and dissolve the political bonds which held the confederacy together. The editor repeated the usual story of South CaroHna's wrongs and sufferings in the Union,^ and added:

Such is the gloomy picture which is artfully drawn to excite popular frenzy to an act of irretrievable desperation. A measure of the general government (to say the worst

^Charleston Courier, February 12, 1828. This paper will be referred to hereafter as the Courier. See Houston, Nullification in South Carolina, pp. 49-51, 71-73-

^ Such as quoted from the Mercury in n. i, p. 12.

of it) of doubtful policy is thus worked up into the most horrid phantom which can disturb the vision of freemen; and over their terrified imagination a demoniac sorcery is thus exercised to lead them into crime and to tempt them to their destruction. For it would be a crime, unpardonable before God and man [to] violate and tear down the only true altar which has ever been erected to civil and religious liberty; and a desolation wider and more destructive than has ever darkened the fortunes of the human race would mark and signalize its accomplishment.^

The editor admitted that the state had suffered somewhat along with the general agricultural interests of the South, but he believed that the evil would right itself.

Many men now wrote or spoke against disunion. On July 4, at Columbia, Alfred Bynum delivered an address which a correspondent said did much to stop seditious expressions in that part of the state. He reported that never before had he seen the tide of party feeling so suddenly arrested in its course as by this speech. This he insisted was no exaggeration, for at the several barbecues not a toast was permitted which had

' Charleston Cily Gazette, June 19, 1828. This paper was a daily. The Charleston Carolina Gazette was a weekly edition published by the same editors for country circulation. The Charleston City Gazette will be referred to hereafter as the Gazette, while the Charleston Carolina Gazette will be referred to as the Carolina Gazette.

the least savor of disaffection toward the government. The efforts of both Wilham C. Preston and William Harper to answer Bynum were pronounced failures/

"One of the People," dating his letter from Pineville, now started a series of articles to show the dangers of disunion. He said that Colleton, Richland, and Abbeville, the districts which had been most clamorous on the subject of state rights and the federal government's usurpations, had lost sight of the original purpose of the State Rights party and had come to think too much of immediate and unconditional separation from the Union; they had perverted the state rights doctrines and misled the people simply for their own selfish ends."" Many other writers kept the Courier supplied with anti-disunion copy.^ Some of the anti-tariff meetings during the summer had features which attracted special attention. For example, at the Columbia meeting Professor Robert Henry, of South Carolina College, moved

' Courier, July 9, 1828.

'Courier, July 12, 1828.

3 In the Courier, on July 22, 1828, "A Citizen of the U.S." started a series of articles. On July 25, "A Southron" appeared. Soon "Lowndes" followed, and then many others in August. On August 28 "Union" began a series.

1 8 NulUfication Controversy in South Carolina

to strike out of the address those parts professing love for the Union. For this he was severely criticized by many, some of whom said that they would cry shame on the legislature if he were retained in the college. He had his defenders, however, in such papers as the Cheraw Radical.^

A letter by David R. Williams, former governor of the state, to a committee of citizens of York district, attracted attention. He pictured the people of Kershaw district as extremely indignant, and averred that ninety-nine out of every hundred of the people of his congressional district believed the tarifif unjust to the South and unconstitutional. He could not say as yet what proportion would oppose the operation of the law; but he feared that a number of young spirits would willingly risk their lives for a military career " if only for the fun of it," though the discreet and sober-minded would countenance only such opposition as he outlined. He was decidedly against any thought of forcible resistance, for he preferred to suffer as long as burdens were tolerable rather than encounter evils more terrible. He had as yet heard of no project which really assured relief. He could not see that the legislature could

^Courier, August 15, 1828; Carolina Gazette, September 12.

better things by taking affairs into its own hands. He preferred associations for non-consumption of eastern and western articles, and favored no project that might tend to dismember the Union/ Such were the views of the conservatives.

This was in direct opposition to the sentiment of a "large and respectable meeting of the inhabitants of Colleton district " at the courthouse in Walterboro, on June 12.== The official addresses of the meeting to the people of the state and to the governor spoke strongly for resistance and asked that the governor convene the legislature at once to consider the situation, or call a convention to do so. The editor of the Mercury commended this as showing proper disdain for anything Hke a mean evasion of the law ; the people of Colleton, he was glad to see, would not form associations to counteract the tariff law, nor agreements not to use northern manufactures, nor would they resort to any step whatever which, while it would circumvent the law, would be tantamount to an acknowledgment of the right

' Courier, August 27, 1828.

2 This section of the state, the southeast comer, seemed consistently to take an advanced position. The Bluffton movement of 1844 was another instance.

of Congress to enact it and thus tend to fix the oppression irrevocably upon the country. He praised them for clearly denying the constitutionality of the act and recommending distinctly such "open resistance" as became "a Sovereign and Independent State."'

But the Walterboro meeting was proceeding too fast for the rest of the party, or at least faster than the other opponents of the tariff thought politic. While the Mercury itself later admitted this, the Columbia Telescope, which was generally understood to be the principal organ of the less conservative anti-tariff men of the interior, at once disapproved of the proceedings of the meeting and declared itself as preferring non-consumption as a more advisable mode of defeating the operation of the system.^ The Winyaw Intelligencer, although firmly opposed to the tariff, also regretted the proceedings as premature, and the Richmond Enquirer, taking the same ground, called upon the citizens of Colleton to pause and avoid such a program as their enemies were most anxious they should adopt.

As yet the doctrine of nullification was not generally indorsed nor even discussed; other

' Mercury, June i8, 1828. ' Mercury, July 4, 1828.

methods were proposed. These were non-consumption, the estabhshment of state excises, and the estabhshment of southern manufactures. Each had a few strong advocates,^ but many objections were raised. The Mercury regarded the non-consumption plan as equivalent to submission, and the establishment of southern manufactures as absolutely hopeless and only calculated to benefit a few individuals without effecting anything like general relief. George McDuffie was one of those who suggested these measures, which were to be made effective by a tax on all northern manufactured goods and Kentucky live stock after they had been incorporated in the property of the state; thus the people were to be encouraged to raise all their o\Mi horses, mules, and cows, and to manufacture their own wearing apparel.^ Some confidently believed that a successful beginning in manufacturing had already been made in South Carolina. "Homespun" left at the Courier ofhce, for the inspection of planters, a sample of cotton osnaburgs for negro clothing, manufactured by the South Carolina Manufacturing Company at Society Hill in Darlington district. This company

^Courier, August 19, 1828. "Mercury, July 4, 18, 1828.

also manufactured other sorts of cloth for winter or summer clothes for negroes, and cotton bagging, "at prices most essentially anti-tari£f," said "Homespun." The writer endeavored to show how South Carolina had at her command every means for avoiding extravagant duties.^ Other writers recommended the manufacture of cottonseed oil and the culture of the vine to help lighten the burden of the tariff. During this year and the next, noticeable attention was directed to agricultural improvements, and announcement was made of an agricultural paper which was to begin publication on January i, 1830.^