TARIFF AND NULLIFICATION

It was more than brilliant oratory that had drawn to the Senate
chamber the distinguished audiences faced by Webster and Hayne in the
great debate of 1830. The issues discussed touched the vitality and
permanence of the nation itself. Nullification was no mere abstraction
of the senator from South Carolina. It was a principle which his
State--and, for aught one could tell, his section--was about to put
into action. Already, in 1830, the air was tense with the coming
controversy.

South Carolina had traveled a long road, politically, since 1789. In
the days of Washington and the elder Adams the State was strongly
Federalist. In 1800 Jefferson secured its electoral vote. But the
Virginian's leadership was never fully accepted, and even before the
Republican party had elsewhere submitted to the inevitable
nationalization the South Carolina membership was openly arrayed on
the side of a protective tariff, the National Bank, and internal
improvements. Calhoun and Cheves were for years among the most ardent
exponents of broad constitutional construction; Hayne himself was
elected to the Senate in 1822 as a nationalist, and over another
candidate whose chief handicap was that he had proposed that his State
secede rather than submit to the Missouri Compromise.

After 1824 sentiment rapidly shifted. The cause appeared to be the
tariff; but in reality deeper forces were at work. South Carolina was
an agricultural State devoted almost exclusively to the raising of
cotton and rice. Soil and climate made her such, and the "peculiar