customs act, known as the Tariff of Abominations. Sparks falling on ice
carry no peril, but sparks falling on the dry prairie cause
conflagrations. The news of the passing of the protective tariff created
intense excitement in South Carolina. Public meetings were called in all
the towns in the land, and protests were made against the execution of
the new law. Legislators in the State capital, orators on the platform,
editors through their columns, urged nullification. There were two
reasons for this growing hostility to protection on the part of the
citizens of Calhoun's State; first the belief that as England was the
largest purchaser of cotton, it was to South Carolina's best interest to
have English goods brought in free; second the conviction that the
tariff was a strictly sectional movement in the interest of the
manufacturing North, as opposed to the South with her raw cotton and
slave labour.

As a candidate for the vice-presidency in 1828 on the same ticket as
General Jackson, Calhoun took no definite step until after the election,
when he published a paper showing the evil which the protective tariff
was doing the Southern states, and asserting the right to interpose a
veto. In January, 1830, having broken with Jackson and abandoned all
hope of later obtaining the presidency by his aid, Calhoun decided to
test the theory of nullification upon the national theatre. Accordingly,
under his direction, Senator Hayne inserted in his speech on the Foote
Resolution on the public lands the defense of what was to be known later
as the South Carolina Doctrine,--that, if a State considered a law of
Congress unconstitutional (as South Carolina asserted the recent tariff
act to be) the State had the right to nullify the law, and, if
obedience was sought to be enforced, the right to secede from the Union.

His position has been stated by no one so clearly as by himself, for he