consummation of that Union, imbittered them. Hence their determination
to seize every possible occasion and pretext afterward to destroy it,
believing, as they doubtless did, that upon the crumbled and mouldering
ruins of a dissevered Union and ruptured Republic, Monarchical ideas
might the more easily take root and grow. But experience had already
taught them that it would be long before their real object could even be
covertly hinted at, and that in the meantime it must be kept out of
sight by the agitation of other political issues. The formulation and
promulgation therefore, by Jefferson, in the Kentucky Resolutions of
1798, and by Madison, in the Virginia Resolutions of 1799, of the
doctrine of States Rights already referred to, was a perfect "God-send"
to these men. For it not only enabled them to keep from public view and
knowledge their ultimate aim and purpose, but constituted the whip which
they thenceforth everlastingly flourished and cracked over the shrinking
heads of other and more patriotic people--the whip with which, through
the litter of their broken promises, they ruthlessly rode into, and, for
so long a period of years held on to, supreme power and place in the
Land.

Including within the scope of States Rights, the threats of
Nullification, Disunion and Secession--ideas abhorrent to the Patriot's
mind--small wonder is it that, in those days, every fresh demand made by
these political autocrats was tremblingly acceded to, until patience and
concession almost utterly exhausted themselves.

Originally disturbing only South Carolina and Georgia to any extent,
these ambitious men, who believed in anything rather than a Republic,
and who were determined to destroy the Union, gradually spread the
spirit of jealousy and discontent into other States of the South; their
immediate object being to bring the Southern States into the closest