Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/109

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Nullification Controversy in South Carolina

would be embarrassed by such election under the existing circiunstances, declined the honor.[1]

In some places, however, the line of division was simply between Unionism and Nullification, apparently with the tacit understanding that all Unionists would oppose and all Nullifiers support a convention; but as the campaign progressed, the convention issue became confused in many parts of the state and did not mark a clear line of division between the two parties. Politics became the great business of life in many sections; the excitement was so great that not only the candidates, but many of the active partisans on both sides, spent their whole time in electioneering.[2] The greatest obstacle the advocates of a convention had to overcome was the apprehension

  1. Times, August i6, 1830; Mountaineer, August 6. In this same district the adherents of the "Non-Convention party" soon began to feel their power and to glory in it. They began to talk of running a man for Congress in opposition to Warren R. Davis, because he had spoken for a convention. The Mountaineer tried to discourage this because it would be an unjust merger of two distinct matters; the delegate to Congress could have nothing to do with the question of a state convention. Davis had been a very able and fearless supporter of true southern policy in Congress, and to throw him out would be foolish.
  2. Hammond Papers: D. L. Wardlaw to Hammond, July 24, 1830.