Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/172

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A Year of Campaigning
153

houn did not necessitate hostility to Jackson, for they feared an evil even worse than the General in the person of Henry Clay.[1]

Jackson's letter of June 14 marks an important point in the relations of the President to the South Carolina factions. It will be remembered that the State Rights party in October of 1828 added to its name that of Jackson and called itself the State Rights and Jackson party.[2] In May, 1831, the use of Jackson's name in its title was discontinued by this party and the term Free Trade substituted; this dropping of the name of Jackson, it was alleged, had nothing to do with the trouble between Jackson and Calhoun over the Seminole campaign, nor did it mean that the party was unwilling to support the General for the presidency; but it was done simply because the party had concluded that it was idle to look to any President or to anything but "the undaunted spirit of the state." At any rate, whereas the State Rights men had been loud in praise of Jackson, after the publication of

  1. Mercury, April 16, 1831. There were also a few sporadic efforts to push forward the ticket of Jackson and Calhoun. See Beacon, May 10, 1831.
  2. In the Mercury of June 31, 1831, "Phocion" wrote a review of party history.