At the same time that such sentiments were
expressed, the people of the North were warned
not to be deceived into thinking that the people
of the South and of South Carolina who opposed
the tariff were but a paltry few, "a desperate and
imprincipled faction, a small number of noisy
and restless demagogues"; instead of a faction,
it was "the whole people arrayed against federal
usurpations." One Union editor believed that
there were not 150 individuals in South Carolina,
outside of Charleston, who did not deprecate the
tariff system as unjust, unequal, and oppressive.[1]
The Columbia Times editors showed themselves to be heartily with the South, but at the same time professed to love and venerate the Union, to have a "holy, all but superstitious reverence" for it, and to believe that most of the people felt the same way. They asserted that South Carolina did not aim at disunion; yet merely to arouse attention, they said, they believed in talking about disunion, and opened their columns to writers who tried to show that the South had all the resources necessary to resist invasion by the North, and to support a government when separate. The position this sheet now consistently held was
- ↑ Journal, August 7, 1830.
