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The First Test of Strength
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government unworthy of preservation. The people should know this and determine for themselves. If, knowing it, they declared for a convention, then every citizen should abide by the decision and support its policy to the end. But he believed that it was too soon to act; South Carolina should wait for the return of good sense to the American people, which must come soon.[1] If, however, the state were resolved to act, it should do so openly and boldly, without any attempt to shield itself behind metaphysical constructions of the Constitution.[2]
It goes without saying that all supporters of the tariff in South Carolina were against a convention.
- ↑ Mountaineer, May 21, November 13, 1830; Courier, November 13. Judge William Smith was another holding this view—against a convention because the tariff and internal improvement systems were fast crumbling away and would soon be demolished.
- ↑ The editor of the Camden Journal claimed just before the election that the Convention party would not number more than fifty out of 800 voters in the district and that there were not ten in the town. "But," he added, "there is not one 'submission' man" in the district. The editor of the Columbia Times and Gazette asked: "If you are opposed to a convention and yet not for giving up, pray what remedy do you propose? "The Journal editor answered that he was for resistance in every constitutional way, by the use of moral force, of reason and argument, to the point where shown useless, and then for a convention to withdraw from the confederacy. The Times editor then answered that if the Journal editor could show that nullification would produce disunion or civil war, the Times would abandon the doctrine at once (Times, October 11, 21, 25, 1830).
