Page:Nullification Controversy in South Carolina.djvu/130

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The First Test of Strength
111

were now said to be admitting that they had deceived themselves and the people.[1]

As the session of Congress progressed, everything available was seized upon by the Nullifiers to show, directly and by implication, that those who had argued that a convention was premature and useless had been in the wrong. Then in May the party speakers at public dinners and barbecues began to come out more openly again and to urge a speedy application of the Carolina doctrines as the only means of relief.[2]

In the early summer the State Rights papers began to chide the Anti-convention papers for not publishing an amoimt of anti-tariff material sufficient to prove that they were true South Carolinians.[3] It was charged that in combating the nullification doctrine they were allowing themselves to be carried off into the incidental, if not open, support of those very measures against which they had formerly fought. To this the Anti-convention papers answered that there was no need of continuing to print anti-tariff doctrines

  1. Mercury, February 5, 17, 1831.
  2. Mercury, March 12, April 13, May 20, 1831 ; Messenger, April 13.
  3. The Banner of the Constitution, published in Philadelphia by Raguet, was recommended as the best source of anti-tariff material. See Messenger, June 8, 1831; Camden and Lancaster Beacon, June 21.