By the middle of July communications denouncing the tariff were numerous in the southern papers, and especially in South Carolina many men wrote for publication. These communicated articles were signed with various fantastic names. The nom de plume was sometimes the name of some famous historic character of the state, nation, or world, some doctrine or theory, or was indicative of some class which the writer thought he represented. A man occasionally wrote under more than one name. Some of these anonymous writers wrote long series of articles and became widely known literary characters, though their real identity remained long or permanently unknown to the public. There were
editorial must have been forming before he finished it—that the editor was showing that there was surely but one course left for the South honorably to pursue—the editor concluded with a plea for careful consideration of the question on the part of every citizen before he formed his opinion as to what the policy of the state should be. "Whether," he said, "the spirit of just dissatisfaction which now prevails should be allayed or extended; whether, as we have borne before, we shall magnanimously bear again, or by a convulsive effort shake off the burden which afflicts us; whether by any possible course of conduct, we can avert the misfortunes which threaten us, without incurring the hazard of others still more dreadful and appalling—are questions which will naturally arise to the mind of every man, and which the people of this state may possibly be called upon to determine."
