men to resist the law, I will order thirty thousand to execute the law. To this I may add the request for the custom house to be removed to Castle Pinckney on Sullivan's Island, and the power in the Secretary of the Treasury to demand the payment of duties in cash, deducting the interests, from all vessels entering a port where the states may have enacted laws to resist the payment of the duty.[1]
By the end of December the President was feeling even more bitterly on the subject. He wrote:
This abominable doctrine, that strikes at the root of our government and the social compact, and reduces everything to anarchy, must be met and put down or our Union is gone, and our liberties with it forever. The true Republican doctrine is, that the people are the sovereign power, that they have the right to establish such form of government [as] they please, and we must look into the Constitution, which they have established, for the powers expressly granted, the balance being retained to the people and the states; When we look into the [Articles of] Confederation of the thirteen United States of America, we find there a perpetual union; and that it might last forever, we find the express power granted to Congress to settle all disputes that may arise between the states. What next—we find upon experience that this perpetual union and confederation is not perfect. On this discovery, "We the people of these United States,"
- ↑ Van Buren Papers: Jackson to Van Buren, December 15, 1832.
