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entailed.[1] All of this preparation was formidable enough to cause many citizens to leave the state.[2]
During January the President was often informed of the trend of affairs in South Carolina, and he became ever more convinced of the
- ↑ Hammond Papers: Hammond to Governor Hayne, January 23, 1833: "The people of Barnwell are generally very poor, and, though staunch yeomanry, not generally so public spirited I find as some of our neighbors. If drafted there is not a Nullifier in the district and few Union men who would not cheerfully take up arms; they would make soldiers that might be depended on; but as to volunteering, they do not understand it and are not inclined to put themselves to unnecessary trouble. The fact is that there are not intelligent men enough sprinkled about to stir them up, and that they have gone right heretofore I attribute to mere instinct. Whenever they can be collected together I have never failed to produce some ardor among them; but in so large a district, so sparsely populated, it is difficult to get them together, and they know so little of the matter that one exhortation does not last long. I mentioned these things to show you why there has not been so spontaneous a burst of patriotism here as elsewhere."
- ↑ The Sumter Whig stated that if the tide of emigration from that district continued as it had gone on for the past two months, Sumter would soon literally be a waste and howling wilderness. And it was a matter deemed worthy of remark that it was not the Union men generally—the "spiritless submissionists," as they had been scornfully termed—but chiefly the "brave spirits, the pinks of chivalry, the fire and brimstone eaters," who had "suddenly been enlightened as to the vast advantages of the western country, and were leaving South Carolina in the midst of her troubles." "They were going to leave the glorious triumph of nullification behind them and seek a continuance of their oppressions in the West," the Mountaineer put it. See Mountaineer, January 12, 1833; Niles' Register, January 19.
