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A Year of Campaigning
139
Of course during all this controversy the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were repeatedly spoken of by the Nullifiers as justifying their theories. Many Unionists, on the other hand, denied that nullification of the South Carolina brand could be found in those resolutions. William Drayton, in an oration on July 4, 1831, gave the explanation of those resolutions which circulated widely as the platform of most of the Union
leave these points to be settled by some greater name, which derives celebrity from a learned title. It shall be our task to mark with care and precision its effects upon the human system or the symptoms of that alarming disease which is the inevitable result of its inspiration. …
"Whether nullification be a demoniacal spirit or an exhilarating gas, it may be impossible to determine; but the disease it produces is established by the clearest principles of nosology; it belongs to the class Neurosis, order Vesania, and genus Amentia. It is chiefly confined to the brain, producing slight fever with extreme thirst for blood, and occasional prostration of appetite for Kentucky hogs and mules and Yankee manufactures, and a perfect loathing of wooden nutmegs." He fears that the disease is "moveable" and may produce cholera morbus or sweating sickness if it falls upon the bowels or skin. "But should it continue a fixed Neurosis, an adequate enlargement of our already spacious lunatic asylum may be all that is requisite. "The distemper arising from nullification is manifestly an epidemic, and although it spends its force almost exclusively on the brain, the great sympathy which exists between that important organ and the liver causes the latter function to become so far perverted as to throw a sufficiency of gall into the circulation to produce a jaundiced eye and optical illusion, and hence we may account for