tariff will be so lowered as to take away (it is hoped) the chief cause of our excitement, and render it impossible to get the people ever again to nullify. The. principle however is to remain untouched, and after a few years of respiration the assault again to be made upon our purses and our liberty.[1]
And this, in fact, proved a fair prophecy of what did take place. Hammond believed that the people of South Carolina were now ready to nullify a protecting tariff of even 1 per cent, but that the other states would accept a slight reduction of the tariff and that South Carolina would then lose the formidable power she derived from the sympathy of fellow-sufferers. Nullification would then surely end in civil war.
The resolutions of the meeting of the State Rights party of the Charleston congressional and judicial districts, with a speaker or two from the interior, were indorsed by the party at large, and nullification was suspended without further formality. Thereupon Union men remarked that the sovereignty of the state was in an awkward predicament. The Charleston State Rights convocation had apparently determined its supremacy
- ↑ Hammond Papers: Hammond to Preston, January 10, 1833.
