[Sidenote: The North and the South. _McMaster_, 301-304.]
303. The North and the South.--The South was now a great cotton-producing region. This cotton was grown by negro slaves. The North was now a great manufacturing and commercial region. It was also a great agricultural region. But the labor in the mills, fields, and ships of the North was all free white labor. So the United States was really split into two sections: one devoted to slavery and to a few great staples, as cotton; the other devoted to free white labor and to industries of many kinds.
[Sidenote: The South and the tariff, 1829.]
304. The Political Situation, 1829.--The South was growing richer all the time; but the North was growing richer a great deal faster than was the South. Calhoun and other Southern men thought that this difference in the rate of progress was due to the protective system. In 1828 Congress had passed a tariff that was so bad that it was called the Tariff of Abominations (p. 231). The Southerners could not prevent its passage. But Calhoun wrote an "Exposition" of the constitutional doctrines in the case. This paper was adopted by the legislature of South Carolina as giving its ideas. In this paper Calhoun declared that the Constitution of the United States was a compact. Each state was a sovereign state and could annul any law passed by Congress. The protective system was unjust and unequal in operation. It would bring "poverty and utter desolation to the South." The tariff act should be annulled by South Carolina and by other Southern states.
305. Webster and Hayne, 1830.--Calhoun was Vice-President and presided over the debates of the Senate. So it fell to Senator Hayne of South Carolina to state Calhoun's ideas. This he did in a very able speech. To him Daniel Webster of Massachusetts replied in the most brilliant speeches ever delivered in Congress. The Constitution, Webster declared, was "the people's constitution, the people's government; made by the people and answerable to the people. The people have declared that this constitution ... shall be the supreme law." The Supreme Court of the United States alone could declare a national law to be unconstitutional; no state could do that. He ended this great speech with the memorable words, "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable."