Following this doughty setting-out of what one might call the Palmetto-rattlesnake position, the Governor suggests military associations on the model of the Minute Men of the Revolution, and makes ready for what blood-letting shall be required to sustain Statesman Calhoun in his new preachment. Altogether it is a South Carolina day of bombast and blue cockades, with Statesman Calhoun already chosen as the president of a coming “Southern Confederacy.” While these dour matters are in process of Palmetto transaction, Statesman Hayne encounters the lion-faced Webster on the floor of the Senate, and the latter establishes forever the rightful supremacy of the Federal Union, and demonstrates that the “Nullification” set up by Statesman Calhoun is but the chimera of a jaundiced, ambition-bitten mind. Thus canters the hour in the Senate and in South Carolina; while up in the White House the General sits reading a book.
CHAPTER XXIII--THE FEDERAL UNION: IT MUST BE PRESERVED
THE General is reading his book, when in walks Wizard Lewis. The latter necromancer casually alludes to Statesman Calhoun, and his pet infamy of “Nullification.” At this the General's honest rage begins to mount.
“You bear witness, Major,” he cries--“you bear witness how Calhoun is trying me! But by the living heavens, I'll uphold the law!” Then, shaking the ponderous tome at Wizard Lewis, his finger marking the place--“Here! I've been reading what old John Marshall said in the case of Aaron Burr. He makes treason in its definition as plain as a pikestaff. A man can't _think_ treason; he can't _talk_ treason; he can only _act_ treason. It requires an act--an overt act! Calhoun is safe while he only talks or conspires. But let one of his followers perform one act of opposition to the law, even if it be no more than hand on sword hilt or just the snapping of a fireless flint against an empty rifle-pan, and I have him. There would be the overt act demanded by old Marshall; and he goes on to say that the overt act, once committed, attaches to all of the conspirators and becomes the act of each. I shall keep my ear as well as my eye, Major, on Calhoun's State of South Carolina; and, at the first crackling of a treasonable twig beneath a traitorous foot, into a felon's cell goes he. Then we shall see what a hempen noose will do for him and his 'Nullification.'”