A little consideration of these plain and irrefutable truths would show
how utterly unworthy and false are the vulgar taunts which attribute
"treason" to those who, in the late secession of the Southern States,
were loyal to the only sovereign entitled to their allegiance, and which
still more absurdly prate of the violation of oaths to support "_the
Government_," an oath which nobody ever could have been legally required
to take, and which must have been ignorantly confounded with the
prescribed oath to support the Constitution.
Nullification and secession are often erroneously treated as if they
were one and the same thing. It is true that both ideas spring from the
sovereign right of a State to interpose for the protection of its own
people, but they are altogether unlike as to both their extent and the
character of the means to be employed. The first was a temporary
expedient, intended to restrain action until the question at issue could
be submitted to a convention of the States. It was a remedy which its
supporters sought to apply within the Union; a means to avoid the last
resort--separation. If the application for a convention should fail, or
if the State making it should suffer an adverse decision, the advocates
of that remedy have not revealed what they proposed as the next
step--supposing the infraction of the compact to have been of that
character which, according to Mr.
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