Is it worth our while
to continue this union of States, where the North demands to be our
masters and we are required to be their tributaries? who with the most
insulting mockery call the yoke they put upon our necks the 'American
system!' The question, however, is fast approaching the alternative of
submission or separation."
Only a few days after this inflammatory speech at Columbus, S. C.,
inciting South Carolinians to resist the pending Protective Tariff even
to the lengths of Secession, during a grand banquet at Richmond, Va.,
William B. Giles--another Free Trade leader--proposed, and those present
drank a toast to the "Tariff Schemer" in which was embodied a
declaration that "The Southerners will not long pay tribute." Despite
these turbulent and treasonable mutterings, however, the "Jacksonian
Congress" passed the Act--a majority of members from the Cotton and New
England States voting against, while the vote of the Middle and Western
Free States was almost solidly for, it.
At a meeting held soon after the enactment of the Tariff of 1828, at
Walterborough Court House, S. C., an address was adopted and issued
which, after reciting the steps that had been taken by South Carolina
during the previous year to oppose it, by memorials and otherwise, and
stating that, despite their "remonstrances and implorations," a Tariff
Bill had passed, not indeed, such as they apprehended, but "ten-fold
worse in all its oppressive features," proceeded thus:
"From the rapid step of usurpation, whether we now act or not, the day
of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Constitution cannot be
far off, and it is that it may not go down in blood that we now call
upon you to resist.
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