with the friendly interposition of his State, asking that the compromise be accepted. The President of the body, General Hamilton, delivered an admirable address advising the acceptance of the compromise. Senator Miller spoke, assenting to that view, but bestowing upon General Jackson much bitter invective. Mr. Rhett said he could attach no importance to the compromise. He would vote to repeal the Ordinance because Virginia advised it. He said:

"There is a question pending between the North and the South, resulting from the difference in the political, mental and social organism of the two sections, which no party measure can settle which cannot be settled save by treaty or by revolution. The convention should understand, that when the present dispute, which disturbs the Union and divides it into hostile sections, is pacified, the quarrel will be found to have been only changed to slavery. Slavery, with all its semireligious and fanatical associations, will take the place of the question we have compromised."

So fell the American System before the doctrine of liberty based on decentralization of political power; and so triumphed the State of South Carolina, bringing upon itself the hatred and jealousy of the supporters of centralization in every quarter. Monopoly, cut off in one direction, shifted to another. The war against the labor of the South came, with accelerated speed, to overcome "that policy which should hold an equal and impartial hand in government, neither seeking or granting exclusive favors or preferences, consulting the natural course of things, diffusing by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing." (Washington's Farewell.) The ceaseless and ever augmenting peril to slavery in revolution, reduced the enterprise of the people of the South to the one industry, of opening fresh fields to employ slaves. The first canal opened to commerce in the United States was the Wateree Canal in South Carolina, the South Carolina railroad was the first of equal length built in the Union, and upon it was operated the first of American made locomotive engine, the first steam ship that crossed the Atlantic was built on the order of Savannah capitalists and received its outgoing cargo in cotton from the wharves of Savannah. But the peril of slavery, in which species of property the great bulk of investment lay, acted to chill the enterprise of the South in the risks of commerce and to stimulate the North to renewed efforts to

occupy the entire commercial field. What secret inspiration the abolition agitation may have found in this fact, it is useless here to inquire. The people of the South were equal to great enterprises. Wherever they were permitted under their federal relations to appear on terms of equality with the North, in the learned professions, in the pulpit, in the Senate, on the arena of combat by land or by sea, they lost nothing in comparison. The institution of African servitude was seen in its ennobling effects wherever the society which supported it came to the trial of strength with other conditions of civilization. Monopoly in cotton production was forced upon the slave States by the menacing revolution aimed at slavery. The free States, disappointed, by the action of South Carolina and the consequent failure of the American System, in securing a monopoly of manufactures for the supply of the commerce of the slave States, turned their attention with characteristic energy to another field of monopoly. Congress forbid the importation of Africans, with the full approbation of the South, and Congress in the Missouri "compromise," in land laws and naturalization laws, opened the mighty empire of the West to European colonization. Speculation in Western lands at once became a leading enterprise of the people of the North. New towns sprang up, new markets for new England goods opened, new borrowers of New England cash presented themselves, and fresh recruits to the New England Anti-Slavery Society flowed in from the cities and the farms of Germany. Monopoly of cotton production here and monopoly of land colonization there, clashed with fervor on the floors of Congress. In the strife was the opportunity of the Constitution. But the opportunity pointed out by Governor Hayne, to amend the Constitution to quiet the already assured collision of the sections, was not heeded. Each section began the work of self-preservation after its own methods. Sectional reconciliation on Constitutional grounds was the doctrine of State rights, and the doctrine did not harmonize with the land speculations of the West more than with the lost American System.

The village of Greenville sat at the foot of the Blue Ridge chain. A perfect climate and an enchanting landscape

attracted thither, in the summer months, some of the rich planters with their wives and daughters from the low country. In the distant perspective were the valleys of the Saluda, the Tyger, the Catawba, where the Scotch-Irish farmers lived, the McLemores, the McCoys, Roebacks, the father and mother of Andrew Jackson, Calhouns, Caldwells, and, intermingled with them, settlers of another blood, the Earles, Perrys, Hamptons, Butlers, Cunninghams. The village was the capital of the region where the social elements of the low country and the up country strangely intermingled where the conflicting elements of property in slaves, dominating the former section, and small white proprietary farms, dominating the latter, were almost of equal strength. The district (county) of Greenville had sent four delegates to the nullification convention, all stout Union men, lead by the venerable and accomplished ex-Governor Middleton, whose chief support was the young lawyer, B. F. Perry. At the village was published the only newspaper organ, in all the up-country, of the Union men The Mountaineer.

When W. L. Yancey entered the law office of Perry he rose at once upon the very crest of the great controversy the convention had sent forth to the people. There was no escape for him from the course he pursued. The lawyer and the political leader were identical in the land. The unsettled phase of nullification which the adjourned and dissolved convention had relegated to the polls was, a "test oath." In order to understand the political issue in South Carolina, in the general elections of 1834, at which we have arrived, it will be necessary to recur to one of the most exciting episodes of the work of the convention. That body prescribed a new oath of office, intended to enjoin allegiance to the State and obedience, only, to the Union. In order to have the benefit of the new oath, in support of the new position of the State, the admirably organized militia was disbanded by an Ordinance vacating the commissions of all its officers. Elections for new officers were then ordered. A large proportion of the original 'militia was composed of Union men, and, at the elections ordered by the convention, most of the old Union officers were re-elected. They refused the test oath and applied to the courts for the writ mandamus to compel the Adjutant-General to

deliver their commissions. The case was carried immmediately to the Court of Appeals. The Union judges, Johnson and O'Neal, held the test oath to be unconstitutional, Harper, Nullifier, dissenting. The Nullifiers met in Charleston to denounce the Court. Preston, Wilson, Colcock, Hamilton and others addressed it. Meetings for the same purpose were held in various districts. The Governor was petitioned to convene the Legislature to impeach the Union judges. Nor did the press, on the nullification side, omit to attack the Union judges with great vehemence. A Columbia paper, published there while the court sat hearing appeal causes, from all parts of the State, addressed them: "When you walk the streets do you meet any expressions of kindness in the countenances of those you meet? They turn from you: you do not look at them. They look upon you as violators of the sacred trust reposed in you. They regard you as the tools of a foreign tyrant as participators in a conspiracy against their liberties : as instruments of General Jackson: as stirrers up of sedition. They cannot see your Robes of Justice for the butcher knives and tomahawks your hands contain. Pray hasten away and give relief to the country. For what is there here to give you pleasure? There is not a man but that dreads and abhors you, save those, the desperate and profligate crew, your accomplices."

The Union men had already formed Washington Societies.. To offset the effects of the Nullifiers' meetings and their practical disbandment of the militia, for the purpose of reorganization in their own interest, the Washington Societies organized on a military footing. Judge Huger, whose father had been a General in the revolutionary war, under Greene, was commander-in-chief: Robert Cunningham, whose father had been a royalist in that war, commanded the division in which was situated Greenville. Yancey was Captain of a troop of Greenville mounted men under his uncle, Cunningham. To evade the effect of the decision of the court, the Legislature prepared an amendment to the Constitution in the form of an oath of office which required all officers of the State "to be faithful and true allegience bear to the State of South Carolina. To preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of this State and of the United States."

The first speech of Yancey's in the campaign, of which there remains any report, was an oration delivered at Lodi, Abbeville District, on the occasion of the celebration there of the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The address was an argument, suggested by the circumstances. The orator said the Nullifiers continually brought up one question: "Will you not fight for the land of your birth?" To this he would make answer: "Where liberty is, there is my country." If South Carolina became the advocate of anarchy he, for one, would not follow her lead. Looking around him, he saw men bent with age and marked with scars. Almost every one of this class was for the Union, and when he traced their history he found they were old soldiers of the war for liberty. Sires who had not hesitated or counted the costs in '76, graves of those who slept on King's Mountain and Cowpens, appealed to the generation now upon the scene of action to resist the machinations of the majority to undermine all government. A great feast was spread under the trees and at the conclusion toasts were called. When the name of the orator of the day was reached he rose and begged to read a sentiment which had just been handed to him by a lady, in lieu of anything less expressive which he might say for himself. The toast read was: "A Happy and Prosperous Existence to Our Federal Union: Union ladies wish and pray for its success; Union gentlemen should protect it and bring confusion to the counsels of its enemies." ["Music and cheers."]

On October 14, 1834, Mr. Alfred Huger, then a Unionist, being on a visit to Greenville, was offered the compliment of a public dinner in a grove near the Baptist Church. General Waddy Thompson, Nullifier, not understanding the character of the meeting, took the stand and began to speak. He was interrupted, but refused to desist., A vote was taken and eight hundred of the nine hundred present declared General Thompson should not speak. The community was greatly stirred up. Yancey, who was Secretary, wrote a letter for the Mountaineer describing the scene and defending his original report thereof, which had been attacked in the newspapers by General Thompson, the following being the concluding sentence: "I say here openly and fully, that it did not depend