asser

fect of the tariff laws. The effects of those laws are confessedly injurious, but the evil was greatly exaggerated by the unfounded theory you were taught to believe, that its burthens were in proportion to your exports, not to your consumption of imported articles. Your pride was roused by the tion that a submission to those laws was a state of vassalage, and that resistance to them was equal, in patriotic merit, to the opposition our fathers offered to the oppressive laws of Great Britain. You were told that this opposition might be peaceably-might be constitutionally made; that you might enjoy all the advantages of the union, and bear none of its burthens.

Eloquent appeals to your pas. sions, to your state pride, to your native courage, to your sense of real injury, were used to prepare you for the period when the mask which concealed the hideous features of DISUNION should be taken off. It fell, and you were made to look with complacency on objects which, not long since, you would have regarded with horror. Look back at the arts which have brought you to this state-look forward to the consequences to which it must inevitably lead! Look back to what was first told you as an inducement to enter into this dangerous course. The great political truth was repeated to you, that you had the revolutionary right of resisting all laws that were palpably unconstitutional and intolerably oppressive; it was added, that the right to nullify a law rested on the same principle, but that it was a peaceable remedy! This character which was given to it, made you receive, with too much confidence, the assertions that were made of the unconstitutionality of the law and its oppressive effects. Mark, my fel

low citizens, that by the admission of your leaders, the unconstitutionality must be palpable, or it will not justify either resistance or nullification! What is the meaning of the word palpable, in the sense in which it is here used?—That which is apparent to every one; that which no man of ordinary intellect will fail to perceive. Is the unconstitutionality of these laws of that description? Let those among your leaders who once approved and advo cated the principle of protective duties, answer the question; and let them choose whether they will be considered as incapable, then, of perceiving that which must have been apparent to every man of common understanding, or as imposing upon your confidence, and endeavouring to mislead you now. In either case, they are unsafe guides in the perilous path they urge you to tread.

Ponder well on this circumstance, and you will know how to appreciate the exaggerated language they address to you. They are not champions of liberty, emulating the fame of our revolutionary fathers; nor are you an oppressed people, contending, as they repeat to you, against worse than colonial vassalage. You are free members of a flourishing and happy union. There is no settled design to oppress you. You have indeed felt the unequal operation of laws which may have been unwisely, not unconstitutionally passed; but that inequality must necessarily be removed. At the very moment when you were madly urged on the unfortunate course you have begun, a change in public opinion had commenced. The nearly approaching payment of the public debt, and the consequent necessity of a diminution of duties, had already produced a considerable reduction, and that too on some articles of general con

act be the dreadful consequences on their heads be the dishonour, but on yours may fall the punish. ment; on your unhappy state will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the government of your country. It cannot accede to the mad project of disunion, of which you would be the first victims. Its first magistrate cannot, if he would, avoid the performance of his duty; the conse. quence must be fearful for you, dis. tressing to your fellow citizens here, and to the friends of good government throughout the world. Its enemies have beheld our prosperity with a vexation they could not conceal; it was a standing refutation of their slavish doctrines, and they will point to our discord with the triumph of malignant joy. It is yet in your power to disappoint them. There is yet time to show that the descendants of the Pinckneys, the Sumpters, the Rutledges, and of the thousand other names which adorn the pages of your revolutionary his. tory will not abandon that union to support which so many of them fought, and bled, and died. I adjure you as you honour their memory-as you love the cause of freedom to which they dedicated their lives--as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. Snatch from the archives of your state the dis. organizing edict of its convention; bid its members to re-assemble and promulgate the decided expression of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honour; tell them, that compared to disunion all other evils are light, because that brings with it an accumulation of all; declare that you will never take the field unless the star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you; that you

will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonoured and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the constitution of your country! Its destroyers you cannot be. You may disturb its peace ; you may interrupt the course of its prosperity; you may cloud its repu tation for stability; but its tranquil. lity will be restored, its prosperity will return, and the stain upon its national character will be transfer. red, and remain an eternal blot on the memory of those who caused the disorder.

Fellow citizens of the United States! The threat of unhallowed disunion-the names of those, once respected, by whom it is utteredthe array of military force to support it-denote the approach of a crisis in our affairs on which the continuance of our unexampled pros. perity, our political existence, and perhaps that of all free governments may depend. The conjunction demanded a free, a full, and explicit enunciation, not only of my inten. tions, but of my principles of aetion; and as the claim was asserted of a right by a state to annul the laws of the union, and even to recede from it at pleasure, a frank exposition of my opinions in relation to the origin and form of our go. vernment, and the construction I give to the instrument by which it was created, seemed to be proper. Having the fullest confidence in the justness of the legal and constitutional opinion of my duties which has been expressed, I rely with equal confidence on your undivided support in my determination to execute the laws--to preseve the union by all constitutional means--to arrest, if possible, by moderate but firm measures, the necessity of recourse to force; and, if it be the will of heaven that the recurrence of its primeval curse on man for the shedding of a brother's blood should

fall upon our land, that it be not called down by any offensive act on the part of the United States.

Fellow citizens! The momentous case is before you. On your undivided support of your government depends the decision of the great question it involves, whether your sacred union will be preserv. ed, and the blessing it secures to us as one people shall be perpetuated. No one can doubt that the unanimity with which that decision will be expressed, will be such as to inspire new confidence in republican institutions, and that the prudence, the wisdom, and the courage which it will bring to their defence, will transmit them unimpaired and invigorated to our children.

May the Great Ruler of nations grant that the signal blessings with

which He has favoured ours, may not, by the madness of party or personal ambition, be disregarded and lost; and may His wise Providence bring those who have produced this crisis, to see the folly, before they feel the misery of civil strife, and inspire a returning veneration for that union which, if we may dare to penetrate his designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire.

In testimony whereof, I have caused the seal of the United States to be hereunto affixed, having sigued the same with my haud. Done at the city of Washington, this 10th day of December, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and thirty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the fifty-seventh.

ANDREW JACKSON.

By the President:

Edward Livingston, Secretary of State.

Gentlemen of the Senate

and House of Representatives, In my annual message, at the commencement of your present session, I adverted to the opposition to the revenue laws in a particular quarter of the United States, which threatened, not merely to thwart their execution, but to endanger the integrity of the union. And although I then expressed my reliance that it might be overcome by the prudence of the officers of the United States, and the patriotism of the people, I stated that should the emergency arise, rendering the execution of the existing laws impracticable, from any cause whatever, prompt notice should be given to congress, with the suggestion of such views and measures as might be necessary to meet it.

Events which have occurred in the quarter then alluded to, or which have come to my knowledge subsequently, present this emer

date of the annual message, the convention which assembled at Columbia, in the state of South Carolina, passed, on the 24th of November last, an ordinance declaring certain acts of congress therein mentioned within the limits of that state to be absolutely null and void, and making it the duty of the legislature to pass such laws as would be neces sary to carry the same into effect, from and after the 1st of February next. A copy of that ordinance has been officially transmitted to me by the governor of South Carolina, and is now communicated to congress.

The consequences to which this extraordinary defiance of the just authority of the government might too surely lead were clearly foreseen, and it was impossible for me to hesitate as to my own duty in such an emergency. The ordinance had been passed, however, without any certain knowledge of the recommendation, which, from a view of the interests of the nation at large,

the executive had determined to submit to congress, and a hope was indulged that by frankly explaining his sentiments and the nature of those duties which the crisis would devolve upon him, the authorities of South Carolina might be induced to retrace their steps. In this hope I determined to issue my proclamation of the 11th of December last, a copy of which I now lay before

congress.

I regret to inform you that these reasonable expectations have not been realized, and that the several acts of the legislature of South Carolma, which I now lay before you, and which have all and each of them finally passed after a knowledge of the desire of the administration to modify the laws complained of, are too well calculated, both in their positive enactments and in the spirit of opposition which they obviously encourage, wholly to obstruct the collection of the revenue within the limits of that state.

Up to this period, neither the recommendation of the executive, in regard to our financial policy and impost system, nor the disposition manifested by congress promptly to act upon that subject, nor the unequivocal expression of the public will in all parts of the union, appears to have produced any relaxation in the measures of opposition adopted by the state of South Carolina, nor is there any reason to hope that the ordinance and laws will be abandoned. I have no knowledge that an attempt has been made, or that it is in contemplation to re-assemble either the convention or the legislature; and it will be perceived, that the interval before the 1st of February is too short to admit of the preliminary steps necessary for that purpose. It appears, moreover, that the state authorities are actively organizing their military resources, and providing the means, and giving the most solemn assurances of protection and support to all who shall enlist in op.

A

position to the revenue laws. recent proclamation of the present governor of South Carolina has openly defied the authority of the executive of the union, and general orders from the head-quarters of the state have announced his determination to accept the services of volunteers, and his belief, that should their country need their services, they will be found at the post of honour and duty, ready to lay down their lives in her defence. Under these orders, the forces referred to, are directed to "hold themselves in readiness to take the field in a moment's warning," and in the city of Charleston--within a collection district and a port of entry, a rendezvous has been opened for the pur. pose of enlisting men for the magazine and municipal guard. Thus South Carolina presents in the attitude of hostile preparation, and ready even for military violence if need be, to enforce her laws for preventing the collection of the duties with. in her limits.

Proceedings thus announced and matured must be distinguished from menaces of unlawful resistance by irregular bodies of people, who, acting under temporary delusion, may be restrained by reflection and the influence of public opinion from the commission of actual outrage. In the present instance aggression may be regarded as committed when it is officially authorized, and the means of enforcing it fully provided.

Under these circumstances, there can be no doubt that it is the deter. mination of the authorities of South Carolina, fully to carry into effect their ordinance and laws, after the 1st of February. It therefore be comes my duty to bring the subject to the serious consideration of congress, in order that such measures as they in their wisdom may deem fit, shall be seasonably provided, and that it may be thereby understood, that while the government is disposed to remove all just cause of