Calhoun to the
Vice-Presidency. It was the year that terminated the honorable part of
Mr. Calhoun's career and began the dishonorable. His political
position in the canvass was utterly false, as he himself afterwards
confessed. On the one hand, he was supporting for the Presidency a man
committed to the policy of protection; and on the other, he became the
organ and mouthpiece of the Southern party, whose opposition to the
protective principle was tending to the point of armed resistance to
it. The tariff bill of 1828, which they termed the bill of
abominations, had excited the most heated opposition in the cotton
States, and especially in South Carolina. This act was passed in the
spring of the very year in which those States voted for a man who had
publicly endorsed the principle involved in it; and we see Mr. Calhoun
heading the party who were electioneering for Jackson, and the party
who were considering the policy of nullifying the act which he had
approved. His Presidential aspirations bound him to the support of
General Jackson; but the first, the fundamental necessity of his
position was to hold possession of South Carolina.
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