Randolph's apology for the
President's bad spelling; but the item passed, nevertheless. During
the reign of Andrew Jackson, Congress was little more than a board of
registry for the formal recording of his edicts. There are those who
think, at the present moment, that what a President hath done, a
President may do again.
It was fortunate that John Randolph was in retirement when Calhoun
brought on his Nullification scheme. The presence in Congress of a man
so eloquent and so reckless, whose whole heart and mind were with the
Nullifiers, might have prevented the bloodless postponement of the
struggle. He was in constant correspondence with the South Carolina
leaders, and was fully convinced that it was the President of the
United States, not "the Hamiltons and Haynes" of South Carolina, who
ought to seize the first pretext to concede the point in dispute. No
citizen of South Carolina was more indignant than he at General
Jackson's Proclamation. He said that, if the people did not rouse
themselves to a sense of their condition, and "put down this wretched
old man," the country was irretrievably ruined; and he spoke of the
troops despatched to Charleston as "mercenaries," to whom he hoped "no
quarter would be given.
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