Some hint of that recent literature, which the General found so interesting, gets abroad, and many go reading the lucid dictum of old Marshall. Treason as a crime becomes better understood; and--by Statesman Calhoun at least--better feared. Moved of these fears, Statesman Calhoun sends message after message into his restless Palmetto-rattlesnake State of South Carolina commanding, nay imploring, a present suspension of “Nullification.” His Palmetto-rattlesnake adherents, while not understanding the danger which fringes them about, have already found enough that is alarming in the very air; and, for their own safety as much as his, are heedful to regard that prayer for a “Nullification” passivity. The South Carolina shouting ceases; the Minute Men rest on their traitorous arms; the manufacture of blue cockades is abandoned; while the Columbia convention devotes itself to innocuous adjournments from innocent day to day.
While Palmetto-rattlesnake affairs are thus timidly quiescent, the Senate itself--having read old Marshall, and being, moreover, somewhat instructed by the watchful attitude of the General, who sits in the White House a figure of frowning menace, both relentless and fateful--devotes itself to the scaffold extrication of Statesman Calhoun. Machiavelli Clay leads the rescue party. His is of an opposite political church to that of Statesman Calhoun; but the pair meet on the warm, common ground of a deathless hatred of the General. Under the mollifying guidance of Machiavelli Clay, Senator after Senator surrenders those pet schedules of tariff desired of his own people, and puts the surrender on the expressive basis of “saving the neck of Calhoun.”
When every possible tariff cut has been arranged, and Congress adjourns, Statesman Calhoun makes his memorable homeward flight. Horse after horse he rides down, night becomes as day; for Death crouches on his crupper, and he must stay the Nullifying hand of South Carolina to save his own neck. He succeeds beyond his deserts, and comes powdering into Columbia, worn and wan and anxious, yet none the less ahead of that “overt act” whereof old Marshall spoke, and for which the somber General waits.
Once among his own treason-hatching coterie, Statesman Calhoun loses no moments, but breaks up the “Nullification” nest. Secession dies in the shell, and the Columbia convention, with more speed even than it displayed in passing it, repeals that “Ordinance of Nullification.” Thereupon Statesman Calhoun draws his breath more freely, as one who has been grazed by the sinister fangs of Fate; while the inveterate General heaves a sigh of regret.