Throughout the summer and autumn of 1830 both the State Rights and Union parties in South Carolina worked feverishly to perfect their organizations.  The issue that both were making ready to meet was nothing less than the election of a convention to nullify the tariff laws.  Those upholding nullification lost no opportunity to consolidate their forces, and by the close of the year these were clearly in the majority, although the unionist element contained many of the ablest and most respected men in the State.  Calhoun directed the nullifier campaign, though he did not throw off all disguises until the summer of the following year.

Though Jackson made no further public declarations, the views which he expressed in private were usually not slow to reach the public ear.  In a letter to a committee of the Union party in response to an invitation to attend a Fourth of July dinner the President intimated that force might properly be employed if nullification should be attempted.  And to a South Carolina Congressman who was setting off on a trip home he said:  “Tell them [the nullifiers] from me that they can talk and write resolutions and print threats to their hearts’ content.  But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.”  When Hayne heard of this threat he expressed in Benton’s hearing a doubt as to whether the President would really hang anybody.  “I tell you, Hayne,” the Missourian replied, “when Jackson begins to talk about hanging, they can begin to look for the ropes.”

Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become its avowed leader.  Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make.  Above all things he wanted to be President.  He was not the author of nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late how much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be bettered by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy.  Circumstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually into the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement.  The tide of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the breach with Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western democracy; and his resentment of Van Buren’s rise to favor prompted words and acts which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian.  His party’s enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for reelection in 1832 and of “Little Van” as a candidate for the vice presidency—­and, by all tokens, for the presidency four years later—­was the last straw.  Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back into the role of an extremist, sectional leader.  There was no need of further concealment; and in midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous Address to the People of South Carolina, and this restatement of the Exposition of 1828 now became the avowed platform of the nullification party.  The Fort Hill Letter of August 28, 1832, addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and clearer presentation of the same body of doctrine.