A Compromise.—­In his messages to Congress, however, Jackson spoke the language of conciliation.  A few days before issuing his proclamation he suggested that protection should be limited to the articles of domestic manufacture indispensable to safety in war time, and shortly afterward he asked for new legislation to aid him in enforcing the laws.  With two propositions before it, one to remove the chief grounds for South Carolina’s resistance and the other to apply force if it was continued, Congress bent its efforts to avoid a crisis.  On February 12, 1833, Henry Clay laid before the Senate a compromise tariff bill providing for the gradual reduction of the duties until by 1842 they would reach the level of the law which Calhoun had supported in 1816.  About the same time the “force bill,” designed to give the President ample authority in executing the law in South Carolina, was taken up.  After a short but acrimonious debate, both measures were passed and signed by President Jackson on the same day, March 2.  Looking upon the reduction of the tariff as a complete vindication of her policy and an undoubted victory, South Carolina rescinded her ordinance and enacted another nullifying the force bill.

[Illustration:  From an old print.

DANIEL WEBSTER]

The Webster-Hayne Debate.—­Where the actual victory lay in this quarrel, long the subject of high dispute, need not concern us to-day.  Perhaps the chief result of the whole affair was a clarification of the issue between the North and the South—­a definite statement of the principles for which men on both sides were years afterward to lay down their lives.  On behalf of nationalism and a perpetual union, the stanch old Democrat from Tennessee had, in his proclamation on nullification, spoken a language that admitted of only one meaning.  On behalf of nullification, Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, a skilled lawyer and courtly orator, had in a great speech delivered in the Senate in January, 1830, set forth clearly and cogently the doctrine that the union is a compact among sovereign states from which the parties may lawfully withdraw.  It was this address that called into the arena Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts, who, spreading the mantle of oblivion over the Hartford convention, delivered a reply to Hayne that has been reckoned among the powerful orations of all time—­a plea for the supremacy of the Constitution and the national character of the union.

=The War on the United States Bank.=—­If events forced the issue of nationalism and nullification upon Jackson, the same could not be said of his attack on the bank.  That institution, once denounced by every true Jeffersonian, had been reestablished in 1816 under the administration of Jefferson’s disciple, James Madison.  It had not been in operation very long, however, before it aroused bitter opposition, especially in the South and the West.  Its notes drove out of circulation the paper currency of unsound