The substance of this ordinance was to interdict the action of the courts, and to require all officers to take an oath to obey the ordinance and the laws passed to give it effect.  It also declared that the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 were null, void, and not binding on the State, its officers or citizens.  It further declared it to be unlawful for any of the constituted authorities of the State or of the United States to enforce the payment of the duties imposed by the act within the limits of the State of South Carolina.  Other provisions were that no case of law or equity decided in South Carolina, in which was involved the question of the validity of the ordinance of the South Carolina convention, or any act of its Legislature to give it effect, should be appealed to the Supreme Court of the United States, or be regarded if appealed; and that, if the General Government should employ force to carry these acts into effect, or endeavor to coerce the State by closing its ports, South Carolina would consider the Union dissolved, and would proceed to organize a separate government.  A union convention was called in South Carolina to endeavor to suppress the movement inaugurated by the ordinance of the recent convention.

The States of Alabama, Tennessee, and Georgia—­the first through its Governor, Gayle, and the latter by resolutions of their Legislatures—­took strong anti-nullification grounds.  On December 10th President Andrew Jackson issued his famous proclamation exhorting all persons to obey the laws, and denouncing the South Carolina ordinance.  He said in this proclamation:  “I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed.”

“This, then, is the position in which we stand.  A small majority of the citizens of one State in the Union have elected delegates to a State convention.  That convention has ordained that all the revenue laws of the United States must be repealed, or that they are no longer a member of the Union.  The Governor of that State has recommended to the Legislature the raising of an army to carry the secession into effect, and that he may be empowered to give clearance to vessels in the name of the State.  No act of violent opposition to the laws has yet been committed, but such a state of things is hourly apprehended; and it is the intent of this instrument to proclaim not only that the duty imposed on me by the Constitution—­’to take care that the laws be faithfully executed’—­shall be performed to the extent of the powers already vested in me by law, or of such other as the wisdom of Congress shall devise and intrust to me for that purpose, but to warn the citizens of South Carolina, who have been deluded into an opposition to the laws, of the danger