Controversy over this tariff raged for fully four years, and had a memorable issue.  In the course of 1830 the doctrine of “nullification” and “secession” was discussed in the Senate, and the view of Calhoun was expounded by one Senator Hayne.  Webster answered him in a speech which he meant should become a popular classic, and which did become so.  He set forth his own doctrine of the Union and appealed to national against State loyalty in the most influential oration that was perhaps ever made.  “His utterance,” writes President Wilson, “sent a thrill through all the East and North which was unmistakably a thrill of triumph.  Men were glad because of what he had said.  He had touched the national self-consciousness, awakened it, and pleased it with a morning vision of its great tasks and certain destiny.”  Later there came in the President, the redoubtable Andrew Jackson, the most memorable President between Jefferson and Lincoln.  He said very little—­only, on Jefferson’s birthday he gave the toast, “Our Federal Union; it must be preserved.”  But when in 1832, in spite of concessions by Congress, a Convention was summoned in South Carolina to “nullify” the tariff, he issued the appropriate orders to the United States Army, in case such action was carried out, and it is understood that he sent Calhoun private word that he would be the first man to be hanged for treason.  Nullification quietly collapsed.  The North was thrilled still more than by Webster’s oratory, and as not a single other State showed signs of backing South Carolina, it became thenceforth the fixed belief of the North that the Union was recognised as in law indissoluble, as Webster contended it was.  None the less the idea of secession had been planted, and planted in a fertile soil.

General Andrew Jackson, whose other great achievements must now be told, was not an intellectual person, but his ferocious and, in the literal sense, shocking character is refreshing to the student of this period.  He had been in his day the typical product of the West—­a far wilder West than that from which Lincoln later came.  Originally a lawyer, he had won martial fame in fights with Indians and in the celebrated victory over the British forces at New Orleans.  He was a sincere Puritan; and he had a courtly dignity of manner; but he was of arbitrary and passionate temper, and he was a sanguinary duellist.  His most savage duels, it should be added, concerned the honour of a lady whom he married chivalrously, and loved devotedly to the end.  The case that can be made for his many arbitrary acts shows them in some instances to have been justifiable, and shows him in general to have been honest.

When in 1824 Jackson had expected to become President, and, owing to proceedings which do not now matter, John Quincy Adams, son of a former President, and himself a remarkable man, was made President instead of him, Jackson resolved to overthrow the ruling class of Virginian country gentlemen and Boston city magnates which seemed to him to control Government, and to call into life a real democracy.  To this end he created a new party, against which of course an opposition party arose.