Calhoun was forced to take an open stand on the question of the relation of the states to the general government before he had expected to do so.[1] In July he issued a long public letter which at once appeared in most of the State Rights papers. It amounted to little more than a restatement of the Exposition; but this time his authorship was published. He did not expect that his statement or any force of argument could change public opinion in the North, but he did feel assured that the "coming confusion and danger," which he had "for years foreseen," would
- ↑ Calhoun Correspondence: Calhoun to Ingham, June 16, 1831.
not to the minority as a minority, but to each of the several states for itself; and when a state exercising that right resisted in its sovereign capacity, the question became one between equals, between sovereigns, to which it would be absurd to apply the terms "minority" and "majority," since the sovereignty of a small state was equal to that of a large state and the sovereignty of one state equal to that of many states. How absurd, it was urged, to draw a parallel between the resistance of a sovereign state against the unauthorized acts of the agents of the league and the resistance of a parish or corporation against its own state government. Had England resisted the decrees of the Holy Alliance the case would certainly not have been parallel to that of Manchester or Liverpool resisting England. And yet some politicians persisted in attempts to "mystify truth by confounding cases equally dissimilar."
But it must be added that those who argued thus never thought that it might be equally absurd to liken the American government to the Holy Alliance. See W. W. Willoughby, The Nature of the State; J. W. Garner, Introduction to Political Science.