over to the judiciary for trial and punishment the "leaders, exciters, and promoters of this rebellion and treason." On receiving official notice of the assemblage of a force in Charleston, armed to resist the laws, he would have in Charleston, in ten or fifteen days at the latest, from ten to fifteen thousand organized troops, well equipped for the field, and from twenty to thirty thousand more in the interior. He reported to the Union men that he had had a tender of volunteers "from every state in the Union," and could, "if need be, which God forbid, march 200,000 men in forty days to quell any and every insurrection or rebellion that might arise to threaten our glorious confederacy and Union, upon which our liberty, prosperity, and happiness rest." He felt convinced that the whole nation, from Maine to Louisiana, including even Virginia, would unitedly stand behind him in the position he had taken.[1]
- ↑ See Poinsett Papers: Drayton to Poinsett, December 31, 1832; Jackson to Poinsett, January 16, 24, February 7, 17, 1833. In short, Jackson was proving the truth of the picture which George McDuffie had drawn of him a few years previously, in the days before "the mist of nullification....overspread his imagination": "In a word, if I were called upon to define what it is that constitutes a talent for governing human affairs with wisdom, I would say that when our country is surrounded with difficulties, and a crisis is presented in her affairs, from which she should be speedily extricated,
