The protean character of nullification was shown, and the misuse by the State Rights party of the phrase "sovereignty is indivisible" was pointed out.[1]
When the Edgefield Carolinian a Columbia paper, and the Mercury all claimed that the advance in cotton, noticed in August, was attributable to nullification, the Patriot replied that such a statement might be expected from "an ignorant up-country editor,"[2] unacquainted with the matters of trade, but was inexcusable in the Mercury. "Nullification," it was remarked, "must indeed have performed wonders, if it has given increased activity to the cotton mills of Europe and interfered with certain physical laws of our globe so as to have checked the growth of cotton." The Nullifiers were asked what they would have said had the high price of cotton in 1825 been attributed to the passage of the tariff
- ↑ Courier, November 23, June 15, 1833. Indivisible sovereignty, the Union men argued, applied only to the prince and not to the people. South Carolina, they said, had actually divided hers (the delegation of it had been divided, was probably what was meant), yielding a portion of it to the "great community of the Union."
- ↑ These editors were by no means all ignorant. The editorial columns of some of the up-country papers were far more able than those of some of the Charleston papers.
