home manufactures as impossible of enforcement. While the Edgefield meeting of July 26 pledged its participants not to use northern manufactures or live stock, this expedient was viewed as having only slight and temporary value. Though faith was expressed in the state legislature, a committee of five was appointed to correspond with similar committees in South Carolina and other southern states. Thus a step was early taken to promote union of policy in the South.[1]
For most of the disunion talk, so generally decried, the "Mercury Junto" was blamed, and the men connected with the paper were classed together as a dangerous group. Those who formed this junto were said to be some "apostate republicans"; ambitious office-holders and hungry expectants of office, deluded or wicked men, who would sacrifice on the altar of interest their dearest rights; "blind partisans of Calhoun, McDuffie, Hamilton, etc."; and "disorganizing ultra-federalists," who were "never so happy as when successful in fomenting dissensions among the different sections of the United States."[2] Strategem as well as disunion purpose was
