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52
Nullification Controversy in South Carolina
years, and as a special concession to the manufacturers to allow them to withdraw their capital with little loss. But the manufacturers had betrayed the trust of the South Carolina delegation by applying for an extension of the system, unsuccessfully in 1820, but successfully in 1824. James Hamilton, Jr., now published his famous
course on the part of Congress a constitutional one. The arguments usually presented to impute such power to Congress he considered mere sophistry. The Mercury strongly approved Drayton's course (Mercury, January 26, 27, 1830).
This episode attracted considerable attention. The northern papers seemed to interpret it as an indication that Charleston was switching principles altogether. The Mercury, however, said that those who approved were merely the same ones who had long been for a tariff and for internal improvements, together with a few who, though honest opponents of the tariff and internal improvements, thought that Congress could constitutionally invest the public funds in the stock of private companies, and who, lamenting the depression of the city and state, thought it desirable that an effort be made to revive them by such an investment in the sotck of the South Carolina company (Mercury, January 27, 1830). General Robert Y. Hayne came out, in a letter made public (Columbia Southern Times, February 8), to show that this was sacrificing all principle, and a meeting at Walterboro, always in the van, denounced the petition of the company as destitute of propriety and expediency and unworthy of being countenanced by the citizens of South Carolina (Mercury, February 17). It was not that they opposed the railroad, but that the state was engaged in a struggle for political liberties, the successful issue of which was endangered by such a petition. It seemed to be a case of trying to eat one's cake and have it too.