had properly understood and believed in the powers of nullification.[1]
The opponents of nullification asked if that system of checks would not put it in the power of any one state to force the government to call a convention, and if this were true under the doctrine, as they understood it to be, whence was the power derived? Did not the Constitution say that two-thirds of the states were required to call a convention? Yet by the nullification doctrine one state was given the right of exercising this important power, which the framers of the Constitution were unwilling a majority of the states should possess. Was not this an open, palpable, and dangerous infraction of the federal compact? Furthermore, asked the Union men, where was the clause of the Constitution which conferred the power of construing that instrument upon three-fourths of the states? They knew very well that this number had the right to make amendments to the federal Constitution, but they believed that
- ↑ Professor F. M. Anderson in "A Forgotten Phase of the New England Opposition to the War of 1812" printed in the Proceedings of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, Vol. VI, says that, though neither the word "nullification" nor "secession" was used by the New Englanders, yet practically all of the elements of those doctrines as later championed by Calhoun were presented.
