than three-fourths of the states. If this ever came to pass, the Union men cared not how soon a dissolution of the Union might follow, for they too held it to be the right of a people to revolutionize their government when evils were insufferable.
Some of the Union men agreed that when they could be made to perceive any, even a metaphysical, distinction between nullifying a statute of the United States and absolute rebellion, they would take a stand that moment for nullification, for South Carolina had suffered under an unrighteous legislation on the part of Congress long enough and severely enough to warrant any step on her part short of severance of the Union. But, "with all proper deference to others," they looked upon such a thing as constitutional nullification as "very much of a downright absurdity." That South Carolina, like every other state in the Union, had a "perfect right to resolve herself into her original elements," no person could deny; she had the right at any moment to secede from the Union, and they would leave the question open whether the oppressions that had been heaped upon her had not become sufficiently intolerable to justify her in such a step; but it "sickened"
