Heirs of the Founders by H. W. Brands

Author:H. W. Brands
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2018-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

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THE SENATORS WATCHED in amazement. Few had thought Calhoun harbored such intense emotions. But feelings ran high on all sides. Andrew Jackson made plain he would brook no interference with the laws of the country: no nullification and certainly no secession. He ordered his secretary of war, Lewis Cass, to gird an army to march against South Carolina if necessary. “We must be prepared to act with promptness and crush the monster in its cradle,” he told Cass. To South Carolinian Joel Poinsett, an opponent of the nullifiers, Jackson declared, “The wickedness, madness, and folly of the leaders and the delusion of their followers in the attempt to destroy themselves and our Union has not its parallel in the history of the world. The Union will be preserved.” To John Coffee, a Tennessee friend, he was more adamant still. “The Union must be preserved,” Jackson told Coffee. “I will die with the Union.”

When a South Carolina congressman asked if the president had any message for the people in his district, Jackson replied, “Yes, I have. Please give my compliments to my friends in your state, and say to them that if a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hand on engaged in such treasonable conduct, upon the first tree I can reach.”

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