[Footnote: Niles' Register, XXXIII., 339; cf. ibid.,
XXXV., 82, 131.]
Although South Carolina and all of the staple-producing section
except Louisiana and Kentucky were in substantial agreement upon the
iniquity of the tariff, yet, in respect to the remedy, they were
widely at variance. Protest had proven ineffective; proposals of
resistance by force, plans for a southern convention, and threats of
disunion were rife. [Footnote: Houston, Nullification in S.C., 49-
52, 73-75.]
Such was the situation which confronted Calhoun when he returned
from Washington and found that his section had passed beyond him.
The same considerations that had aroused this storm of opposition
also had their effect upon him. But he was still hopeful that, by
the election of Jackson, a cotton-planter, the current of northern
power might be checked; and he looked forward also to the prospect
that he himself might eventually reach the presidential chair.
Before him lay the double task of uniting himself to his friends in
South Carolina, lest he lose touch with the forces of his own
section, and of framing a platform of opposition that should be
consistent, logical, and defensible; and, at the same time, of
providing some mode of avoiding the forcible revolution that the
hotheads of his section threatened as an immediate programme.
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