In effect, therefore, Calhoun, the logician of
nationalism in the legislation that followed the War of 1812, became
the real architect of the system of nullification as a plan of
action rather than a protest. As it left his hands, the system was
essentially a new creation. In the Exposition, the doctrine was
sketched only in its larger lines, for it was in later documents
that he refined and elaborated it. It was intended as a substitute
for revolution and disunion--but it proved to be the basis on which
was afterwards developed the theory of peaceable secession. Calhoun
did not publicly avow his authorship or his adhesion to
nullification until three years later.
The rallying of the party of the Union in South Carolina against
this doctrine, the refusal of Georgia, Virginia, and other southern
states to accept it as the true exposition of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions, the repudiation of it by the planting states
of the southwest, all belong to the next volume of this series.
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