Now the same conditions existed for the nation. The
free majority embraced a great zone of states in the north and west;
the south, a minority section, was now seeking protection against
the majority of the Union by the device of state sovereignty; and
Calhoun made himself the political philosopher of the rights of this
minority section, applying to the nation the experience of South
Carolina. [Footnote: Calhoun. Works, I., 400-405.]
Still the great currents of national growth ran on. New England was
achieving unity and national feeling as a manufacturing region, and
Webster was developing those powers which were to make him the
orator of consolidation. While the leaders of the middle states
played the game of personal politics, their people and those of the
growing west were rallying around the man who personified their
passion for democracy and nationalism--the fiery Jackson, who
confused sectional opposition to the government with personal
hostility to himself. This frontiersman was little likely to allow
political metaphysics, or even sectional suffering, to check his
will.
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