In the first year of his "reign" he thus removed two thousand
people, it is said. The whole of Washington too, was filled with
unrest and suspicion, no man knowing when it would be his turn to
go. Many of the government clerks were now old men who had been in
the service almost since the government was established. When they
were turned out, there was nothing for them to do, nothing but
beggary for them to look forward to. In consequence there was a
great deal of misery and poverty. But the removals went on.
In time this became known as the "spoils system," because in a speech
a senator talking of this matter said, "to the victor belongs the
spoils of the enemy."
But something much more serious soon began to call for attention.
You remember that the Tariff Bill of 1828 had been called the
Tariff of Abominations, and that the people in the South objected
to it very much. A feeling had begun to grow up that the interests
of the North and the South were different, and that the North had
too much power, and the South too little. So some Southern men began
to declare that if any state decided that a law made by Congress
was not lawful according to Constitution they might set that law
at nought in their own state and utterly disregard it.
This was called nullification because it made a law null and void.
Wise men saw at once that if this was allowed it would simply break
up the Union and every state would soon do just as it liked.
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