312 ANDREW JACKSON 



of Jefferson fell upon Van Buren, and it was to Jack- 

 son's credit that he took that statesman into his 

 innermost counsels. The soldier-President, though 

 doubtless at first actuated by personal motives, soon 

 found the soundest kind of support. 



But it is upon his attitude toward the nullifiers that 

 Jackson's most conspicuous claim to our gratitude is 

 based. The question as to whether the federal Con- 

 stitution created a nation or not was never really set- 

 tled until it was settled by war. Previous to Jackson's 

 presidency, people's ideas on the subject were very 

 hazy, and when single states, or sections of the country, 

 grumbled and threatened, nobody knew exactly what 

 ought to be done about it. It was significant that 

 Webster's great speech and Jackson's decisive action 

 should have come so near together. Webster's speech 

 was not only a most masterly summing up of the situ- 

 ation, but for sublime eloquence we must go back to 

 the time of Demosthenes to find its equal. Among the 

 forces that have held the Union together, the intelli- 

 gent response of the popular mind to that speech, and 

 the strong emotions it awakened, must be assigned a 

 very high place. But, after all, it was only Mr. Web- 

 ster's speech ; it did not create a precedent for action ; 

 it was something which a federal executive might see 

 fit to follow, or might not. But from the moment 

 when President Jackson said in substance to the nulli- 

 fiers, " Gentlemen, if you attempt to put your scheme 

 into practice, I shall consider it an act of war and shall 

 treat it accordingly," from that moment there was no 

 mistaking the significance of the action. It created a 

 precedent which, in the hour of supreme danger, even 

 the puzzled, reluctant, hesitating Buchanan could not 



