The tariff bill of 1828 was passed before the Presidential canvass had set in with its last severity. There was time for Mr. Calhoun to withdraw from the support of the man whose nearest friends had carried it through the Senate under his eyes. He did not do so. He went home, after the adjournment of Congress, to labor with all his might for the election of a protectionist, and to employ his leisure hours in the composition of that once famous paper called the "South Carolina Exposition," in which protection was declared to be an evil so intolerable as to justify the nullification of an act founded upon it. This Exposition was the beginning of our woe,--the baleful egg from which were hatched nullification, treason, civil war, and the desolation of the Southern States. Here is Mr. Calhoun's own account of the manner in which what he correctly styles "_the double operation_" was "pushed on" in the summer of 1828:-- "This disastrous event [the passage of the tariff bill of 1828] opened our eyes (I mean myself and those immediately connected with me) as to the full extent of the danger and oppression of the protective system, and the hazard of failing to effect the reform intended through the election of General Jackson. With these disclosures, it became necessary to seek some other ultimate, but more certain measure of protection. We turned to the Constitution to find this remedy. We directed a more diligent and careful scrutiny into its provisions, in order to understand fully the nature and character of our political system. We found a certain and effectual remedy in that great fundamental division of the powers of the system between this government and its independent co-ordinates, the separate governments of the States,--to be called into action to arrest the unconstitutional acts of this government by the interposition of the States,--the paramount source from which both governments derive their power. But in relying on this our ultimate remedy, we did not abate our zeal in the Presidential canvass; we still hoped that General Jackson, if elected, would effect the necessary reform, and thereby supersede the necessity for calling into action the sovereign authority of the State, which we were anxious to avoid. With these views the two were pushed with equal zeal at the same time; which double operation commenced in the fall of 1828, but a few months after the passage of the tariff act of that year; and at the meeting of the Legislature of the State, at the same period, a paper known as the South Carolina Exposition was reported to that body, containing a full development, as well on the constitutional point as on the operation of the protective system, preparatory to a state of things which might eventually render the action of the State necessary in order to protect