Col. Hayne’s speech was the great effort of his life. He was a ready, accomplished and forcible speaker, and he vainly thought himself a match for the great senator from Massachusetts whose power he was yet to understand. He spoke as one who was confident of victory, with a self-confidence, a swagger, a violence of invective, which increased as he went on. He was encouraged by the evident delight of his friends, including the Vice-President. He did not finish his speech the first day, but closed with a hint of what he intended to do. “Sir,” he said, “the gentleman from Massachusetts has thought proper, for purposes best known to himself, to strike the South through me, the most unworthy of her servants. He has crossed the border, he has invaded the State of South Carolina, is making war upon her citizens, and endeavoring to overthrow her principles and institutions. Sir, when the gentleman provokes me to such a conflict, I meet him at the threshold, I will struggle while I have life for our altars and our firesides, and if God gives me strength I will drive back the invader discomfited. Nor shall I stop there. If the gentleman provokes war he shall have war. Sir, I will not stop at the border; I will carry the war into the enemy’s territory, and not consent to lay down my arms until I shall have obtained ‘indemnity for the past and security for the future.’ It is with unfeigned reluctance that I enter upon the performance of this part of my duty. I shrink, almost instinctively, from a course, however necessary, which may have a tendency to excite sectional feelings and sectional jealousies. But, sir, the task has been forced upon me, and I proceed right onward to the performance of my duty, be the consequences what they may; the responsibility is with those who have imposed upon me the necessity. The senator from Massachusetts has thought proper to cast the first stone, and, if he shall find, according to a homely adage, that ‘he lives in a glass house,’ on his head be the consequences.” Brave words these! But brave words do not necessarily win the victory, and Col. Hayne little knew what a foe he was challenging to combat. CHAPTER XXXI. THE REPLY TO HAYNE. Before going farther I must speak of a pestilent doctrine then held in South Carolina, which underlay the whole controversy, and was the animating cause of the antagonism of the Southern leaders to the patriotic representatives of the North. This was known as nullification, and Mr. Calhoun was its sponsor. To explain: South Carolina claimed the right to overrule any law of the general government which did not please her, or which her courts might judge to be unconstitutional. If she did not see fit to pay customs, she claimed that the government could not coerce her. All power was reposed in her own executive, her own legislature, and her own judiciary, and the national power was subordinate to them. [Illustration: COL. ROBERT G. HAYNE.]