While Webster and Clay were leaders in Congress there was great excitement because that body passed a tariff law which the southern people did not like. Many of the southern leaders, especially those of South Carolina, said that Congress had no right to pass such a law and that each state might declare the objectionable law null and void or of no effect within its borders. Such action by a state was called “nullification.” There was talk that some of the states would withdraw from the Union if the President tried to enforce the hated law. Such withdrawal on the part of a state was called “secession.” About the time these mutterings of disunion were in the air, Robert Y. Hayne, a great orator from South Carolina, made a strong speech in the Senate of the United States, maintaining the right of his state to “nullify” and withdraw from the Union. Daniel Webster, the champion of the Union, delivered one of the greatest appeals ever made by any orator, in his famous reply to Hayne. It closed with these now familiar words: “Let my last feeble and lingering glance behold the glorious ensign of the republic, now known and honored throughout the earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies streaming in their original luster, not a stripe erased or polluted, not a single star obscured; bearing for its motto no such miserable question as, ‘What is all this worth?’ or those other words of delusion and folly, ‘Liberty first and Union afterwards;’ but everywhere, spread all over in characters of living light, blazing in all its ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, that other sentiment, dear to every true American heart--_Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable_.” The greatest leader in the south and champion of the right of his state, South Carolina, was John C. Calhoun. He also was an eloquent speaker. He declared in the Senate of the United States, in speaking of the tariff law meant to tax goods which people needed, “We look upon it as a dead law, null and void, and will not obey it.” South Carolina nullified the tariff law and threatened to secede from the Union. General Andrew Jackson, the bluff old Indian fighter and hero of the War of 1812, was then President. He declared, “The Union must and shall be preserved!” John C. Calhoun and all others acquainted with “Old Hickory,” as the President was nicknamed, knew that he meant just what he said. It seemed that civil war was about to begin when Henry Clay, who loved the Union, averted the danger by proposing a plan of compromise which both sides could accept. THE KIND HEART OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN