On the other hand it is asserted that the bill was not at all what South Carolina had demanded. It is undisputed that the United States Government passed a force bill based on the ground that it could compel the exercise of its authority over the citizens of a State disputing it, and that no resistance was made to the collection of the import duties after February 1st, when the State declared its ordinance should be enforced, the reduction of the tariff being subsequently passed.[100] [100] Alex. Johnston, in Winsor’s _History of America_, vol. vii., p. 286, says that Jackson collected the duties at Charleston by naval and military force, and that the day before February 1st a meeting of “leading nullifiers” agreed to avoid all collision with the Federal Government. It was in South Carolina alone that the right of nullification was sanctioned by a majority of its citizens. There were in the debates in Congress on that matter members from other States who maintained that doctrine, but Southern writers have apparently purposely omitted, and Von Holst, Greeley, and Benton, historians of that time, have overlooked the resolutions of the other Southern States condemning the doctrines of South Carolina, which are the more significant as those States agreed with her in opposing and denouncing the tariff. Virginia’s position, though less decided than that of the other States, did not please Calhoun; in reply to her Senator, Mr. Rives, who had opposed the South Carolinian doctrine, he spoke of her as “a once” patriotic State. Virginia’s resolutions were, that the doctrines of State sovereignty and State rights as set forth in her resolutions of 1798, and sustained by the report thereon of 1799, were a true interpretation of the Constitution, but she did not consider them as sanctioning the proceedings of South Carolina in her said ordinances, nor as countenancing all the principles assumed by the President in his proclamation. Virginia sent Mr. Leigh as a commissioner to South Carolina, but without result. Mississippi, Jefferson Davis’ State, declared “that, in the language of the father of his country, we will indignantly frown upon the first dawning of every attempt to alienate any portion of our country from the rest, or to enfeeble the ties which link together its various parts.” Nullification was condemned in the strongest terms, and it was declared they would support the President in maintaining the Union. In the next year, Robert J. Walker canvassed the State for a seat in the Senate with Poindexter, his opponent; the issue was a question of nullification, and Walker, after a contest of three years, prevailed and became Senator at the election, January 8, 1836. General Jackson wrote a letter in his favor.[101] [101] Article by R. J. Walker on “Nullification and Secession,” February, 1863, p. 179, _Continental Monthly Magazine_.