When the first rumblings of nullification were heard from South Carolina in 1829, the _Evening Post_ refused to follow those newspapers which treated the subject flippantly. “Every man of common sense must know that if but a single stave is withdrawn from the barrel, it inevitably tumbles to pieces,” Bryant warned his readers; “and that whatever be the dimensions of the stave withdrawn, the catastrophe is equally sure and fatal.” It was impossible for the journal not to sympathize with the hot-tempered South Carolinians who wanted to destroy the application of the tariff of 1828 to their State. It thought that Col. Hayne was no more wrong about the Constitution than the turncoat Webster was wrong about the tariff; but it warned Calhoun’s and Hayne’s followers that their project was “insane”: It is the destiny of all republics to be agitated occasionally by the desperate plans of disappointed and ambitious men, resolved to rule or ruin. Such might succeed with a corrupt people, but not in our intelligent and free land. Public opinion has indignantly rejected every proposition to dismember our confederacy, and has pronounced a just judgment on those who prefer themselves to their country--we have already among us more than one blasted monument of selfish ambition. The wreck of our republic is not yet at hand--the people’s devotion to the Union is invincible, and the same verdict awaits every man, whether of the North, the South, the East, or the West, who would dare to violate its integrity. (Aug. 29, 1832.) Whether applauding Jackson as he sternly recalled South Carolina to its senses, or attacking the protectionist doctrines, Bryant tried to open his editorials with a flash of humor or an apposite story. When the _American_ delayed a twelvemonth in apologizing for an insult to Jackson, he told the anecdote of the worthy widow whose husband had been dead for seven years and who declared that she could stand it no longer. The opponent who sighed for the time when the Administration would go into a state of “retiracy” reminded him of the Irishman who had rushed for a map when he learned that Napoleon had taken Umbrage. An exchange with a discourteous antagonist recalled the member of the House of Commons who, having said that a colleague was not fit to carry guts to a bear, and being required to apologize, stated: “I retract--you _are_ fit to carry guts to a bear.” During 1831 many Americans were boasting of having known Louis Philippe when he was an expatriate in this country; and in rebuke to their snobbery, the editor spoke of the man who was proud of having been noticed by a king--the king had said, “Get out of my way, you scoundrel!” Bryant wrote laboriously, not fluently, and made so many corrections that his copy was often almost illegible; but he wrote with polish.