South Carolina, erratic, brilliant, and impulsive, had never fully harmonized with the politicians of Virginia in their political doctrines, but had been inclined to ridicule the rigid and non-progressive principles of her statesmen, who, always cautious, were now slow to receive into fellowship and to commit themselves to the new convert who sought their support. They slighted him, and rejected his nullification remedies. Instead of following the Palmetto State in her fanatical party schemes on the alleged issue of free trade, and supporting her "favorite son" in his theories, they sustained General Jackson, whose Union sentiments they approved, and who, to the disgust of Calhoun, became a candidate for reëlection in 1832 and received the votes of almost the whole South. In this crisis, when the heated partisans of South Carolina in their zeal for free trade and State rights had made a step in advance of the more staid and reflecting Statists, and undertook to abrogate and nullify the laws of the Federal Government legally enacted, they found themselves unsupported and in difficulty, and naturally turned to their acknowledged leader for guidance. To contest the Federal Government, and pioneer the way for his associates to resist and overthrow the Administration, Mr. Calhoun resigned the office of Vice-President and accepted that of Senator, where his active mind, fertile in resources, could, and as he and they believed would extricate them. There was, however, at the head of the Government in that day a stern, patriotic, and uncompromising Chief Magistrate, who would listen to no mere temporizing expedients when the stability of the Union was involved, and who, while recognizing and maintaining the rights of the States, never forgot the rights that belonged to the Federal Government. In his extremity, when confronting this inflexible President, Mr. Calhoun hastened to make friends with his old opponents, Clay, Webster, and the protectionists, the advocates of the "American system," the authors and champions of the very policy which had been made the pretext or justification for nullification and resistance to Federal law and the Federal authority. This coalition of hostile factions combined in a scheme, or compromise, where each sacrificed principles to oppose the administration of Jackson. It was an insincere and unrighteous coalition which soon fell asunder.