The second Act of the legislature was a measure to provide for the event of the employment of military power by the general Government to enforce the nullified Acts in South Carolina. It authorized the Governor of the Commonwealth to resist the same; and for this purpose to order into service the whole military power of the Commonwealth at his discretion, to purchase arms, accoutrements, and ammunitions, and to appoint his military staff; and it authorized and obligated the Governor to use military power in suppressing opposition to the laws of the Commonwealth by combinations too powerful to be controlled by the civil officers. The third Act was the test oath, the oath to obey, execute, and enforce the Ordinance of Nullification, and all the acts of the legislature for its enforcement, which every officer of the Commonwealth must take before dealing with any question touching the nullified Acts or the nullifying Acts, and which the Governor might require of any officer whatever. These were the details and the forms of the issue which South Carolina now offered to the United States. Was it rebellion, or was it constitutional and legal opposition? [Sidenote: The meaning of Nullification as understood by the Nullifiers.] As we have seen, Calhoun and the members of the {227} nullifying convention held it to be the latter. They argued that the reserved powers of the Commonwealths are recognized by the Constitution; that every conceivable power is reserved to the Commonwealths, except such as are vested by the Constitution in the general Government exclusively, or are denied by the Constitution to the Commonwealths; that the power to pronounce an act of the general Government null and void had been neither so vested nor so denied; that this was, therefore, a reserved power of the Commonwealths, and was, like all other reserved powers, a constitutional power; that South Carolina proposed to use this power through judicial means only, which means were legally and constitutionally at her disposal through the principle of the governmental system of the United States that general criminal jurisdiction belongs exclusively to the Commonwealths; and that the employment of military power by the Commonwealth, indicated in the Ordinance and the legislative acts for its enforcement, was to be resorted to only in self-defence, only to repel the possible attack of the military power of the general Government upon South Carolina.