It is entirely evident that the South Carolina statesmen and lawyers thought they had so fashioned the laws of the Commonwealth as to force the general Government to the first violation of legal order in attempting to execute the nullified Acts of Congress--that is, they thought they had made it impossible for the general Government to execute these Acts by regular legal methods; and that they had done so without themselves violating any rule or principle of American jurisprudence. They repeated the assertion, again and again, that they did not rest their case on moral, or on revolutionary, principles, but on strict constitutional {228} right; and it is impossible to prove that they were insincere. The great question now was, what attitude the general Government would take toward the attempt of a Commonwealth to defeat the supremacy of its laws. Naturally the Executive Department must act first, since nullification was directed against the execution of existing laws. [Sidenote: Jackson's view of Nullification.] In his message of December 4th (1832), President Jackson referred briefly to the events of the preceding month in South Carolina, but did not seem to have fully appreciated their purport. He said he hoped the United States courts would be able to cope successfully with the difficulties in South Carolina, and that, if they were not, he thought that the existing laws gave the President sufficient power to suppress any attempts which might be immediately made against the supremacy of the Government. [Sidenote: The Tariff in the Annual Message of 1832.] He devoted a much larger portion of the message to a consideration of the tariff, and declared that the time had arrived for the United States to enter upon the realization of the policy of a tariff for revenue only, and of the ultimate limitation of protection to those articles of domestic manufacture indispensable to the country in time of war. It is possible that the President did, after all, understand the serious nature of the situation from the outset, and hoped, by his pronounced recommendations in regard to the tariff, and his very mild utterances concerning nullification, to influence the South Carolinians to a reconsideration of their hasty acts, and give them a loophole of escape from their very dubious and embarrassing position. [Sidenote: The President's Proclamation of December 10th.] He waited for six days, and then issued the noted proclamation of December 10th, which presented the {229} President's idea of the relation of the United States, as a nation, and of the general Government, to the Commonwealths, asserted the supremacy of United States law over Commonwealth law, demonstrated the true character of nullification as rebellion, and declared the President's intention to execute the laws of the United States against any and all opposition.