Callers at the Hermitage about the first of October were surprised to find Jackson’s thoughts remote from the election. Instead of a jubilant politician, they found an old man frothing with fury over the news from South Carolina that the Nullifiers had won a majority of seats in the Legislature and were arranging for an early summoning of a Nullification Convention. His indignation was so intense that his friends were shocked at the ferocity of his mood. The crisis had not crept upon him unaware. With keen, far-seeing eyes he had watched its advance, hoping that something would intervene to divert his native State from its mad course, but determined, if the issue came, to crush it with an iron hand. His hatred of Calhoun had, by this time, become an obsession, and when he threatened to “hang every leader ... of that infatuated people, sir, by martial law, irrespective of his name, or political or social position,” there was no doubt as to whom he referred.[534] Taking no further interest in the election, he put the campaign behind him and hastened to the capital. Blair, the politician always, hurried to the White House with some papers relating to the election. After a hasty and perfunctory glance, Jackson returned them to the editor, with a “Thank you, sir,” and launched into a denunciation of the Nullifiers. The date set for the Nullification Convention had just reached him. Even Blair, accustomed to his fits of temper, was startled. He was in the presence of a Jackson he had never seen or known before. “The lines in his face were hard drawn, his tones were full of wrath and resentment.... Any one would have thought he was planning another great battle.”[535] Even the announcement of victory at the polls scarcely interested him. Blair and Kendall called with a table showing the electoral vote. Glancing at it indifferently for a moment, his face brightened. “The best thing about this, gentlemen, is that it strengthens my hands in this trouble.” Such was the spirit with which Andrew Jackson faced the gravest crisis the Nation had yet known. Beginning with an intensely nationalistic spirit,[536] South Carolina commenced to veer about with the tariff of 1816, and every succeeding tariff measure had been a provocation. Two years before Jackson’s inauguration, the “Brutus” articles on the “Usurpations of the Federal Government,” eloquent, fiery, defiant of the “Monster of the North,” had created a profound impression, commanding the adherence of McDuffie, the Mirabeau of the disaffected, Hamilton, Preston, and Chancellor William Harper, described by Houston as “scarcely inferior to Calhoun as an exponent of meta-physical doctrines.”[537] The principles of “Brutus” only awaited the authoritative sanction of Calhoun to place upon them the stamp of the State’s approval.