On the day Jackson gave this Proclamation to the Nation he made his last appeal. A letter written to Poinsett that day discloses a determination to move sternly and unhesitatingly to what he conceived to be his solemn duty. This letter breathed the spirit of the battle-field. The act of the Nullifiers was sheer treason. He had been assured that he would be sustained by Congress. “I will meet it [treason] at the threshold, and have the leaders arrested and arraigned for treason,” he wrote. He was only waiting for the Acts of the Legislature “to make a communication to Congress, ask the means necessary to carry my Proclamation into complete effect, and by an exemplary punishment of those leaders for treason so unprovoked, put down this rebellion, and strengthen our Government both at home and abroad.” The Unionists of South Carolina need not fear. In forty days he could have 50,000 men in the State, in forty more another 50,000. “How impotent,” he wrote, “the threats of resistance with only a population of 250,000 whites, and nearly double that in blacks, with our ships in the port to aid in the execution of the laws!”[550] Thus hoping that necessity would not compel him to send armed forces, determined to meet the issue, however, as it might present itself, careful to observe all the constitutional and legal limitations of his power, enraged to fury against the leaders and eager to lay his hands on Calhoun, he gave the country the Proclamation which instantly wiped out party lines with most, and rallied the patriotic forces of the Union to his support. III At the time of the writing of the Proclamation, Andrew Jackson was sixty-six, and Edward Livingston sixty-nine years old, but it breathes the fire, the passion, the enthusiasm, and the eloquence of impetuous youth. As an oration, it was to be treasured as a masterpiece; as a public document, it has taken its place alongside the Emancipation Proclamation as one of the greatest pronouncements of American history. Its publication appealed to the Unionists of the country like a charge on the battle-field. To no one did it give keener pleasure than to Webster, who read it in New Jersey on his way to the capital. In Philadelphia he met Clay, and a friend of the latter explained Clay’s plan of concessions to the Nullifiers through a new tariff of gradual reductions. The martial call of Jackson aroused the fighting blood within Webster, and Clay’s game of politics repelled him. He hastened to Washington determined to give his best blows for Jackson and the Administration.[551]