John Marshall, in gloomy mood, found in the Proclamation the elixir for his pessimism.[552] Justice Story, despite his deep-seated prejudice, could not withhold his commendation, coupled with an expression of strange surprise. “The President’s Proclamation is excellent,” he wrote, “and contains the true principles of the Constitution; but will he stand to it? Will he not surrender all to the guidance of Virginia?”[553] Adams described it as a “blister plaster.”[554] Among all his long-time political opponents, Clay alone withheld enthusiastic commendation, with the comment that, “although there are some good things in it, there are some entirely too ultra for me.” In truth, the man who would “rather be right than President” seized eagerly upon the President’s patriotic position to curry favor with the extreme State-Rights men of the South. Thus we soon enter upon the party phase of the fight. The effect upon some of Jackson’s State-Rights supporters was one of painful embarrassment. While the average Virginian had no sympathy with Nullification, he subscribed to the State-Rights doctrine and to the right of secession. The very point on which Clay cunningly and unscrupulously pounced was therefore the one which caused the greatest consternation among the Administration Democrats of the Old Dominion. It was to them that Clay was making his appeal. The Virginia Assembly, which had just unanimously elected W. C. Rives, a Jacksonian, to the Senate, instantly reversed itself by electing John Tyler, an enemy, to that body, to succeed Tazewell, who had resigned. W. S. Archer, writing to Cambreleng in New York, declared that it would be ridiculous to expect Virginia to endorse the Proclamation,[555] and Governor Floyd, who had received South Carolina’s vote in the recent election, rejoiced to find “the poor unworthy dogs, Ritchie, Van Buren & Co. deserted.”[556] To the momentarily embarrassed Ritchie, his cleverness pointed a way out. Penning a mild objection to some of the doctrinal points, he accepted it as primarily a denunciation of Nullification, and, as such, gave it the support of his great prestige and pen.[557] Such was the position of many others among the Southern leaders of the Jackson party, but Ritchie found himself in a minority. John Tyler, never friendly to Jackson, now seized upon the Proclamation as a pretext for pushing to the head of the Opposition. Writing heatedly to Tazewell of the “servility” to party of many Southern statesmen supporting the President, he drew a gloomy picture of the future. The Proclamation, he thought, had “swept away all the barriers of the Constitution,” had established “a consolidated military despotism.” He “trembled” for South Carolina. “The war cry is up--rely upon it,” he wrote. “The boast is that the President by stamping like another Pompey on the earth can raise a hundred thousand men.”[558]