Meanwhile actual nullification awaited the decision of the Vice President to surrender himself completely to the cause and to become its avowed leader. Calhoun did not find this an easy decision to make. Above all things he wanted to be President. He was not the author of nullification; and although he did not fully realize until too late how much his state rights leanings would cost him in the North, he was shrewd enough to know that his political fortunes would not be bettered by his becoming involved in a great sectional controversy. Circumstances worked together, however, to force Calhoun gradually into the position of chief prominence in the dissenting movement. The tide of public opinion in his State swept him along with it; the breach with Jackson severed the last tie with the northern and western democracy; and his resentment of Van Buren's rise to favor prompted words and acts which completed the isolation of the South Carolinian. His party's enthusiastic acceptance of Jackson as a candidate for reÎlection in 1832 and of "Little Van" as a candidate for the vice presidency--and, by all tokens, for the presidency four years later--was the last straw. Broken and desperate, Calhoun sank back into the rÙle of an extremist, sectional leader. There was no need of further concealment; and in midsummer, 1831, he issued his famous Address to the People of South Carolina, and this restatement of the Exposition of 1828 now became the avowed platform of the nullification party. The Fort Hill Letter of August 28, 1832, addressed to Governor Hamilton, was a simpler and clearer presentation of the same body of doctrine.