The defence offered by his friends on this subject--and it is the strongest point they have been able to make--is that these sacrifices, or compromises, were necessary to save the Union, and that--although they did not prevent ultimate secession--they caused a delay of ten years, which enabled the North to gather sufficient strength to carry the civil war to a successful conclusion.

It is not difficult to show historically that the policy of compromise between the national principle and unlawful opposition to that principle was an entire mistake from the very outset, and that if illegal and partisan State resistance had always been put down with a firm hand, civil war might have been avoided.

Nothing strengthened the general government more than the well-judged and well-timed display of force by which Washington and Hamilton crushed the Whiskey Rebellion, or than the happy accident of peace in 1814, which brought the separatist movement in New England to a sudden end.

After that period Mr.Clay's policy of compromise prevailed, and the result was that the separatist movement was identified with the maintenance of slavery, and steadily gathered strength.
In 1819 the South threatened and blustered in order to prevent the complete prohibition of slavery in the Louisiana purchase.

In 1832 South Carolina passed the nullification ordinance because she suffered by the operation of a protective tariff.