Mr.Calhoun's mistake, according to Mr.Davis, was in trying to "nullify" the laws of the Union while continuing a member of it.

He intimated that President Jackson would never have attempted to "execute the laws" in South Carolina as he did against the nullifiers in 1832, if the State had seceded, and that therefore his great example could not be quoted in favor of "coercion." It is not believed that Mr.Davis had the slightest authority for this aspersion upon the memory of Jackson.

It seems rather to have been a disingenuous and unwarranted statement of the kind so plentifully used at the time for the purpose of "firing the Southern heart." There had been an impression in the country that Mr.Davis was among the most reluctant of those who engaged in the secession movement; but in his speech he declared that he had conferred with the people of Mississippi before the step was taken, and counseled them to the course which they had adopted.

This declaration was a great surprise to Northern Democrats, among whom Mr.Davis had many friends.

For several years he had been growing in favor with a powerful element in the Democracy of the free States, and, but for the exasperating quarrel of 1860, he might have been selected as the Presidential candidate of his party.