The failure of the Verplanck
measure, however, left matters where they were, and civil war in South
Carolina again loomed ominously.
In this juncture patriots of all parties turned to the one man whose
leadership seemed indispensable in tariff legislation--the "great
pacificator," Henry Clay, who after two years in private life had just
taken his seat in the Senate. Clay was no friend of Jackson or of Van
Buren, and it required much sacrifice of personal feeling to lend his
services to a program whose political benefits would almost certainly
accrue to his rivals. Finally, however, he yielded and on the 12th of
February he rose in the Senate and offered a compromise measure
proposing that on all articles which paid more than twenty per cent
the amount in excess of that rate should be reduced by stages until in
1842 it would entirely disappear.
Stormy debates followed on both the Compromise Tariff and the Force
Bill, but before the session closed on the 4th of March both were on
the statute book. When, therefore, the South Carolina convention, in
accordance with an earlier proclamation of Governor Hamilton,
reassembled on the 11th of March, the wind had been taken out of the
nullifiers' sails; the laws which they had "nullified" had been
repealed, and there was nothing for the convention to do but to
rescind the late ordinance and the legislative measures supplementary
to it.
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