Proclamation of Gov. Robert Hayne of SC concerning State's Rights

Andersonh1

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ROBERT YOUNG HAYNE was born in St. Paul’s Parish, Colleton District, South Carolina. After attending private schools and studying law, he was admitted to the South Carolina Bar in 1812. During the War of 1812 he began as an infantry Lieutenant in the Third South Carolina Regiment and rose to the rank of Captain of the Charleston Cadet Riflemen and then Quartermaster General of South Carolina. He was a member of the South Carolina House of Representatives from 1814 to 1818-speaker in 1818; Attorney General of South Carolina from 1818 to 1822; and a member of the U.S. Senate from 1822 until 1832, when he was elected governor by the state legislature. Hayne defended the South Carolina Nullification Ordinance that was adopted in 1832 to nullify federal tariff laws, and in response to President Andrew Jackson’s Proclamation to the People of South Carolina, he called for the state to furnish 10,000 troops to repel a federal invasion. - source: https://www.nga.org/governor/robert-young-hayne/

Hayne engaged in a famous debate with Daniel Webster on the nature of the Union while both men were serving in the Senate. A lot of Hayne's views on State's rights and sovereignty can be found there.


Following his election as governor of South Carolina in 1832, Hayne issued a proclamation in response to Andrew Jackson, and here he had much to say again on the nature of the Union and the extent of State sovereignty. I wanted to post a few excerpts, and the full speech can be found at the following link, published by the Phenix Gazette.


The SC General Assembly denounced the idea of a President coercing a state through military means:

Whereas, the President of the U. States has issued his proclamation denouncing the proceedings of this State; calling upon the citizens thereof to renounce their primary allegiance, and threatening them with military coercion, unwarranted by the Constitution, and utterly inconsistent with the existence of a free State, be it therefore​
Resolved, That his Excellency the Governor be requested, forthwith, to issue his proclamation, warning the good people of this State against the attempt of the President of the United States to seduce them from their allegiance, exhorting them to disregard his vain menaces, and to be prepared to sustain the dignity, and protect the liberty of the State, against the arbitrary measures proposed by the President.​
Hayne did so, calling President Andrew Jackson's views "dangerous and pernicious doctrines" intended to mislead people as to the true nature of the Union and to "seduce them from their allegiance" to the State.

I would earnestly admonish them to beware of the specious but false doctrines by which it is now attempted to be shown that the several States have not retained their entire sovereignty....​
Hayne questions whether the Federal Government can either be the final judge of the extent of its own powers, or the final judge of the Constitutionality of its own acts, and if either is true, is it not a government of unlimited power, contrary to the limited powers spelled out in the Constitution?

Hayne asserts that the states began as "free, sovereign and independent" and "at every subsequent change of their condition... the States preserved their sovereignty."

South Carolina holds the principles now promulgated by the President (as they must always be held by all who claim to be supporters of the rights of the States) "as contradicted by the letter of the constitution - unauthorized by its spirit - inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded - destructive of all the objects for which it was framed" - utterly incompatible with the very existence of the States - and absolutely fatal to the rights and liberties of the people."​
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S Carolina has never claimed (as is asserted by the President) the right of repealing at pleasure, all the revenue laws of the Union," much less the right of "repealing the Constitution itself, and laws passed to give it effect which have never been alleged to be unconstitutional." She claims only the right to judge of infractions of the Constitutional compact, in violation of the reserved rights of the State, and of arresting the progress of usurpation within her own limits, and when, as in the tariffs of 1828, and 1832, revenue and protection - constitutional and unconstitutional objects, have been so mixed up together, that it is found impossible to draw the line of discrimination - she has no alternative, but to consider the whole as a system, unconstitutional in its character, and to leave it to those who have woven the web, to unravel the threads.​
More to follow, but it strikes me that much of this line of thought is nearly identical to what will be found thirty years later during South Carolina's secession before the Civil War, establishing a long tradition of belief in South Carolina of which the 1860 secessionists were the inheritors, not the originators.
 
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