"A Great Talking and Eating Machine": Patriarchy, Mobilization and the Dynamics of Nullification in South Carolina

"A GREAT TALKING AND EATING MACHINE": PATRIARCHY, MOBILIZATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF NULLIFICATION IN SOUTH CAROLINA James Rrewer Stewart Fascinated by scenes he had witnessed in April 1833 while awaiting ship in Charleston, South Carolina, a newspaper writer from Pordand, Maine attempted to convey to his far-off readers some of what he had observed. For over three years, South Carolina's remonstrances against the tariff had disturbed national affairs and politics within this state. But the intransigence which this reporter had seen conveyed a heightened intensity. In the city, delegates of the States Rights and FreeTradeParty had just completed an extravagant public celebration, a "nullification ball." As this solitary "up-Easterner" looked on, South Carolina's wealthiest , most active planter-politicians ostentatiously danced and drank, confidently publicizing their intention to defy Congress and die president , to nullify the tariff, and to shed the last drop of blood to resist Federal tyranny. The details of this spectacle struck hard at the newsman 's Yankee sensibilities. Yet his report reveals him to have been blessed with sophisticated instincts and able to sense broader implications in the event. His analysis also conveys an acute sense of what he felt his Yankee readers needed most to understand about Soutb Carolina's fixation witb intransigence. As a result, his report suggests starting points for reassessing several questions which historians have raised about tbe Nullification Crisis. Why did Soutb Carolina's expressions of sectionalism become so vehement after 1828? How did the state's planter elite succeed The phrase in the title, William J. Grayson's characterization ofelectioneering practices in South Carolina during the Nullification Crisis, is found in Grayson's "Autobiography," pp. 168-69, South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina, Columbia. The author of this article wishes to thank the Macalester College Faculty Activities Committee for financial support, and Robert Wier, Tom Connelly, Tom Terrill, George Rogers and Daniel Hollis, Marie Bibus, Emily Rosenberg, Norman Rosenberg, and David Itzkowitz for criticisms of earlier versions of this article. Civil War History, Vol XXVII, No. 3 Copyright © 1981 by The Kent State University Press 0009-8078/81/2703-0001 $01.00/0 198CIVIL WAR HISTORY in mobilizing such an impressive array of lesser whites in the antitariff crusade? Why did white Soutb Carolinians behave so violently toward each other and toward the Federal government? William Freehling, James Banner, Robert Wier, Kenneth Greenberg and several other scholars have addressed tbese matters, concluding that South Carolina's extremism reflected a declining economy, white fear and guilt over slaveholding, and an anachronistic political system ill suited to ideological politics.1 AU these conclusions have merit but should be reexamined if our observer's report was accurate. Here, only slightly amended to enhance readability, is what he wrote home: The Nullifiers are doing things in grand style. The Nullifiers are men of taste, men of little guns, big guns, swords and cutlasses, great spunk and fine speeches, pretty ladies and pretty dances. Who would not be a Nullifier and live in such a land, feed on such chivalry and enjoy such a ball? ... It was [held] in the Citadel, which is the Armory of the State, where are deposited Carolina's munitions of war, with which she was going to whipher twenty three sovereign sisters [states] . . . Ranges of card tables were spread in the gentlemen's drawing rooms. Rivers of wine were near. Refreshments of ices, lemonades, etc. . . . Now the Governor [Robert Y. Hayne] has entered in uniform and epaulettes, and General [James A.] Hamilton also, in all the pomp of the camp, prepared to dance. Cotillions were formed in the crowd . . . [and] when they were formed, the black band, who were planted somewhere on high, began to sound with horn and clarinet and drum and cymbal. . . . Under the staging for the band were long pieces of ordnance, with their mouths turned to the company. Between the columns were medallions with emblematic devices on which were compliments to distinguished nullifiers. Here is the Governor of the State in cap, plumes and epaulettes, with his amiable lady, wearing the cockade of Carolina. There is ex-Governor Hamilton, Emperor of the South, far less humble than Napoleon when only trampling on...