“The People of this State will thenceforth hold themselves absolved from all further obligation to maintain or preserve their political connexion with the people of the other States, and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and to do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do.” – Ordinance of 1832 South Carolina Convention
“[T]his State owes a duty to the Union, above all minor considerations … [S]he prizes that Union less than liberty alone.” – Mississippi Legislature, resolution responding to the South Carolina ordinance (1833)
Judicial Federalists in the Deep South State ex rel. McCready v. Hunt – South Carolina, 1834 (2 Hill 1); Campbell v. State – Georgia, 1852 (11 Ga. 353)
| “We owe allegiance or obedience to both governments, to the extent of the constitutional powers conferred on each.” - Chief Justice John B. O’Neall, in McCready “[I]n the angry discussion which has grown out of this controversy, and which is still continued with increasing animosity, all the bad passions of the human heart have been excited to the highest pitch, and want nothing but an exciting cause to call them into action. … That [United States] government is, ,to all intents and purposes, as much the government of the people of South Carolina, as the State government. They have both received their sanction, and they have consented to be bound by them … to demand the allegiance of the citizen to one, only and exclusively, is to require of him only half of his duty.” - Justice David Johnson, in McCready “Only in the case of a final and irreconcilable conflict of authorities, [the South Carolinian’s] first duty will be due where nature and right feeling would direct it – to the immediate community in which he lives, and to which he is united by his most intimate associations. I conclude that under the fed constitution the allegiance of the citizen is due to the State.” – Justice William Harper, in McCready “We have but one people … which, divided into separate communities, constitute the respective State governments [and] comprise in the aggregate, the United States government.” - Chief Justice Joseph Lumpkin, in Campbell |