Anonymous, Dissolution of the Union (Philadelphia: 1832), 21-24.

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Philadelphia Feb. 22, 1832.

Should the nullifiers succeed in their views of separation, and the Union be in consequence dissolved, the following will be an appropriate epitaph.

(Anticipation.)

Disunited States, January 1, 1834.

EPITAPH.

HERE,

To the ineffable joy of Despots, and Friends of Despotism,

throughout the world,

and the universal distress and mortification

OF THE FRIENDS OF HUMAN LIBERTY AND HAPPINESS

LIE THE SHATTERED REMAINS

of the noblest fabric of Government, ever devised by man,

The Constitution of the United States.

The fatal result of its dissolution was chiefly produced,

by the unceasing efforts of some of the most highly gifted men in the U.S.

whose labors, for a series of years have had this sinister tendency,

by the most exaggerated statements of the distress

and sufferings of South Carolina

(unjustly ascribed to the tariffs of duties on imports)

which, whatever they were, arose from the blighting, blasting, withering

effects of SLAVERY;

together with the depreciation of the great Staple of the State,

THE INEVITABLE CONSEQUENCE OF OVER-PRODUCTION :

caused, in a great degree, by the depression of the Manufacturers of the

country, in 1816, 1817, 1818, 1819, 1820 & 1821, for want

of the protection of the government,

WITHHELD BY THE MISERABLE TARIFF OF 1816:

which overspread the land

with distress, and wretchedness, and bankruptcy;

and produced in three years more decay and ruin of national prosperity,

than a war of equal duration would have done.

It reduced the value of real estate in Pennsylvania in that space of time,

100,000,000 of dollars,

and in all of the grain-growing states probably $300,000,000.

It drove thousands and tens of thousands of Manufacturers to farming;

And thus, by the conversion of customers to rivals,

DEPRESSED AND RUINED A LARGE PORTION OF FARMERS,

who “were driven to seek, in the uncultivated forests of the west, that

shelter of which they were deprived in their native states.”

Numbers of those depressed farmers

devoted themselves to the culture of Cotton;

hence production so far outran consumption, that our export of uplands,

which in 1819 was only 80,508,270 lbs.

rose in 1823 to 161,586,583 lbs and in 1827 to 279,169,217.

Although the distresses of South Carolina were charged

To the Tariffs of 1824 and 1828,

It has been established, beyond the possibility of doubt,

That there was at least as much distress in 1823, as the seceders complained

Of, to justify their secession, in 1832.

By the dissolution of the Union are profusely sowed the seeds of Servile,

Social, and Peloponnesian wars,

which will arm father against son, son against father, and brother

against brother; and make this (now) peaceful land

flow with rivers of blood,

transforming these tranquil scenes into objects of horror to superior beings,

rendering us tools and puppets to foreign nations,

and will probably subject the nation finally to some Caesar or Cromwell.

To produce the calamitous result to which this STONE bears record,

other causes almost equally contributed:

that is to say, the withering apathy, unworthy parsimony,

dire and fatuitous impolicy

as respected their own interests, together

with an utter destitution of regard for the public welfare, of a large

portion of the MANUFACTURING CAPITALISTS,

on whom the powers of

language were for twelve years exhausted in vain,

to excite them to make the few sacrifices necessary to dipel the errors

under which the southern states laboured, although

their fortunes and those of their

children, and the peace, prosperity, and union of their country

were at stake.

A MORE GLORIOUS CAUSE

has rarely existed; and scarcely ever was a great cause so miserably

and pettifoggingly managed.

A more dire instance of infatuation, or one attended with more disastrous

consequences, is seldom to be met with in history.

The folly – perhaps the guilt would be a more proper term –

will carry its own punishment;

for losses will inevitably arise to the parties to an extent one hundred fold

beyond what would have operated as an infallible preventive.

Men worth hundreds of thousands of dollars,

who would not sacrifice

30, 20, 10, or even five dollars a year, to pay for paper

and printing to enlighten the public mind, to avert the calamities of their

country, and secure their own prosperity, will lose thousands;

and many of the body probably be swallowed up

in bankruptcy.

Here, then, at length, is the problem solved,

WHETHER MAN BE FIT FOR SELF GOVERNMENT;

And, alas!

DETERMINED IN THE NEGATIVE.

For no country ever had,

and it is utterly improbable any country ever will have, equal advantages

with those we enjoyed.

We started in our career a comparatively pure people,

with free and liberal forms of government;

have been blessed with boundless prosperity;

Our citizens were more enlightened than those of the nations

of the old world.

We have had before our eyes most powerful admonitions:

the tremendous examples of anarchy,

of rapine, lust, and slaughter, in France, where hundreds of thousands

have been immolated to satanic revenge-infuriate hatred –

devouring cupidity – and wild ambition;

and where the nation,

in the vain search after liberty, exhausted

and wearied out by the rapine, and cruelty, and ambition

of a succession of monsters, finally sunk into torpid submission to the

uncontrolled domination of a single DESPOT;

and after a succession of sanguinary wars, in which

human blood flowed like water, recalled their ancient, expelled

dynasty.

Our WESTERN HEMISPHERE held out equal warnings.

Here, the various REPUBLICS,

as they are ludicrously styled, after a series of most

sanguinary struggles, marked with all the horrors and abominations

of which man in his most depraved state is capable, have

been the prey of a succession of

military usurpers,

whose career has been almost uniformly and

ingloriously closed, by the dagger, by poison, or by the musket.

To have shut our eyes and our ears

against such warnings, required a stupendous degree

of stupid blindness,

rarely equalled in the dark annals of the miserable animal, MAN.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA MUNDI.¹