They had been warned by President Andrew Jackson: “Tell the Nullifiers from me that they can talk and write resolutions to their hearts’ content. But if one drop of blood be shed there in defiance of the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man of them I can get my hands on to the first tree I can find.” All in vain. On November 24, 1832, a special convention of the South Carolina legislature passed an Ordinance of Nullification prohibiting the collection in the state of tariff duties by the federal government after February 1, 1833. Aware of the probable consequences, the legislature authorized the raising of an army and appropriated money to equip it.
The Nullifiers relied heavily, in their attempts at justification, on a pamphlet published four years earlier by Vice-President John Calhoun: “South Carolina Exposition and Protest.” Calhoun argued that since the states created the Union, it followed that they were the final arbiters of the meaning of the Constitution that was its framework. If a state convention, representing the sovereignty of the people, decided that an act of Congress violated the Constitution, it could interpose its authority and “nullify” the law within its boundaries.
Jackson grasped the essential truth that if a state could nullify a law of Congress, the Union could not exist. He prepared to meet force with force but still he hoped to avoid bloodshed. He addressed a “Proclamation to the People of South Carolina”: “The laws of the United States must be executed. I have no discretionary power on the subject. Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent their execution deceived you. ” He also sent a message to Congress asking for a modification of the tariff, and Calhoun, now a senator and perhaps frightened of what he had wrought, helped push through a compromise measure. South Carolina professed itself satisfied with this and repealed the Ordinance of Nullification. At the brink of Civil War both parties drew back, and the Union was preserved in peace—for a while.
November 14—Charles Carroll, reputed to be the richest man in America and the last surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, died at ninety-five in Baltimore.
November 14—The world’s first streetcar, horse-drawn on tracks, appeared in New York City.
1882 One Hundred Years Ago
Of the three great pronouncements uttered by “malefactors of great wealth” in the latter half of the nineteenth century, William H. Vanderbilt’s “The public be damned” is surely the most famous. It lacks the insouciance of Boss Tweed’s “Well, what are you going to do about it?” and the moral grandeur of Jim Fisk’s “Nothing is lost save honor”—but it encapsulated, neatly, what was generally feared to be the attitude of the great capitalists of the day.
Vanderbilt was traveling west in three private railroad cars to inspect his lines, which crossed the country. As the train halted at Michigan City, two newspapermen came aboard; John Sherman of the Chicago Tribune and Clarence Dresser, a free-lancer. Vanderbilt agreed to talk to them. They asked him, among other things, about the new train he had instituted to cut the New York-Chicago run to twenty-four hours. “Does it pay?”
“No, not a bit of it,” came the answer. “We only run the limited because forced to by the action of the Pennsylvania Railroad.”
“But don’t you run it for the public benefit?” asked Dresser.
“The public be damned. What does the public care for the railroads except to get as much out of them for as little consideration as possible!”
His words were quoted all over the United States within a few days. “I never said it,” growled Vanderbilt to New York reporters at the end of his trip: “It’s a malign misrepresentation.” But he had indeed said it, in front of witnesses who heard him very clearly.
November 6—English actress Lily Langtry made her American debut in As You Like It at the Fifth Avenue Theater in New York. Oscar Wilde infuriated all by saying he would rather have discovered Miss Langtry than America.
1932 Fifty Years Ago
There were fifty-one thousand witnesses, including Gov. Franklin Roosevelt, and still the matter is unsettled. Did George Herman Ruth, in the third game of the World Series at Comiskey Park, actually point to the centerfield bleachers before hitting a home run to that very spot? Years later, in his autobiography (“as told to” Bob Considine), Ruth said yes, and the moment is enshrined in the movie version of his life. But contemporary accounts agree only that there was a good deal of gesticulation at the plate: Ruth was keeping track of the count and mocking the Chicago players who were riding him from the bench; a “pantomime act” John Drebinger called it in the New York Times. Charlie Root was pitching for Chicago, Gabby Hartnett catching—the two men in the best position to know. Their testimony is:
Root: Ruth did not point at the fence before he swung. If he had made a gesture like that, well, anybody who knows me knows that Ruth would have ended up on his ass.
Hartnett: Babe waved his hand across the plate toward our bench on the third-base side. One finger was up. At the same time he said softly, “It only takes one to hit it.” If he had pointed out to the bleachers, I’d be the first to say so.
Ruth’s latest biographer, Robert Creamer, gives the last word on the matter to Ford Frick, “who tried to pin Ruth down on the subject when the two were talking about the Series sometime later.
”‘Did you really point to the bleachers?’ Frick asked.
”Ruth, always honest, shrugged. ‘It’s in the papers, isn’t it?’
”‘Yeah,’ Frick said, ‘it’s in the papers. But did you really point to the stands?’
”‘Why don’t you read the papers? It’s all right there in the papers!’
“Which, Frick said, means he never said he did and he never said he didn’t.”
October 2—Norman Vincent Peale was installed at the Marble Collegiate Church. He’s still there.
October 15—The San Francisco Opera House opened. The opera was Tosca.
November 8—FDR was elected as President of the United States.
