Jackson, though a slaveholder and cotton planter, responded with a powerful rejection of such sentiments, shocking the Southerners present by flatly toasting, “Our Federal Union. It must be preserved.”25 Later, in a formal rejection of nullification, Jackson stated that, “The Constitution of the United States . . . forms a government, not a league.”26 That last word would resonate with anyone familiar with the debates around the time of the writing of the Constitution that examined the leagues and confederacies of the ancient Greek republics.
