Floyd's biographer commented that despite advocating moderation in his annual message in December 1832, he was "secretly counting the costs and horrors of war" and that Floyd characterized Jackson's Proclamation in response to South Carolina's Nullification Ordinance as an "outrage upon our institutions" and a "satire upon the revolution" making war inevitable. A letter to Tazewell at this time called Jackson the "tyrant usurper" and feared a civil war would be the result. When Floyd learned that Clay was willing to compromise on the tariff and that South Carolina would submit her issues to a "convention of the states", he supported both. The crisis averted, he toned down his opposition to Jackson, but was unwilling to return to the Democratic Party while Van Buren was the leader. As a result, he turned to Clay, and attempted to bring him and John C. Calhoun together in a new political party to support these views. "... the elimination of both Clay and Calhoun from the list of eligibles for the presidency had become temporarily imperative. Accordingly Floyd set himself to the task of working out a fighting alliance between all the factions opposed to the administration. To this end he encouraged discord within the Democratic party, while scrupulously keeping the conflicting ambitions of his own friends in the background." This was the beginnings of the Whig Party.