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Title: The Middle Period 1817-1858

Author: John William Burgess

Release Date: March 12, 2011 [EBook #35558]

Language: English

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MIDDLE PERIOD 1817-1858 ***

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THE AMERICAN HISTORY SERIES

THE MIDDLE PERIOD

1817-1858

BY

JOHN W. BURGESS, PH.D., LL.D.

PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE AND CONSTITUTIONAL LAW,
AND DEAN OF THE FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE,
IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY IN THE CITY OF NEW YORK

WITH MAPS

NEW YORK

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

1910

COPYRIGHT, 1897, BY

CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

To the memory

of

my former teacher, colleague, and friend,

JULIUS HAWLEY SEELYE,

philosopher, theologian, statesman, and educator,

this volume is reverently

and affectionately

inscribed

PREFACE

There is no more serious and delicate task in literature and morals than that of writing the history of the United States from 1816 to 1860. The periods which precede this may be treated without fear of arousing passion, prejudice, and resentment, and with little danger of being misunderstood. Even the immaculateness of Washington may be attacked without exciting anything worse than a sort of uncomfortable admiration for the reckless courage of the assailant. But when we pass the year 1820, and especially when we approach the year 1860, we find ourselves in a different world. We find ourselves in the midst of the ideas, the motives, and the occurrences which, and of the men who, have, in large degree, produced the animosities, the friendships, and the relations between parties and sections which prevail to-day.

Serious and delicate as the task is, however, the time has arrived when it should be undertaken in a thoroughly impartial spirit. The continued misunderstanding between the North and the South is an ever present menace to the welfare of both sections and of the entire nation. It makes it almost impossible to decide any question of our politics upon its merits. It offers an almost insuperable obstacle to the development of a national opinion upon the fundamental principles of our polity. If we would clear up this confusion in the common consciousness, we must do something to dispel this misunderstanding; and I know of no means of accomplishing this, save the rewriting of our history from 1816 to 1860, with an open mind and a willing spirit to see and to represent truth and error, and right and wrong, without regard to the men or the sections in whom or where they may appear.

I am by no means certain that I am able to do this. I am old enough to have been a witness of the great struggle of 1861-65, and to have participated, in a small way, in it. My early years were embittered by the political hatreds which then prevailed. I learned before my majority to regard secession as an abomination, and its chief cause, slavery, as a great evil; and I cannot say that these feelings have been much modified, if any at all, by longer experiences and maturer thought. I have, therefore, undertaken this work with many misgivings.

Keenly conscious of my own prejudices, I have exerted my imagination to the utmost to create a picture in my own mind of the environment of those who held the opposite opinion upon these fundamental subjects, and to appreciate the processes of their reasoning under the influences of their own particular situation. And I have with sedulous care avoided all the histories written immediately after the close of the great contest of arms, and all rehashes of them of later date. In fact I have made it an invariable rule to use no secondary material; that is, no material in which original matter is mingled with somebody's interpretation of its meaning. If, therefore, the facts in my narration are twisted by prejudices and preconceptions, I think I can assure my readers that they have suffered only one twist. I have also endeavored to approach my subject in a reverent spirit, and to deal with the characters who made our history, in this almost tragic period, as serious and sincere men having a most perplexing and momentous problem to solve, a problem not of their own making, but a fatal inheritance from their predecessors.

I have been especially repelled by the flippant superficiality of the foreign critics of this period of our history, and their evident delight in representing the professions and teachings of the "Free Republic" as canting hypocrisy. It has seemed to me a great misfortune that the present generation and future generations should be taught to regard so lightly the earnest efforts of wise, true, and honorable men to rescue the country from the great catastrophe which, for so long, impended over it. The passionate onesidedness of our own writers is hardly more harmful, and is certainly less repulsive.

I recently heard a distinguished professor of history and politics say that he thought the history of the United States, in this period, could be truthfully written only by a Scotch-Irishman. I suppose he meant that the Scotch element in this ideal historian would take the Northern point of view, and the Irish element the Southern; but I could not see how this would produce anything more than another pair of narratives from the old contradictory points of view; and he did not explain how it would.

My opinion is, on the contrary, that this history must be written by an American and a Northerner, and from the Northern point of view—because an American best understands Americans, after all; because the victorious party can be and will be more liberal, generous, and sympathetic than the vanquished; and because the Northern view is, in the main, the correct view. It will not improve matters to concede that the South had right and the North might, or, even, that both were equally right and equally wrong. Such a doctrine can only work injury to both, and more injury to the South than to the North. Chewing the bitter cud of fancied wrong produces both spiritual misery and material adversity, and tempts to foolish and reckless action for righting the imagined injustice. Moreover, any such doctrine is false, and acquiescence in it, however kindly meant, is weak, and can have no other effect than the perpetuation of error and misunderstanding. The time has come when the men of the South should acknowledge that they were in error in their attempt to destroy the Union, and it is unmanly in them not to do so. When they appealed the great question from the decision at the ballot-box to the "trial by battle," their leaders declared, over and over again, in calling their followers to arms, that the "God of battles" would surely give the victory to the right. In the great movements of the world's history this is certainly a sound philosophy, and they should have held to it after their defeat. Their recourse to the crude notion that they had succumbed only to might was thus not only a bitter, false, and dangerous consolation, but it was a stultification of themselves when at their best as men and heroes.

While, therefore, great care has been taken, in the following pages, to attribute to the Southern leaders and the Southern people sincerity of purpose in their views and their acts, while their ideas and their reasoning have been, I think, duly appreciated, and patiently explained, while the right has been willingly acknowledged to them and honor accorded them whenever and wherever they have had the right and have merited honor, and while unbounded sympathy for personal suffering and misfortune has been expressed, still not one scintilla of justification for secession and rebellion must be expected. The South must acknowledge its error as well as its defeat in regard to these things, and that, too, not with lip service, but from the brain and the heart and the manly will, before any real concord in thought and feeling, any real national brotherhood, can be established. This is not too much to demand, simply because it is right, and nothing can be settled, as Mr. Lincoln said, until it is settled right. Any interpretation of this period of American history which does not demonstrate to the South its error will be worthless, simply because it will not be true; and unless we are men enough to hear and accept and stand upon the truth, it is useless to endeavor to find a bond of real union between us. In a word, the conviction of the South of its error in secession and rebellion is absolutely indispensable to the establishment of national cordiality; and the history of this period which fails to do this will fail in accomplishing one of the highest works of history, the reconciliation of men to the plans of Providence for their perfection.

I have not, in the following pages, undertaken to treat all of the events of our experience from 1816 to 1860. The space allowed me would not admit of that. And even if it had, I still would have selected only those events which, in my opinion, are significant of our progress in civilization, and, as I am writing a political history, only those which are significant of our progress in political civilization. The truthful record, connection, and interpretation of such events is what I call history in the highest sense, as distinguished from chronology, narrative, and romance. Both necessity and philosophy have confined me to these.

I cannot close these prefatory sentences without a word of grateful acknowledgment to my friend and colleague, Dr. Harry A. Cushing, for the important services which he has rendered me in the preparation of this work.

JOHN W. BURGESS.    

    323 WEST FIFTY-SEVENTH STREET, NEW YORK CITY.
        JANUARY 22, 1897.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I.
THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY

CHAPTER II.
THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA

CHAPTER III.
SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820

CHAPTER IV.
THE CREATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MISSOURI

CHAPTER V.
THE BEGINNING OF THE PARTICULARISTIC REACTION

CHAPTER VI.
THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824

CHAPTER VII.
THE DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

CHAPTER VIII.
DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROTECTION

CHAPTER IX.
THE UNITED STATES BANK AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1832

CHAPTER X.
NULLIFICATION

CHAPTER XI.
ABOLITION

CHAPTER XII.
THE BANK, THE SUB-TREASURY, AND PARTY DEVELOPMENT BETWEEN 1832 AND 1842

CHAPTER XIII.
TEXAS

CHAPTER XIV.
OREGON

CHAPTER XV.
THE "RE-ANNEXATION OF TEXAS AND THE RE-OCCUPATION OF OREGON"

CHAPTER XVI.
THE WAR WITH MEXICO

CHAPTER XVII.
THE ORGANIZATION OF OREGON TERRITORY AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850

CHAPTER XVIII.
THE EXECUTION OF THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND THE ELECTION OF 1852

CHAPTER XIX.
THE REPEAL OF THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE

CHAPTER XX.
THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS

CHAPTER XXI.
THE DRED SCOTT CASE

CHAPTER XXII.
THE STRUGGLE FOR KANSAS CONCLUDED

APPENDIX I.
THE ELECTORAL VOTE IN DETAIL, 1820-1856

APPENDIX II.
THE CABINETS OF MONROE, ADAMS, JACKSON, VAN BUREN, HARRISON, TYLER, POLK, TAYLOR, FILLMORE, PIERCE, AND BUCHANAN—1816-1858

CHRONOLOGY

BIBLIOGRAPHY

INDEX

LIST OF MAPS.

FLORIDA AT THE TIME OF ACQUISITION

TEXAS AT THE TIME OF ANNEXATION

OREGON AS DETERMINED BY THE TREATY OF 1846

CALIFORNIA AND NEW MEXICO IN 1850

NEBRASKA AND KANSAS, 1854-1861

THE MIDDLE PERIOD

CHAPTER I.

THE NATIONALIZATION OF THE OLD REPUBLICAN PARTY

General Character of the Acts of the Fourteenth Congress—Madison's Message of December 5th, 1815—Change in the Principles of the Republican Party—The United States Bank Act of 1816—Report of the Bank Bill by Mr. Calhoun—Mr. Calhoun's Argument in Favor of the Bill—Webster's Objections to the Bank Bill—Mr. Clay's Support of the Bank Bill—Passage of the Bank Bill by the House of Representatives—The Passage of the Bank Bill by the Senate—The United States Bank of 1816 a Southern Measure—The Tariff Bill Framed by the Committee on Ways and Means—The Tariff Bill Reported—The Character of the Tariff Bill—Mr. Calhoun's Speech upon the Tariff Bill—The Passage of the Tariff Bill—The Army and Navy Bills—The Bill for National Improvements—Mr. Calhoun's Advocacy of this Bill—The Opposition to the Internal Improvements Bill—Passage of the Bill by Congress—Veto of the Bill by the President—The Failure of Congress to Override the Veto.

It is no part of my task to relate the events of the War of 1812-15. That has already been sufficiently done in the preceding volume of this series. I take up the threads of the narrative at the beginning of the year 1816, and my problem in this chapter will be to expound the acts and policies of the Fourteenth Congress in the light of the experiences of that War.

General
character of
the acts of the
Fourteenth
Congress.

Those acts and policies were shaped and adopted under the influence of those experiences, and this influence was so predominant, at the moment, in the minds of the leading men in the Government and throughout the country as to exclude, or at least to overbalance, all other influences. This is especially manifest in the attitude of the statesmen of the slave-holding Commonwealths, and most especially in the attitude of their great leader, Mr. Calhoun, who was the chief champion of some of the most national measures voted by that Congress. A clear appreciation of his views and his acts at that period of his career will enable us far better than anything else to understand the terrible seriousness of the slavery question, which subsequently drove him into lines of thought and action so widely divergent from those upon which he set out in early life.

Madison's
message of
December
5th, 1815.

It was the President himself, however, one of the chief founders of the "States' rights" party, Mr. Madison, who set the direction toward centralization in the Congressional legislation of 1815-17. In his annual message of December 5th, 1815, he recommended the increase and better organization of the army and the navy, the enlargement of the existing Military Academy and the founding of such academies in the different sections of the country, the creation of a national currency, the protection of manufactures, the construction of roads and canals, and the establishment of a national university.

This is a very different political creed from that promulgated by President Jefferson when the Republican party first gained possession of the Government at Washington. Then, decrease in all the elements of power in the hands of the central Government, and careful maintenance of all the rights and powers of the "States," were recommended and urged upon the attention of the national lawgivers.

Change in the
principles of
the Republican
party.

From a "States'-sovereignty" party in 1801, the Republican party had manifestly become a strong national party in 1816; that is, if we are to take the two Presidential messages, to which we have referred, as containing the political principles of that party at these two periods of its existence.

As the Congress of 1801 showed itself, in its legislation, to be in substantial accord with President Jefferson's views and sentiments, so did the Congress of 1815 manifest, in its legislation, the same general harmony with the views and sentiments of President Madison. In order that the latter part of this statement may be set down as an established fact of history, we will review with some particularity the two cardinal acts of this Congress—the United States Bank Act and the Tariff Act.

The United
States Bank
Act of 1816.

So soon as the reading of President Madison's message before the House of Representatives was completed, that body resolved to refer that part of the message which related to the establishment of an uniform national currency to a select committee. The committee chosen was composed of Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Macon, Mr. Pleasants, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hopkinson, and Mr. Pickering. The first five of these gentlemen were from Commonwealths south of the Pennsylvania line, and only two, therefore, from what began now to be called the "non-slave-holding States." In other words, it was a Southern committee, and the great South Carolinian was its chairman. It is, therefore, just to regard the bill which this committee brought in, and the arguments with which they supported it, as containing the views and the sentiments of the leading Southern Republicans in the House.

Report of the
Bank Bill by
Mr. Calhoun.

This committee came speedily to the conclusion that the nationalization of the monetary system was the most pressing need of the country, and within a month from the date of the appointment of its members the chairman of the committee reported a bill for the creation of an United States Bank, a mammoth national banking corporation, which should have a capital of thirty-five millions of dollars; in which the central Government should own one-fifth of the stock and be represented by one-fifth of the directors; the president of which should always be selected from among the Government's directors; the demand notes and bills of which should be received in all payments to the United States; and the chartered privileges of which should be made a monopoly for twenty years.

Mr. Calhoun's
argument in
favor of the Bill.

In his great argument in support of the bill, delivered on February 26th, Mr. Calhoun dismissed at the outset any consideration of the constitutionality of the bill. That is, he simply assumed that Congress had the power to pass the bill, and declared that the public mind was entirely made up and settled upon that point.

Only five years before this, even the national-minded Clay had pronounced the dictum that Congress had no power to grant a national bank charter, and the fact that Congress then declined to grant such a charter is good evidence that the majority of the people of the country held the same view. There can be little question that the Republican party, down to 1812, regarded the establishment of an United States bank by Congress as an usurpation of power not granted by the Constitution.

Five years constitute a short period of time for the accomplishment of so important a change in the public opinion. Five years of ordinary experience would not have produced it. It was, without doubt, the strain brought upon the finances of the country by the necessities of the War that had developed a powerful national opinion upon the subject of the financial system of the country.

Mr. Calhoun also declined to discuss the question whether banks were favorable or unfavorable to "public liberty and prosperity." He assumed, here again, that public experience had settled that question, and said that such an inquiry was now purely metaphysical. This statement is certainly prime evidence that the practical experiences, made in conducting the Government under the pressure of war, had about knocked the metaphysics of the year 1800 out of the Republican party, and had led the party on to a much more positive stage of political opinion.

Mr. Calhoun furthermore dismissed the question whether a "national bank would be favorable to the administration of the finances of the Government," since there was not enough doubt, he said, in the public mind upon that point to warrant a discussion of it.

He declared, finally, that the only questions which demanded consideration were those relative to the existing disorders of the currency, and the efficiency of a national bank in working their cure. Upon these two points he was distinct, decided, and thoroughly national. He said that the Constitution had without doubt placed the monetary system of the country entirely within the control of Congress; that the "States" had usurped the power of making money by chartering banks of issue in the face of the constitutional provision forbidding the "States" to emit bills of credit; that the two hundred millions of dollars of irredeemable bank-notes, paper, and credits, issued by these banks, were the cause of the financial disorders of the country; and that the remedy for this condition of things was, in his opinion, to be found in a great specie-paying national bank, sustained by the power of the general Government in the work of bringing such a pressure upon these "State" banks as would force them either to pay specie or go into liquidation. This was clear, generous, and patriotic. No one made a fairer statement of the case, and no one advocated a more national remedy in its treatment.

Webster's
objections to
the Bank Bill.

On the other hand, it was Webster who, at this time, appeared narrow and particularistic. He objected to the large amount of the capital, and to the stock feature of the proposed bank, and expressed alarm at the proposition to place it under such strong governmental control. He thought that the bills and paper of the "State" banks would be good enough, if the general Government would only force them to redeem their currency in specie by refusing to accept for Government dues the bills of banks which did not pay specie on demand.

Whatever may be thought of Webster's attitude from the point of view of political economy, it was certainly, from the point of view of political science, the attitude of a "States'-rights" man rather than that of a nationalist. Webster did not, however, call the constitutionality of the bill in question. That was conceded upon all sides.

The friends of the measure felt more anxiety in regard to Mr. Clay. He had, only five years before, as we have seen, pronounced a similar bill unconstitutional in his opinion, and he was now the Speaker of the House, with all the power over the procedure in the House which that position involved. It was generally felt that the fate of the measure would be largely determined by his attitude toward it.

Mr. Clay's
support of
the Bank Bill.

Mr. Clay did not leave the House long in doubt concerning his views. He quickly revealed and avowed that noted change of opinion upon this subject, which has been commonly accounted one of his greatest inconsistencies, but which may be very properly considered as simply manifesting that growth in patriotism and national spirit experienced by almost all the leading men of the country, outside of New England, in consequence of the vicissitudes of the period of war under which the nation suffered between the dates of Mr. Clay's two utterances. He frankly confessed that he had changed his opinion, and explained the change by saying that the power of Congress in respect to the matter was contained in the clause of the Constitution which conferred upon Congress the authority to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying the powers of the Government into operation; that, in the interpretation of the words "necessary and proper," reference must always be had to existing circumstances; that, when conditions change, the interpretation must be so modified as to meet and satisfy such change; and that the conditions obtaining in the country in 1816 were so changed from those obtaining in 1811 as to require the enlarged interpretation of the powers of Congress under this clause upon the subject of the monetary system of the country.

Passage of the
Bank Bill by
the House of
Representatives.

The eloquence and the influence of Mr. Clay counted heavily in favor of the measure, and it was passed by a substantial majority of votes. In fact, the privileges of the proposed Bank had been increased by amendment during the progress of the bill through the House. The Bank and its branches were made the depositories of the funds of the Government. This great advantage was, at least, a substantial offset to the other modifications of the original bill, whereby the clauses requiring that the president of the Bank should always be chosen from among the Government directors, and reserving to Congress the power to permit a temporary suspension of specie payment by the Bank, were stricken out.

The passage
of the Bank
Bill through
the Senate.

During the passage of the bill through the Senate only a single Senator expressed any doubts of its constitutionality, Mr. Wells, of Delaware. Mr. Wells did not deny the power of Congress to charter a national bank, but simply contended that the particular Bank proposed in the bill exceeded what was "necessary and proper" for carrying into effect the powers of Congress, and was therefore unconstitutional. On the other hand, Senators Barbour, of Virginia, Taylor, of South Carolina, and Bibb, of Georgia, supported the measure, both in principle and in details, and carried it with a larger relative majority through the Senate than it had received in the House.

The United States
Bank of 1816 a
Southern measure.

The United States Bank of 1816 was thus a Southern measure, and Calhoun was its chief author. It was in principle a great national measure, and its creation by Congress is strong evidence of the great growth in national opinion and sentiment throughout the country, away from the national indifference of the Jeffersonian metapolitics of 1800.

The Tariff of 1816.

A review of the Tariff Act of 1816 will bring us to the same conclusions concerning the great nationalizing influence of the War.

The rate of duty upon the principal articles of imported goods was, before the War, twelve and one-half per centum ad valorem. From a rate of five per centum upon these articles, imposed by the first Customs Act, that of July, 1789, the duty had been increased by about a dozen acts, passed by both Federal and Republican Congresses, until, in 1812, it had reached the above-mentioned per centum. Twelve and one-half per centum was, as a fact, nothing more than a revenue duty, and was intended for nothing more by the party in power at that date.

At the outbreak of the War double duties were imposed by the Act of July 1st, 1812, as a war measure, that is, as a measure for obtaining additional revenue for the prosecution of the War. It was not intended as a measure for the protection of manufacturers. This Act was to expire in one year, at the farthest, after the conclusion of peace with England.

The ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent were exchanged on February 17th, 1815. At the meeting of Congress, in December, 1815, the war duties were, therefore, still in force, but the Act establishing them would expire by its own limitation in less than three months. This Congress was obliged, therefore, to deal with the tariff anew.

The Bill framed by
the Committee on
Ways and Means.

The recommendations of the President in regard to the matter were referred to the committee of the House on Ways and Means, the regular revenue committee. At that moment this committee was composed of seven members, four from Commonwealths south of Maryland, and three from those north of Maryland. Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, was its chairman. It is fair, therefore, to call it a Southern committee, and to regard the bill which it produced as a Southern measure.

The Tariff
Bill reported.

The committee first asked for a continuation of the existing duties until the thirtieth day of the following June, in order to give proper time to mature the bill, which request was voted by both houses of Congress; and on March 20th, Mr. Lowndes announced that he was prepared to report the draft of the new Act. The measure contained virtually the continuation of the war tariff as the permanent rule and policy in time of peace. It was now manifestly a protective tariff, and it was intended to be such. Mr. Ingham of the committee said, at the beginning of the debate upon it, that "its great primary object was to make such a modification of duties upon the various articles of importation as would give the necessary and proper protection and support to the agriculture, manufactures, and commerce of the country." He went so far as to say that revenue considerations ought not to have any influence in the decision of the House upon the committee's propositions.

The character of
the Tariff Bill.

It is entirely evident, however, that the committee did not regard the bill as proposing advantages for the manufacturers only, or as having for its principal aim the increase of the wages of the employees in the manufacturing establishments, but considered it a great national measure, a measure necessary to the industrial independence of the country. It is also evident that the bill was not thought by anybody to rest upon a perfect and permanent principle. Mr. Clay himself said of it, "that the object of protecting manufacturers was, that we might eventually get articles of necessity made as cheap at home as they could be imported, and thereby to produce an independence of foreign countries;" that "in three years we could judge of the ability of our establishments to furnish those articles as cheap as they were obtained from abroad, and could then legislate with the lights of experience;" and that "he believed that three years would be sufficient to place our manufacturers on this desirable footing."

Mr. Calhoun's
speech upon
the Tariff Bill.

It was Calhoun again, however, who surpassed them all in broadness of view and in patriotic devotion to the interests of the nation. The immediate occasion of his speech was a motion made by John Randolph, which seemed to Mr. Calhoun to attack the principle of the bill. He said, that so long as the debate had been confined to questions of detail he had refrained from joining in it; but now that the general policy of the measure had been attacked he felt obliged to come forward in support of that policy, which he could do with all the more grace and sincerity since his own private interests were primarily subserved by the advancement of agriculture, as were those of his section. He began his argument with the assertions that commerce and agriculture were the chief sources of the wealth of the country at the moment, almost the only sources, and that manufactures must be added to these in order to accomplish industrial independence. In proof of this latter proposition he referred to the well known effect of war between a maritime power and the United States upon the prosperity of the latter. He simply pointed to the historic facts that such a war destroyed the commerce of the country with foreign powers, and that the destruction of commerce caused the products of agriculture, usually exported to pay for manufactured goods imported from foreign countries, to perish in the hands of the producers. Domestic manufactures, he contended, would not only relieve us from dependence upon foreign countries for manufactured goods, but would create home markets for agricultural products. Encouragement to manufactures was, therefore, a sound national, a truly American, policy. As Mr. Calhoun proceeded in his speech, his strong patriotism became more manifest. He affirmed that the policy of protection to manufactures was calculated to bind more closely together the different parts of our widely extended country, since it would increase the mutual dependence of these different sections on each other in proportion as it decreased their dependence on foreign markets. And he declared that he considered the production of this result to be the most fundamental of all our policies, for the reason that the absence of such mutual dependence would tend toward disunion, and disunion comprehended almost the sum and substance of our political dangers, against which, therefore, we ought to be perpetually guarded.

The passage of
the Tariff Bill.

Calhoun was in his thirty-fifth year when he advanced these views. The sentiments which they revealed cannot, therefore, be ascribed to the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience. They rested upon the settled convictions of a mature man. They stand in need of no comment. They speak for themselves. We shall search the reports of the debate in vain for anything wiser, nobler, or more patriotic. In comparison with them the views pronounced by the New Englanders upon the subject appear narrow and selfish. They were willing to sacrifice the industrial independence of the nation to their own interests in the carrying trade upon the sea. Even the name of Webster is not to be found among those who voted for the final passage of the bill. The majority in its favor was, however, nearly two to one. In the Senate, the vote was nearly four to one for it. Though Southern in its immediate origin, it certainly had the support of the nation, and was regarded as a great measure of national independence. The opposition made to it by Randolph and Telfair, and by the remnant of the New England Federalists, was regarded as unnational and unpatriotic. It contributed to the complete disappearance of the Federal party from the arena of national politics.

The Army and
Navy Bills.

This Congress gave, however, an even surer test of the growth of the national spirit among the people than either the Bank Act or the Tariff Act. It was the series of acts for the increase of the Army and the Navy, and for their thorough reorganization. The Republican doctrine of 1800 was, that there was no need of a national army; that the militias of the Commonwealths were a sufficient military force; and that a standing army was dangerous to liberty. By the Act of March 16th, 1802, Congress fixed the peace establishment at two regiments of infantry, and one regiment of artillerists, not more than thirty-five hundred men. No increase of this force had been permitted between 1802 and 1812.

During the War of 1812-15, the Commonwealths of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut taught the nation how much, or rather how little, reliance was to be placed upon the militias of the Commonwealths in the defence of the country against foreign attack. In spite of the plain provision of the Constitution, and the Act of Congress in accordance therewith, empowering the President to call the militias of the Commonwealths into the service of the United States, the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut disputed the President's authority in this respect and refused compliance with his orders. Well might the President complain that, even upon this most essential point, the military organization, the United States was not a nation. With such an experience as this, Congress and the people were thoroughly converted from the particularistic doctrinism of 1800, and now manifested their strong national spirit in the willingness to place a large standing military force in the hands of the central Government in times of peace.

By the Act of March 3rd, 1816, Congress fixed the peace footing of the Army at ten thousand men, excluding the corps of engineers; and by the Act of April 24th, of the same year, it reorganized, or rather re-created, the general staff, upon the principle that the staff should be as complete in time of peace as in time of war.

The Navy received similar attention and favor. By the Act of April 29th, 1816, Congress appropriated eight millions of dollars for the construction of nine seventy-four-gun ships, twelve forty-four-gun ships, and three steam batteries.

Evidently the fear that the President would, by virtue of his power as commander-in-chief of a large standing army and navy, declare himself emperor, and make the military and naval officers his dukes and counts, had vanished in the smoke of the burned Capitol, and, in place of this silly terror of crowns and diadems, a thoroughgoing confidence in the national Government had established itself in the brain and heart of the people and of their leaders.

These great national measures occupied the attention of Congress to such a degree, during the session of 1815-16, as to delay the consideration of the question of a system of national internal improvements to the second session, that of 1816-17.

The Bill for
National
Improvements.

At the opening of this session, Mr. Calhoun, again, came forward with a motion for the appointment of a committee, which should consider the question of setting aside the bonus to be paid by the United States Bank to the Government for its charter, and the net annual proceeds received by the Government upon its shares in the Bank, as a permanent fund for internal improvements. The motion was quickly carried, and the committee, consisting of two members from the North and two from the South, with Mr. Calhoun for chairman, was appointed. This was December 16th, 1816. In a week from this date the committee presented a bill providing for the setting apart of the funds above indicated for the construction of roads and canals.

Mr. Calhoun's
advocacy of
this Bill.

Mr. Calhoun opened the debate upon the bill, and his speech abounded with the same national ideas and patriotic sentiments which characterized his arguments in support of the Bank and Tariff measures. After asserting that the moment was most opportune for the consideration of the question, on account of the fact that all party and sectional feelings had given way to "a liberal and an enlightened regard for the general concerns of the nation," Mr. Calhoun again pronounced his warning concerning the greatest danger to which the country was exposed, namely, disunion, and declared it to be the highest duty of American statesmen so to form the policies of the Government as to counteract all tendencies toward sectionalism and disunion. He contended that from this point of view nothing could be more necessary or more advantageous than a large national system of internal improvements, establishing the great lines of commerce and intercourse for binding together all the parts of the country in interests, ideas, and sentiments.

No part of his argument, however, is so instructive to the student of American constitutional history as the observations upon the question of the constitutionality of the bill. He said that he was no advocate of refined reasoning upon the Constitution; that "the instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on; that it ought to be construed with plain good sense; and that when so construed nothing could be more express than the Constitution upon this very point." The clause to which he referred was that which confers upon Congress the power "to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." Mr. Calhoun claimed that these words were to be interpreted as vesting in Congress the power to appropriate money for the common defence and general welfare of the country at its own discretion, both as to object and amount. He insisted that a generous interpretation of the power to raise and appropriate money was absolutely required, in order to avoid the necessity of placing a forced construction upon other powers. It was all in his best strain, and showed Mr. Calhoun still as the chief advocate of national union and national development. No other person seemed to equal him in breadth of view and purity of patriotism.

The opposition
to the Internal
Improvements Bill.

The measure met, however, with more opposition than the Bank Bill or the Tariff Bill had experienced. Two years of peace had cooled the ardor of the national spirit somewhat, and the people were dropping back into the narrow spheres of ordinary life and business routine.

Moreover, the great hue and cry raised by the demagogues and the press over the bill, passed at the previous session, changing the pay of the members of Congress from a per diem of six dollars during attendance to an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, had made the members timid about the appropriation of money, and disinclined to obligate the Treasury to anything beyond absolutely necessary expenses.

Passage of the
Bill by Congress.

Nevertheless, the great power and earnestness with which Mr. Calhoun addressed himself to the task of carrying the bill through its different stages were crowned with success. It finally passed both Houses, in a slightly modified form, during the last week of the Fourteenth Congress and of President Madison's second term.

Veto of the
Bill by the
President.

To the great surprise of the friends of the measure, the President returned the bill to Congress on March 3rd, with his objections. These were, summed up in a single sentence, that there was no warrant in the Constitution for the exercise of the power by Congress to pass such a bill. The President held that Congress could appropriate money only to such objects as were placed by the Constitution under the jurisdiction of the general Government. He, therefore, repudiated Calhoun's latitudinarian view that Congress was referred to its own discretion merely in the appropriation of money for the advancement of the general welfare. He acknowledged the desirability of attaining the object contemplated by the bill, and indicated that an amendment to the Constitution, expressly conferring upon Congress the power in question, was the proper way to deal with the subject. He had, as we have seen, recommended the consideration of the question of internal improvements in both of his annual messages to the Fourteenth Congress, and it was chiefly for this reason that the veto was so unexpected. It is true that, in both of these messages, he had expressed some doubt in regard to the power of Congress over the subject, but it was supposed that this was only his cautious way of approaching a new thing, and that he would certainly defer to the views of the Congressional majority.

It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Madison belonged to the first generation of the Republicans, and that the principle of the party, in the period of its origin, was strict construction of the Constitution in regard to the powers of the general Government. He had been driven by the younger men into the War, and into the national policies which it occasioned and produced, and it is at least intelligible that he returned to his earlier creed as the country settled down again into the humdrum of ordinary life.

The failure
of Congress
to override
the veto.

The national Republicans looked upon his act, however, as an apostasy, and the House of Representatives repassed the bill by an increased majority and with considerable feeling. The majority was still, however, not sufficient to overcome the veto, and thus the first earnest attempt to commit the nation to a general system of internal improvements failed, failed through the resurrection of a spirit in the retiring President, which was destined soon to take possession of many who denounced it then as mean and narrow, and to lead the whole country back into those cramping tenets of particularism from which war and bloodshed alone could deliver it.

CHAPTER II.

THE ACQUISITION OF FLORIDA

The Influence of Physical Geography upon Political Development—Defect in the Southern Boundary of the United States before 1819—The Treaty of Paris of 1763—The Boundary between Louisiana and Florida—Occupation of Florida by the United States Forces during the War of 1812—The Hold of the Spaniards on Florida Weakened by the War of 1812—The British Troops in Florida during and after the War of 1812—Nicholls and his Buccaneer State in Florida—The British Government's Repulse of Nicholls' Advances—Destruction of the Nicholls Fort by the United States Forces—The Seminole War—The Fight at Fowltown—The Seminole War Defensive—McGregor on Amelia Island—General Gaines sent to Amelia Island—General Jackson placed in Command in Florida—His Orders—Jackson's Letter to President Monroe—Jackson's Operations in Florida—The First Treaty for the Cession of Florida to the United States—Jackson's Popularity in consequence of the Seminole War—The Attempt in Congress to Censure Jackson—The same Attempt in the Cabinet—The Failure of the Attempt to Censure Jackson in Congress—Assumption of the Responsibility for Jackson's Acts by the Administration—Jackson Triumphant—The Treaty of Cession Attacked in Congress, but Ratified by the Senate—Rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish Government—Resumption of Negotiations—The New Treaty Ratified by the Senate and by the Spanish Government—Political Results of the Seminole War.

It was entirely natural that the quickening of the national spirit and the growth of the national consciousness throughout the United States, in the decade between 1810 and 1820, had, for one of their results, the extension of the territory of the United States, at some point or other, to its natural limits.

The influence
of physical
geography
upon political
development.

The element of physical geography always plays a large part in national political development. The natural territorial basis of a national state is a geographical unity. That is, it is a territory separated by broad bodies of water, or high mountain ranges, or broad belts of uninhabitable country, or climatic extremes, from other territory, and possessing a fair degree of coherence within. If a national state develops itself on any part of such a territory, it will inevitably tend to spread to the natural limits of the same. It will not become a completely national state until it shall have attained such boundaries, for a completely national state is the sovereign organization of a people having an ethnic unity upon a territory which is a geographic unity.

Defect in
the southern
boundary of
the United
States
before 1819.

In the second decade of this century, and down to the latter part of it, the United States had not acquired the territory of the country as far as to the natural southern boundary east of Louisiana. This boundary was, of course, the Gulf of Mexico; but Spain held in quasi possession a broad strip, and then a long peninsula, of land along and within this boundary. In other words, the territory called Florida, or the Floridas, was, politically, a colony of Spain, but geographically a part of the United States. It was inhabited chiefly by Indian tribes. Spanish rule in this territory was, therefore, foreign rule, both from the geographical point of view and the ethnical. Indian rule was not to be thought of in the nineteenth century. There was but one natural solution of the question. It was that the United States should annex this territory and extend the jurisdiction of the general Government over it.

The Treaty
of Paris
of 1763.

The Treaty of Paris of 1763 was the first great international agreement which gave a fair degree of definiteness to the claims of England, France, and Spain, upon the North American continent. In this Treaty, France surrendered Canada, Cape Breton, and all claims to territory east of the Mississippi River, from the source of the river to the point of confluence of the Iberville with it, to Great Britain. From this latter point, the boundary between the two powers was declared to be the middle line of the Iberville, and of the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain, to the Gulf of Mexico. It is also expressly stated in this Treaty that France cedes the river and port of Mobile to Great Britain.

In this same instrument, Spain surrendered to Great Britain Florida and every claim to territory east and southeast of the Mississippi.

The boundary between
Louisiana and Florida.

The boundary between Louisiana and Florida had, to that time, been the River Perdido. After the cessions above mentioned to Great Britain, the British Government united the part of Louisiana received from France with Florida, and then divided Florida into two districts by the line of the River Appalachicola. That part lying to the west of this river was named West Florida, and the part east of it was called East Florida.

By a secret Treaty of the year 1762, which became known to the world some eighteen months later, but whose terms were not executed until 1769, France ceded Louisiana to Spain. After this, therefore, the North American continent was divided between Great Britain and Spain, and the line of division was, so far as it was fixed, the Mississippi River to the confluence of the Iberville with it, then the Iberville and the middle line of the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain to the Gulf of Mexico.

The Treaty of 1762 between France and Spain, having been concluded before the Treaty of 1763 between France and Great Britain, gave Spain a certain show of title to the territory between the Mississippi and the Perdido; but the Treaty of 1763, in which France ceded this same territory to Great Britain, was, as we have just seen, known first, and was the Treaty which France executed in respect to this territory. The conflict of claims between Great Britain and Spain, which was thus engendered, continued to be waged for twenty years, and was settled in the year 1783, in so far as these two powers were concerned, by the recession of Florida to Spain.

In this same year, Great Britain recognized the independence of the United States, with a southern boundary extending from the point where the Mississippi River is intersected by the thirty-first parallel of latitude, along this parallel to the River Appalachicola, thence down the Appalachicola to its confluence with Flint River, thence on the line of shortest distance to the source of the River St. Mary, and thence by the course of this stream to the Atlantic. Spain thus held, as the result of these several treaties, all of the territory south of this line, unless England reserved in her recession of Florida that portion of Louisiana lying between the Iberville and the Perdido, ceded by France to Great Britain in the Treaty of 1763, and united by Great Britain with Florida. There is no evidence in the text of the Treaty of 1783 that Great Britain made any such reservation, or in the subsequent actions of the British Government.

By the Treaty of St. Ildefonso, of October 1st, 1800, also a secret treaty, Spain receded Louisiana to France. The description of the territory thus receded was very vague. It reads in the official translation of the treaty, "His Catholic Majesty promises and engages, on his part, to cede to the French Republic, six months after the full and entire execution of the conditions and stipulations herein relative to his Royal Highness the Duke of Parma, the Colony or Province of Louisiana, with the same extent that it now has in the hands of Spain, and that it had when France possessed it; and such as it should be after the treaties subsequently entered into between Spain and other states."

There was here certainly opportunity for a dispute between Spain and France as to the correct boundary between Louisiana and Florida. France could claim with some reason the Perdido as the eastern boundary of Louisiana, and Spain could meet this with a counterclaim that, after the cession in 1763 of all Louisiana east of the Iberville and the Lakes to Great Britain, and its union by Great Britain with Florida, the line of the Iberville and the Lakes Maurepas and Pontchartrain was the eastern boundary of Louisiana.

Before, however, any actual contest arose over the question, France sold Louisiana to the United States, with the same vague description of boundary contained in the cession of the territory from Spain to France by the Treaty of St. Ildefonso. The question of boundary became now one which must be settled between Spain and the United States.

The United States claimed at once that Louisiana reached to the Perdido. Spain disputed the claim, and held that Florida extended to the Iberville and the Lakes. Spain could make out the better abstract of title. Spain certainly did not intend to recede to France in 1800 anything more as Louisiana than France had ceded to her in 1762. But the United States had a show of legal title. It could be held that the ancient boundary of Louisiana was the one intended both in the Treaty of St. Ildefonso and in that of 1803, in which France passed the possession of Louisiana to the United States. The reasons of physical geography and of national development certainly favored the annexation of the whole of Florida to the United States; and with such forces to back the apparent legal claim to a large part of it, the result of the dispute could not well have been otherwise than it was.

The United States enforced its claim by military occupation of the disputed district before the close of the War of 1812.

Occupation of
Florida by the
United States
forces during
the War of 1812.

During the course of the war, the British forces had occupied Pensacola. The Spanish governor either could not, or would not, prevent them from doing so. Florida became thus, in spite of its nominal neutral status, a base of operations for the enemy of the United States. No more convincing evidence of the necessity for its annexation to the United States could have been offered. It was thus seen that not only the geography and the national growth of the Union demanded it, but that the safety of the Union, in case of war with any power, required it. The sea is the natural boundary of the United States on the south, and it was the "manifest destiny" of the Union to reach it.

The occupation of Florida would have been a sound and justifiable policy for the United States, had the Government commanded a sufficient military force for the purpose, when the British troops took possession of Pensacola. General Jackson did expel the British from Pensacola, but restored the place to the Spanish authorities, in order to avoid a conflict with Spain while engaged in war with Great Britain. We know now that the Congress of the United States had, by secret acts passed before the beginning of the War, authorized the President to occupy Florida east of the Perdido temporarily. The President did not deem it wise, under the circumstances which prevailed, to make use of this power; but the readiness of the Congress to intrust the President with the authority to take possession of the territory of a friendly power certainly shows that a strong feeling existed among the representatives of the people that Florida must be acquired by the United States upon the first fair opportunity.

The hold of the
Spaniards on
Florida
weakened by
the War of 1812.

The occasion was destined soon to appear. The power of Spain upon the American continents was everywhere in rapid decline. At the close of the War of 1812, the Spanish occupation in Florida was confined substantially to three points—Pensacola, St. Mark's, and St. Augustine. The remainder of the province, by far the greater part of it, was a free zone, in which desperate adventurers of every race and land might congregate, from which they might make their raids for murder and pillage into the United States, and into which they might escape again with their prisoners and plunder.

The British
troops in Florida
during and after
the War of 1812.

We have noticed the occupation of Pensacola by the British troops during the War of 1812, and their expulsion by General Jackson from this position in November of 1814. After this, they concentrated upon the Appalachicola and established a fort some fifteen miles above the mouth of this stream for their head-quarters and base of operations. The British commander, one Colonel Nicholls, pursued from this point the policy which he had already inaugurated at Pensacola. This policy was the collection and organization of fugitive negroes, Indians, and adventurers of every character, and their employment in raids into the territory, and attacks upon the inhabitants, of the United States.

It appears that Colonel Nicholls did not regard the Treaty between the United States and Great Britain concluding the War as putting an end necessarily to his hostile movements. He remained in command at his fort on the Appalachicola for several months after the ratification of the Treaty, and then went to London, taking with him the Indian priest Francis, for the purpose of securing a treaty of alliance between the British Government and his band of outlaws in Florida.

Nicholls and
his buccaneer
state in
Florida.

Before leaving the Appalachicola, he had incited the Indians and their negro auxiliaries to continue hostilities against the United States, by representing to them that the ninth article of the Treaty of Ghent contained a pledge on the part of the United States to reinstate the Indians in all lands held by them in the year 1811. He represented to them that this provision restored to the Creeks the lands in southern Georgia surrendered by them to the United States in the Treaty between the Creeks and the United States made at Fort Jackson in August of 1814, although it was well understood by both of the high contracting parties to the Treaty of Ghent that only those lands were intended under this provision whose seizure by the United States had not been confirmed by an agreement with the Indians; and the pledge as to these only was conditioned upon the immediate cessation of hostilities on the part of the Indians when the Treaty of Ghent should be announced to them. This announcement had been made, and the actual continuation of hostilities, therefore, after the announcement, made this whole article nugatory.

Nicholls left the fort, with all its munitions, in the hands of the negroes and Indians. The garrison consisted of some three hundred negroes and about twenty Indians.

The British Government's
repulse of Nicholls' advances.

The British Government would not listen to Nicholls' proposition for an alliance between Great Britain and the buccaneering state which he was endeavoring to establish upon territory belonging politically to Spain.

Destruction of the
Nicholls Fort by the
United States forces.

The United States Government waited a year and a half for the disbanding of this hostile force, or for its dispersion by the Spanish authorities, and then, when forbearance had ceased to be a virtue, did the work itself. The fort was destroyed by the explosion of its magazine, which was pierced by a red-hot shot from the batteries of the assailants, and almost the whole garrison perished. It was claimed that the attack was made by the United States forces with the consent of the Spanish authorities, whatever the significance of that may have been.

Professor von Holst, in his great work, has designated the expedition against the Nicholls Fort as a hunt by the United States army for fugitive slaves. He does not seem to have recognized the danger to the peace and civilization of the United States of the growth of a community of pirates and buccaneers upon its borders. It does not appear to have occurred to him that the most humane attitude toward the slaves of Georgia may have been to prevent them from being drawn into any such connection. He does not seem to have comprehended that any public interest was subserved by disposing of the negroes captured in this expedition in such a way as to prevent any future attempts on their part at co-operation with the Indians in their barbarous warfare upon the frontiers of the United States. In a sentence, he seems to have regarded the entire incident as a prostitution of the military power of the United States to the private greed of slave-hunters, and to have discovered in it a most convincing proof of the canting hypocrisy of the free Republic. In view of all the facts of the case, this certainly appears to be a very crude appreciation of the subject.

The Seminole War.

This same historian calls the attack upon the Nicholls Fort the beginning of the Seminole War. It appears, however, more like the termination of the War of 1812, so far as the negro outlaws of Florida were participant in that War, than like the beginning of a new war. Generals Gaines and Jackson and the War Department of the Government seem to have so comprehended the event.

After the destruction of the Nicholls Fort, or the Negro Fort, as it was then called, there was comparative peace, for a few months, on the frontier. With the beginning of the year 1817, however, hostilities were renewed. It is not known which party gave the first offence. Ex-Governor Mitchell of Georgia, then holding the office of Indian agent for these parts, thought both parties equally at fault. The point is a matter of little moment. The conflict between civilization and barbarism is irrepressible, and arises as often from the encroachments of civilization as from the onslaughts of barbarism.

The fight
at Fowltown.

In November of 1817, General Gaines endeavored to secure an interview with the chief of the hostile Indians, but the chief refused to visit the General, whereupon the General sent a detachment of soldiers to the chief's village, called Fowltown, to repeat his invitation, and to conduct the chief and his warriors to a parley-ground. The soldiers were fired upon by the Indians as they approached the village. They naturally returned the fire, and then seized and destroyed the village. A few Indians were killed in the conflict.

The Indian agent, Mitchell, called this event the beginning of the Seminole War. It was certainly something more like it than was the capture of the Negro Fort. Still it will be more correct to consider it as being only the continuation of the War of 1812, in so far as the participation in that War of Great Britain's Indian allies on the southern border of the United States was concerned. They had never really resumed the status of peace after acting during that War, at the instigation of the British officers in Florida, against the United States.

The Seminole
War defensive.

Following the fight at Fowltown hostilities became much more active. Fowltown was situated north of the Florida line, upon territory ceded by the Creeks to the United States in the Treaty of Fort Jackson. If, therefore, the incident of November 20th was the beginning of the Seminole War, it stamps that War as defensive in its character. The troops of the United States were attacked upon the territory of the United States. If the further prosecution of the War should, in the judgment of the President, or of the officer whom he might vest with discretionary power in the execution of his will, require the crossing of the Florida line and the pursuit of the enemy upon Florida territory, the character of the War could not be changed thereby. This could not be regarded as making war on Spain. Spain could meet and satisfy the right of the United States to do this only by dispersing the Indians herself, and preventing Florida from becoming a base of hostile operations against the United States. Spain could claim the rights of neutrality for Florida only when she discharged these duties of neutrality. The general principles of international custom required that of her. When, now, we add to this the consideration that Spain had pledged herself in a specific agreement with the United States to do these very things, and that Florida, nevertheless, was actually a free zone, over which no civilized state had any efficient control, then it certainly appears that the right of the United States to pursue its enemy into Florida was clearly in keeping with the recognized law of nations. The President, therefore, ordered the pursuit of the enemy into Florida, under the qualification that if they took refuge in a Spanish fortification the fortress should not be attacked, but the situation should be reported to the War Department and further orders awaited. This order was issued on December 16th, 1817, to General Gaines, who was then in command of the forces on the Florida frontier.

McGregor on
Amelia Island.

Meanwhile an adventurer by the name of McGregor had, with a band of freebooters, taken possession of Amelia Island, which lies off the coast of Florida, just below the mouth of the St. Mary's River, and had, in the name of the Governments of Buenos Ayres and Venezuela, proclaimed the independence of Florida against Spain. They made the island an entrepôt for the smuggling of slaves into the United States, a storehouse for the results of their robberies, and head-quarters generally for piratical expeditions.

General
Gaines sent to
Amelia Island.

By a secret act of the year 1811, the Congress of the United States had declared its unwillingness to have Florida, or any part of it, pass from the hands of Spain into those of any other power, and had authorized the President to prevent it. Acting upon this authority, the President instructed General Gaines to go to Amelia Island and take possession of it.

General
Jackson
placed in
command
in Florida.
His orders.

About ten days later, December 26th, 1817, the President assigned General Jackson to the command of the troops acting against the Indians. The day before the issue of the order to General Jackson, the War Department had received the news of the Indian attack upon Lieutenant Scott's boat while ascending the Appalachicola with supplies for the United States troops at Fort Scott. The cold-blooded massacre of almost the entire crew of the boat apparently moved the War Department to more energetic measures. The order to General Jackson, besides investing him with the command, empowered him to call on the Governors of the adjacent Commonwealths for such military forces as he might deem necessary, with those already in the field, to overcome the Indians, and informed him that General Gaines had been instructed "to penetrate from Amelia Island, through Florida, to the Seminole towns, if his force would justify his engaging in offensive operations." "With this view," the order to Jackson continues, "you may be prepared to concentrate your forces, and to adopt the necessary measures to terminate a conflict which it has ever been the desire of the President to avoid, but which is now made necessary by their settled hostilities."

Jackson's letter
to President Monroe.

When Jackson received these orders he was in Tennessee. He wrote immediately to the President: "Let it be signified to me through any channel (say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the Floridas would be desirable to the United States and in sixty days it will be accomplished." General Jackson naturally supposed that this letter was duly received and read by President Monroe, and that a subsequent order, giving him discretionary powers in the prosecution of the campaign, contained the answer to it. As we shall see, however, the President claimed later that he did not read Jackson's letter until a year after it was written and sent to him. It was certainly the President's fault if he did not. General Jackson certainly could not be held accountable for the President's strange negligence in examining official correspondence, and he had good reason to think, from the tone of the order issued to him after his letter had had due time to be received and read, that the Administration desired him to occupy Florida.

Upon taking command Jackson called his Tennessee veterans to him, and reached with them the Florida frontier in March of 1818.

Jackson's
operations
in Florida.

When he advanced into Florida he found that the Spanish officials in Florida were in collusion with the Indians, and that the instigators of the hostilities were an Englishman, named Ambrister, and a Scotchman, named Arbuthnot, together with two Indian chiefs named Hillis Hajo and Himallemico.

An order from the War Department, of January 16th, 1818, instructed the commander of the United States forces in Florida that the honor of the nation required a speedy termination of the War with the Seminoles, "with exemplary punishment for hostilities so unprovoked." Jackson naturally considered himself empowered to do speedy and thorough work. He felt it necessary to seize St. Mark's and Pensacola, in order to destroy the base of operations and the places of refuge of the enemy, and he caused the four ringleaders of the enemy to be executed. By the end of May (1818) the campaign was ended, and Florida was in the military possession of the United States. The President assumed the responsibility for Jackson's deeds, but offered to restore St. Mark's and Pensacola, and therewith the nominal possession of Florida, to Spain, so soon as Spain would garrison these points with forces able to maintain peace with the United States and disposed to do so. Spain accepted the offer, fulfilled in a way the conditions, and the places were restored to her jurisdiction.

The first Treaty for
the cession of Florida
to the United States.

It was now manifest to Spain, however, that she could not control Florida, and that her possession of the province was, and could be, only nominal. She now, therefore, agreed to cede it to the United States. The treaty bears date of February 22nd, 1819. Its important provisions are contained in the second and third articles. By these articles Spain ceded the Floridas, with the adjacent islands dependent thereon, to the United States; and agreed with the United States that the boundary between the two powers in North America should be the west bank of the Sabine River from its mouth to the thirty-second parallel of north latitude, thence the line of longitude to the Red River, thence up the course of the Red River to the one-hundredth parallel of longitude from London, or the twenty-third from Washington, thence the line of longitude to the Arkansas River, thence the south bank of the Arkansas to its source, thence the line of longitude to the forty-second parallel of north latitude, and thence this line of latitude to the South Sea.

This settlement of boundary included that of all other claims, of whatever character, of the Government, citizens, or subjects of either power against the Government, citizens, or subjects of the other. All such were mutually renounced.

Jackson's popularity
in consequence of
the Seminole War.

The results of the Seminole War raised General Jackson to a still higher plane of popularity than he possessed as the hero of the War of 1812. It was evident that here was a character who would have to be reckoned with in future presidential contests. It is possible that Jackson's chief mentor, William B. Lewis, had conceived, at this date, the idea of Jackson's candidacy for the highest place in the gift of the nation. And it is highly probable that the fears of all the existing aspirants for the presidency were excited by the appearance of this new and popular rival for public favor. It is difficult to explain upon any other theory the attempt made in Congress, during the session of 1818-19, to suppress Jackson by a vote of censure.

The attempt in
Congress to
censure Jackson.

This procedure certainly had no connection whatsoever with the question of slavery extension through the acquisition of Florida. When we find Tallmadge, of New York, the self-same person who introduced, at the same session, the proposition for restricting slavery in Missouri, defending Jackson's course in every particular, while Cobb, of Georgia, attacked it, and when we consider that John Quincy Adams, the life-long opponent of slavery, sustained Jackson in the cabinet, while Calhoun moved to bring him to account for disobedience to orders, we are bound to conclude that we have here nothing whatsoever to do with the question of slavery.

The same attempt
in the Cabinet.

Crawford, of Georgia, the Secretary of the Treasury, was the prime aspirant for presidential honors, after Monroe should have completed his two terms, and Cobb was Crawford's right-hand man. Clay was also working up his plans. These two men felt it necessary to discredit Jackson in every possible way. Clay made a great bugbear out of Jackson's military heroship, and so threatening did he make it appear to the principle of civil government and republican institutions that he really seemed frightened at it himself. Crawford set up the same strain, through Cobb, in a feebler key. Calhoun seems to have been animated rather by wrath at what he conceived to be the violation of his orders, or, at least, the exceeding of his orders, than by jealousy of a presidential rival. His presidential fever had not, at that moment, reached a high degree. But what shall we say of Adams, who undoubtedly then considered himself a candidate for the successorship to Monroe, and who stood against the whole Cabinet in Jackson's defence, and carried the day against both Crawford and Calhoun combined. Of course it may be said that Adams thought his own turn would come before that of Jackson, and that he would gain Jackson's support by his attitude. But against such a supposition must stand the fact that the Cabinet pledged itself to secrecy in regard to all that was proposed on the subject, and that for ten years Jackson supposed that Calhoun was the friend in the Cabinet who had successfully defended him against the other members under the lead of Crawford. The attitude of Adams in the question was noble and disinterested, as well as patriotic, and had Jackson known of it in 1824, it is altogether probable that he would never have charged an unfair bargain with Clay upon Adams for his own defeat.

The failure of
the attempt to
censure Jackson
in Congress.

Clay and Cobb represented that every movement made by Jackson, from the moment of his appointment to the command of the expedition to the end of hostilities, was illegal and in defiance of the orders of the War Department. They said he had no right to call upon his old soldiers instead of asking the Governor of Tennessee for the militia. They claimed that he waged an offensive war upon his own responsibility against Spain, when the War Department had expressly forbidden him to attack the Spanish forts, and they accused him of murdering two prisoners of war. The House of Representatives showed what it thought of these accusations by voting down the resolutions which contained the censure by a majority of nearly two to one, while the resolutions of like effect introduced into the Senate were laid on the table and never taken up for consideration.

Assumption of the
responsibility
for Jackson's acts
by the Administration.

The Administration had, under the influence of the Secretary of State, Mr. Adams, already assumed the responsibility for Jackson's acts, had upheld their legality, and was even then bringing its negotiations with Spain, in regard to the cession of Florida, to a successful close; while the British Government had refrained from any interference on account of the treatment of Ambrister and Arbuthnot.

Jackson
triumphant.

The attempt to suppress Jackson broke down thus upon all sides, and he emerged from the assaults of his rivals with a greater popularity than he had ever before enjoyed, and with improved prospects as a presidential candidate. With the worship accorded to a hero he now enjoyed the sympathy extended to a martyr.

The Treaty of Cession
attacked in Congress,
but ratified by the Senate.

The Treaty itself, ceding the Floridas, did not escape attack. Adams regarded it as a great diplomatic triumph for the United States, but Clay expressed great disappointment with it, because it sacrificed, as he viewed it, the claims of the United States to the territory between the Sabine and the Rio del Norte. And Crawford, who was seizing every opportunity to discredit the Administration, by encouraging it to false measures from his place in the Cabinet, and then professing publicly his disapprobation of them, also saw in the point emphasized by Clay a prime occasion for making political capital.

The Senate showed what its members thought of such manoeuvres by a speedy and unanimous vote in ratification of the Treaty.

Rejection of
the Treaty by
the Spanish
Government.

The Spanish Government, on the other hand, rejected the Treaty. Mr. Adams felt, at the moment, that this was a blow to his reputation as a diplomatist, and perhaps to his chances for the presidency. But it did not prove to be such. Had the Treaty been then ratified three large land grants made by the Spanish King to certain Spanish nobles, at a date earlier than Mr. Adams had supposed, would not have been extinguished by it. The rejection of the Treaty by the Spanish Government, which at the same time sent another Ambassador, General Vivês, to take the place of Don Onis, and to renew negotiations on the subject, gave Mr. Adams the opportunity to insist upon the cession of Florida with the extinguishment of the above mentioned grants.

Resumption of
negotiations.

When the new Ambassador arrived, the country was in the midst of the excitement over the question of slavery extension in the Louisiana territory, the history of which will be related in a succeeding chapter. The effect of this agitation was to arouse some doubt in the minds of those opposed to the extension of slavery in regard to the expediency of any addition to the territory of the United States southward. Mr. Adams himself felt the influence of this doubt, and was prompted, in part at least, by it to assume an attitude of indifference toward the new propositions of the Spanish Ambassador. He gave the Ambassador to understand that Spain could make such a treaty with the United States in regard to the subject as would be satisfactory to the latter, or take the consequences of leaving things as they were. The unshakable determination of Mr. Adams won the day, and the old Treaty, with a new provision extinguishing the above mentioned land grants, was finally ratified by both Governments, two years after the date of the original agreement between Mr. Adams and Don Onis.

The new Treaty ratified
by the Senate and by
the Spanish Government.

The vote of ratification by the Senate of the United States was again practically unanimous. Only four votes were recorded against it; and of these four one was cast by a brother-in-law of Mr. Clay, one by a subservient friend of the same gentleman, and one by a bitter personal enemy of General Jackson. The province was soon transferred to the United States and Jackson became its first territorial governor. With this the United States attained its natural boundary on the south, eastward from the mouth of the Mississippi, and a source of chronic irritation was removed.

Political results
of the Seminole War.

It was to be expected that this territory would be erected into a Commonwealth in which the institution of slavery would be legalized; but this did not deter the statesmen of the North from securing the great advantages just indicated. Radical abolitionism had not yet blinded them to the general and paramount interests of the Union. In fact, the results of the Seminole War and of the diplomacy of the Administration in connection with it had the immediate effect of diminishing the ultra-Southern influence in the Government. They brought Adams and Jackson to the front, and set Crawford and Calhoun back in the course of their careers. They had, indeed, much to do, as we shall see later, with the development of the era of personal politics, which prevailed from 1824 to 1832, and which terminated finally in the separation of the all-comprehending Republican party into the Whig party and the Democratic party.

CHAPTER III.

SLAVERY IN THE UNITED STATES BEFORE 1820

First Appearance of Slavery in the British North American Colonies—Early Theory of the Benefits of Slavery—The Earliest Legal Recognition of Slavery in the Colonies—Northern Colonies not well Adapted to Negro Labor—The Southern Colonies well Adapted to Negro Labor—Negro Slavery a Temporary Necessity in the South—Was Negro Slavery an Error and an Evil from the first?—Slavery Legislation in the Southern Colonies—Partus Sequitur Ventrem—Definitions of the Slave Class—The Test of the Slave Status as Fixed by the Virginia Statute—The Legal Position of the Slave—Tendency Toward Serfage in the Code of 1705—Public Relations of the Slave System—The General Object of the Laws in respect to Slaves—Slavery and the Revolutionary Ideas of the Rights of Man—First Prohibition upon Slave Importation—Abolition of Slavery in the Northern Commonwealths after the Beginning of the Revolution—Slavery and the Constitution of 1787—Reaction against the Humanitarian Principles of the Revolution—Abolition of the Foreign Slave-trade by Congress—Cotton Culture and the Cotton-gin—The Effect of the Return to the Arts of Peace upon the Ideas Concerning Slavery—Slavery During the War of 1812 and the Years just before and just after this War—Slavery in the Louisiana Territory—Slavery in the territory West of North Carolina and Georgia—Slavery in Louisiana a Different Question from Slavery in the North Carolina and Georgia Cessions—Interest in Slavery in Maryland and Virginia Increased by the Acquisition of Louisiana—The Domestic Slave-trade—The Relation of Slavery to the Diplomacy of the United States.

It is not easy to define the term slavery in the abstract without unfitting it for application to the great majority of the systems of servitude which have ever existed. Especially will it be difficult to gain a correct conception of the relation between the white man and the negro in North America previous to 1860 by means of such a definition.

The institution of negro slavery in the United States was an historical growth, which was in some respects unique. We shall, therefore, do better to follow the main stages of that development than to attempt at the outset any definition whatsoever. We may, in this manner, build up a true description of it, and escape the error frequently contained in the brevity of a definition and in the nature of an abstract proposition.

First appearance of
slavery in the British
North American
colonies.


Early theory of the
benefits of slavery.

It began its existence, like most institutions and relations, as a social custom. Most of the historians record the appearance of a Dutch merchant ship at Jamestown, in the year 1619, having negroes on board, and inform us that twenty of them were sold to the colonists. What title the Dutch traders had to such property, exactly what they sold to the colonists, and what rights the colonists acquired in or over such property, were defined, guaranteed, and secured by no existing statutes. If any of the parties to the transaction reflected upon these subjects at all, they must have supposed that the right of possession and the freedom of contract covered the whole case. There is certainly no evidence that any of these parties, or anybody else, had the faintest conception that the law of any state, or any principle of natural justice, or of reason, was violated or impaired by the procedure or the results of the procedure. It was a firmly and universally established opinion of the time that the attachment of infidels to Christians in a relation of servant to master was vastly beneficial to the infidel, certainly so when the infidel was also a barbarian, and was taken out of slavery to a barbarian master, as was the case in respect to almost all of the negroes brought to the English colonies in North America.

We cannot dismiss this opinion as one of the errors of the dark ages. It lives to-day as a principle of modern political science and practical politics, under the form of statement that civilized people have the right and duty to impose civilization upon uncivilized populations by whatever means they may deem to be just and proper.

There can be no reasonable doubt that the negroes transferred from slavery in Africa to slavery in the English-American colonies themselves felt the amelioration of their condition, and were, in general, entirely contented with their new lot.

The earliest legal
recognition of
slavery in
the colonies.

The relation was established in the Northern colonies, as well as in the Southern, in the early years of their existence, and it was in Massachusetts rather than in Virginia that it first received legal recognition, and began to be changed from a purely domestic institution by suffering governmental regulation. In the Massachusetts "Fundamentals," or "Body of Liberties," passed by the General Court in 1641, the slavery of negroes and Indians, and the slave-trade, were expressly legalized. In fact, so far as the colonists themselves were responsible for the introduction of negro slavery among them, the impartial historian must place the greater blame upon a Northern colony. Its citizens were first to develop commerce, and it was their ships which brought the slave cargoes from the coasts of Africa to all of the colonies.

Northern colonies
not well adapted
to negro labor.


The Southern
colonies well
adapted to
negro labor.

The negroes were not, however, fitted for labor in the Northern colonies. In the first place, it was too cold for them to thrive there. A warm, moist air is the natural climate for the negro. In the second place, the work to be done in these sections was not suited to his capacity. The Northern colonies had not, indeed, at that early day, developed the finer forms of industry which have subsequently distinguished that part of the country. They were then, as to their internal pursuits, almost as completely agricultural as the colonies of the South. But their farming required a great deal more of intelligence, thrift, and industry in the laborer than the negro of that day possessed. The country was broken, the good soil was limited in amount, the weather was capricious, and the management of the crops demanded judgment and discretion. On the other hand, the vast level areas of good soil, the warm, uniform climate, and the simple crops of the Southern colonies furnished the conditions favorable to the employment of negro labor.

Negro slavery a
temporary necessity
in the South.

It is not easy to see how the rich swamp-lands of these colonies could ever have been reclaimed and made tributary to the civilization of the world in any way but by the employment of negro labor. And it is no easier to see how the pure negro could then have been brought to do this great work save through slavery to the white race, save by being forced to contribute the muscular effort, under the direction of the superior intelligence of the white race, to the realization of objects determined by that superior intelligence. The negro is proof against malaria, and thrives under the burning sun. The white man is destroyed by the former and greatly disabled by the latter. And the pure negro would not at that period of his development labor voluntarily. These were the elements of the problem which confronted those who undertook to subject the vast marshes of the Southern colonies to cultivation and to prepare them for the production of their most valuable contributions to the comforts of civilized man. The solution of the problem was negro slavery.

Was negro slavery
an error and an
evil from the first?

We are most of us inclined, at this day, to hold that this was an erroneous solution, and that we could have discovered a better one; but it was the solution which was reached, and we shall be wiser if we seek to understand it clearly, instead of wasting our energies in its condemnation, remembering that many of the things of the past, which, from the point of view of the present, we are prone to regard as error, and even as sin, are only anachronisms. In fact, those who founded the colony of Georgia thought then that they had a better solution of the problem. They prohibited slavery at the outset from that colony. In fourteen years they came to regard this act as a great mistake, and the noblest spirits among them acknowledged themselves in error, and joined in the movement for the introduction of negro slave-labor.

Slavery legislation in
the Southern colonies.

The conditions above mentioned were undoubtedly the chief causes of the more rapid and pronounced development of negro slavery in the Southern colonies. And that more rapid and pronounced development directs us rather to the legislation of the Southern colonies than to that of the Northern, in following the legalization of the relation.

Partus
sequitur
ventrem.

Virginia naturally took the lead, and furnished the precedents for the others. The first question, both as to time and importance, which required legislative treatment, was the question of the status of the children of slaves. Where legalized marriage does not exist, the only certainty in respect to parentage is attained by regarding the mother. Rights and status in such a condition of society are, therefore, transmitted through the female line. Partus sequitur ventrem is the rule not only of the civil law, but of every system of law regulating the accidents of descent among people where the mingling of the sexes is not controlled by civilized marriage. Insuperable obstacles present themselves in the attempt to apply any other rule. It was no unusual or arbitrary enactment of the Virginia legislature which, in 1662, prescribed the rule that the status of the slave mother should determine that of her offspring. This rule was followed in all the colonies, and many of them enacted it into statute law.

Definitions of
the slave class.

So long as the slaves were few in number and were not Christians the necessity for legislation defining the slave class was not felt; but so soon as the slave-trade became more active, and slaves began to receive Christian baptism, the old customary test in regard to this matter, that of infidelity or heathenism, would no longer suffice. The colonists of that day were too conscientious to cut the knot of this difficulty by denying Christian baptism to any one seeking it. They considered it their prime duty to lead the heathen to the knowledge of Christ. It is evident that their consciences were greatly troubled over the question of the effect of Christian baptism upon the slave status. The colonial legislatures, the Home Government, and the Bishop of London were appealed to for counsel in the dilemma. The answers received from all of these were to the effect that the status of the slave was not changed by Christian baptism or conversion.

The test of the slave
status as fixed by
the Virginia statute.

The test of the slave status was then necessarily fixed by legislation. The Virginia statute declared all servants brought into the country by land or sea, who were not Christians in their native country at the time when they were purchased or procured, nor free in England or some other Christian country, to be slaves. Exception was made of Turks and Moors in amity with the King. This statute, taken together with the rule partus sequitur ventrem, which rule was re-enacted, became the test of the slave class. At the same time heavy penalties were attached to the marriage or cohabitation of white women with slaves.

The legal
position of
the slave.

Of course it very soon became necessary that the legal position of the slave should be definitely fixed. The legislature of Virginia again set the precedents. Concisely stated, this legislation provided that a slave could have no standing in the ordinary courts, either as party or witness; that a slave could own no property; that a slave owed obedience to the master, who might force the slave to labor, and chastise the slave even to the extreme of so injuring the slave that the slave might die in consequence thereof, without incurring the penalties of felony; that the slave could be sold or inherited as personal property; and that the offspring of the female slave belonged to the master owning her at the time of its birth.

Tendency
toward
serfage in the
Code of 1705.

The wilful killing of a slave by anyone, even the master, was accounted murder, and extraordinary tribunals, without a jury, were constituted for the protection of his person. The Code of 1705 even contained regulations which indicated that the trend of thought and of legislation, at that juncture, was toward attaching the slave to the soil, which would have been a step upward in a course, which, if consistently followed, would have made the slave a serf. But the still prevailing rules, which allowed the slave to be seized and sold for the debts of the master, and regulated the inheritance of slaves according to the law governing the descent of personal property, seem to have completely neutralized that tendency before the middle of the century had been reached.

Public relations of
the slave system.

Naturally the private law accidents of the relation were first developed and fixed, but very soon the rights and powers of the community in regard to the institution began to claim attention. The public peace and welfare must be safeguarded against the possible conduct of the slave, on the one hand, and of the master, on the other.

The legislation of Virginia set the example in these respects also. That legislation provided that no slave should have, or carry arms, or go outside of the plantation of his master without a pass from his master, or lift his hand against a Christian; that a sheriff should arrest a runaway slave on the warrant of two justices, and might lawfully kill any slave who resisted arrest; and that no slave should be emancipated without the consent of the Governor and Council.

On the other hand, it provided that the master should be responsible for all damage done by his slave at any place where there was no Christian overseer, and required that any master giving freedom to his slave should pay the cost of his transportation out of the colony.

The general object of the
laws in respect to slaves.

Such was substantially the law of negro slavery in all of the colonies at the beginning of the decade before the Revolution. It was perhaps more severe than this in South Carolina, and it was certainly less so in Massachusetts.

The objects which it had in view were to secure the master's property in the slave, to enable the master to hold the slave in obedience and force him, if necessary, to labor, and to protect the public peace and welfare against the abuse of the relation by the master, and against the vicious nature of the slave.

It does certainly appear that the century of law-making upon the subject had not ameliorated the condition of the slave. We must remember, however, that the first stages in the legalization of any relation sometimes make the situation appear worse than what obtained before the movement began, although it may not be worse in fact.

Slavery and the Revolutionary
ideas of the rights of man.

But the period of the Revolution brought with it a great change of view in regard to the morality of slavery, and this change of idea produced great modifications in the law of slavery, all of which tended not only toward an improvement of the condition of the slave, but also toward the ultimate extinction of slavery.

When we regard the Revolution of the colonies against the motherland from the point of view of the present, we can easily see that its purpose was very different from that of the French Revolution. What it really sought and accomplished was national independence against foreign rule. Those, however, who formulated the creed of the Revolution sought its justification in the doctrine of human rights rather than in that of national rights. The philosophy of the eighteenth century was a humanitarian outburst. Politically and legally it is summed up in the very misleading propositions that all men are born equal and are endowed with freedom, and that the people have the right to change or abolish existing government at their pleasure. Whatever we may think of these doctrines now, our ancestors professed to believe in them, and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of their profession, so far as their own consciousness went. They saw also the inconsistency of slavery with these doctrines, and quickly came to regard slavery as an evil which should be removed as soon as possible.

First prohibition
upon slave
importation.

The Continental Congress took the first step in this direction. Two years before it declared independence it prohibited any further importation of slaves, and repeated the prohibition two years later. These acts are good evidence that, at the moment, the question of slavery was regarded as a matter of national concern.

The Congress was, however, so occupied with the duties pertaining to the prosecution of the war, that it failed to go forward in this matter, as well as in many other matters of national concern; and when the Confederate Congress succeeded the Continental Congress, it did so upon the basis of a written constitution, or rather articles of union, which vested no powers whatsoever in it over the subject of slavery.

Abolition of slavery in the
Northern Commonwealths
after the beginning
of the Revolution.

The separate colonies, now become "States" by the theory of the Articles of Confederation, took up the question. Massachusetts abolished slavery substantially by her constitution of 1780. Pennsylvania provided for gradual emancipation by a statute of the same year. Rhode Island, Connecticut, and New Hampshire followed the example of Pennsylvania. And New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia forbade any further importation of slaves.

The Ordinance
of 1787.

Under such impulses and influences the Confederate Congress, in spite of the fact that no power in respect to slavery had been conferred upon it, assumed to pass the famous Ordinance of 1787, decreeing the free status exclusively in all of the territory then belonging to the United States north of the Ohio River. The power to enact the Ordinance could not even be derived by the most generous principles of implication from any provision in the Articles of Confederation. To justify the exercise of it by the Confederate Congress it is necessary to go back to the general principle of political science that, as there was no government for this territory but the Confederate Congress, and as there were no limitations in the Articles of Confederation upon the powers of the Congress in this territory, the powers of that Congress must have extended in this territory to all subjects usually regulated by government.

The claim sometimes made that this Ordinance was a treaty between the "States" forming the Confederation, or between them and the "States" to be formed out of that territory in the future, is altogether untenable. It was nothing more nor less than a legislative act of the Congress.

It is an incontrovertible proof of the universality and intensity of the opposition to the farther spread of slavery that the common consciousness of the age acquiesced in this most latitudinarian construction of the powers of the Confederate Congress, and that the Congress itself voted the measure with but a single dissenting voice.

Slavery and the
Constitution of 1787.

At the same moment that this measure was being considered in the Congress, the Constitutional Convention, sitting at Philadelphia, was framing the national Constitution of 1787. The attitude which the nation would assume in this new instrument of its organic law toward the subject of slavery was one of the most, if not the most, important of the questions which the Convention was called upon to consider.

There can be little doubt that the men of 1787 had come to regard the question of the rights of man a little more calmly than they did during the heat of the battle with the motherland. In Luther Martin's famous letter to the legislature of Maryland upon the work of the Convention of 1787, a very significant passage concerning the existing views upon slavery occurs. He wrote: "At this time we do not generally hold this commerce" (the slave-trade) "in so great abhorrence as we have done. When our liberties were at stake we warmly felt for the common rights of men. The danger being thought to be past which threatened ourselves we are daily growing more insensible to those rights."

The Constitution of 1787 contains evidence of the correctness of this statement. Among its provisions were to be found three most important compromises with the slavery interest, three most important recognitions of slavery. The first was political in its nature. It counted the negro for three-fifths of the white man in the distribution of the representation in the House of Representatives and in the Presidential Electoral Colleges. The second was commercial in its nature. It forbade the Congress to prohibit, before the year 1808, the migration or importation of such persons as the existing "States" might see fit to admit. The third was a direct guarantee of slave property. It required the surrender to his master of an escaped slave wherever found in the United States. These were most momentous provisions. They secured slave property, increased slave property, and made slavery a vast political power in the hands of the slave-masters. There is no doubt that the clock of the ages was turned back full half a century in regard to this great question by the Constitution of 1787.

Reaction against
the humanitarian
principles of
the Revolution.

From 1787 to 1808 the reactionary course was pursued almost without a single break. Kentucky was made a Commonwealth with the slave status. The Congress accepted from North Carolina and Georgia cessions of the territory which lay to the west of them, and which they claimed as belonging to them, with a condition that slavery should not be forbidden therein by Congress. The slave Commonwealth of Tennessee was immediately formed out of a part of this territory. The vast territory of Louisiana, in which slavery existed wherever it was inhabited, was added to the domain of the Union. The District of Columbia, the seat of the general Government, was made a slave-holding community, through the adoption by Congress of the laws of Maryland as the code of the District. A fugitive slave-law was passed by Congress, which enabled any white man to seize, as his slave, any man of color, and bring him before any magistrate, and, upon proof satisfactory to the latter, to demand such papers and certificates as would legally warrant him in reclaiming the slave and transporting him to the place whence he was said to have escaped; and petitions to Congress complaining of the abuse of this arbitrary power were laid aside without consideration. Even the Territory of Indiana prayed Congress to suspend for it that part of the Ordinance of 1787 which forbade slavery within its limits. And South Carolina abolished her law against the importation of slaves, and opened the way wide for a vast increase of the slave population.

Abolition of
the foreign
slave-trade
by Congress.

These last acts seem to have aroused the consciousness of the Congress to the rapidity with which the whole country was becoming again subject to the slave-holding interests. The Congress resisted the importunities of the Indiana leaders, and after giving South Carolina a reasonable time to re-enact her law abolishing the foreign slave-trade, without effect, proceeded itself to abolish the trade from the first moment that the Constitution permitted this to be done, from January 1st, 1808.

Cotton culture
and the
cotton-gin.


The effect of the
return to the arts
of peace upon the
ideas concerning
slavery.

It has been customary to ascribe the great revulsion of view in regard to slavery, which certainly manifested itself everywhere in the United States between 1790 and 1807, to cotton culture and the cotton-gin. The invention of the cotton-gin, in the first part of the last decade of the eighteenth century, and the increased demand for cotton fabrics throughout the world, had made the cultivation of cotton highly profitable. An increase in cotton culture was naturally encouraged by such enhanced profits, and this tendency produced an increased demand for negro labor and for new lands, since the cotton crop requires a warm climate and low lands, and exhausts the soil very rapidly. Those parts of the country adapted to cotton-raising felt, therefore, a renewed interest in the increase of negro labor and in territorial extension. And those parts not so adapted felt an indirect interest in the same, since the increased and still increasing profits of the cotton culture made a market for their slaves and a carrying trade for their shipowners. There is no doubt that such was the main cause of the great change of view in regard to the question of negro slavery which the country experienced between 1790 and 1810, but it was not the sole cause. It was inevitable that, when the men of that era passed out of the excited state of mind and feeling produced by the War with the motherland, and came to the task of re-establishing the relations of peace and every-day life and business, they should regain a calmness of judgment, a respect for vested rights, and a regard for customary relations, which placed the political philosophy of 1776 under many limitations and qualifications, some of which, certainly, were sound and valuable. It is only when we take all of these considerations together that we comprehend the reasoning of the men of the first decade of this century upon the great question. They saw a great interest developing which was bringing wealth and comfort into an impoverished country. They knew that it could be then sustained only by negro labor. They did not believe that the negro would work unless forced to it by the white man. They thought it was better for the negro himself to have food, clothing, and shelter, in slavery, than to starve, or become a robber, in liberty. They felt, on the other hand, that the slavery of one human being to another was an exceptional relation in a political system which rested its own right to independent existence upon the doctrine of human freedom. It was not, then, unnatural that they arrived at the conclusion that to prohibit further importations of the barbarians from Africa was the only remedy for which the time was ripe. They sincerely believed that they would place themselves and their slaves in a far more advantageous position for the gradual elevation of the latter by having to deal only with negroes born and reared amid civilized surroundings, and that freedom would finally be attained by all, as the result of a gradual advancement in intelligence, morals, and industry, and would be thus attained without any shock to the civilization and welfare of the country.

This appeared to the men of that day, both of the North and of the South, to be the only safe way to proceed in solving the question of the relation between the highly civilized Anglo-American race and the grossly barbaric negro race in the United States. We think now that they might have done better, and some of the more unsympathetic critics of our history affirm that they did nothing of any consequence, and that in what they did do they acted with a consciously deceptive purpose. There may have been a few to whom this criticism can be justly applied, but there is no sufficient evidence that the mass of them were insincere either in act or thought. The contention that they were is more partisan than truly historical.

Slavery during the War
of 1812, and the years
just before and just
after this war.

The decade between 1807 and 1817 was filled with the questions of foreign relations, of foreign war, and of the results of foreign war. The suspension, and then the almost entire destruction, of foreign commerce by the British Orders in Council, the Napoleonic decrees, the Jeffersonian embargo, and the War of 1812, reduced the exportation in cotton from about fifty millions of pounds in 1807 to less than twenty millions of pounds in 1814. The pecuniary interest in the maintenance of slavery declined thus quite materially, and the majority of the leading men, both North and South, still regarded negro slavery as only a temporary status, which would be gradually modified in the direction of freedom.

Slavery in the
Louisiana territory.

Notwithstanding all this, however, the slavery interest was steadily waxing in influence and power throughout this period. First of all the existence and the extension of slavery in the vast territory purchased from France was secured. The custom of slave-holding had been introduced into this territory by the French and Spanish immigrants, while it was in the possession of France and Spain, before the year 1800. In that year Spain, as we have seen, receded it to France. Nine years before this date, slavery had been abolished in France by the National Assembly. It is certainly a question, then, whether the re-establishment of French supremacy over Louisiana in 1800 did not produce the abolition of slavery there. It will be remembered that France was at that moment subject to the consular government of Bonaparte, and that the Consul was not an enthusiast for the revolutionary ideals. He did not disturb the custom of slave-holding in Louisiana, and when he ceded this vast territory to the United States, in 1803, the custom existed in all its inhabited parts. The Treaty of cession contained a provision which pledged the Government of the United States to uphold the rights of property of the inhabitants of the province. It can be fairly said, therefore, that the United States Government obligated itself to France to maintain slavery within the territory ceded until it should be erected into a Commonwealth, or into Commonwealths, of the Union.

The United States Government might have violated the Treaty, if it had chosen to do so, and the question then raised would have been one of a purely diplomatic or international character. There would have been no question of constitutional power involved. The act of the United States Government breaking the Treaty would have been the law of the land for the inhabitants of this territory.

The United States Government, however, not only permitted the continuance of the custom of slave-holding in Louisiana, but when, in 1804, Congress divided this vast region into two parts by the thirty-third parallel of latitude, and organized the southern portion as the Territory of Orleans, and placed the northern portion under the jurisdiction of the Governor and judges of the Territory of Indiana, it, at the same time, authorized citizens of the United States immigrating into the Territory of Orleans, for the purpose of actual settlement, to take their slaves with them, and provided that the French laws in force at the date of the division should continue in the northern part until repealed or modified by the Governor and judges of Indiana Territory. Any danger to slavery in this district of Louisiana, which might be contained in the power vested by Congress in the Governor and judges of the Territory of Indiana to repeal or modify the French laws which Congress had allowed to continue in the district, was overcome, the following year, by the independent organization of this district as the Territory of Louisiana, and by a provision in the Act of Congress effecting this organization, which provided for the continuance in force of the laws of the district, until repealed or modified by the legislature of the Territory.

When, therefore, in 1812, the Territory of Orleans was erected into the Commonwealth of Louisiana, and the name of the Territory of Louisiana was changed to Missouri, there was no question about the status of the new Commonwealth. It was, both in fact and in law, a slave-holding Commonwealth; and the custom of slave-holding was perpetuated in the newly named Territory by the provision in the Act of Congress that the laws and regulations of the Territory of Louisiana should remain in force in the Territory of Missouri until repealed or modified by the legislature of the Territory of Missouri.

Slavery in the territory
west of North
Carolina and Georgia.

The Government of the United States had entered into obligations with North Carolina and Georgia, as we have seen, not to prohibit slavery in the territory ceded by them to the United States. Whatever we may think of the binding force of any such agreement from a legal point of view, certainly from an ethical point of view it could have been urged that the Government would have broken faith with some of the citizens of the United States had the Congress disregarded this understanding.

Slavery in Louisiana a
different question from
slavery in the North
Carolina and
Georgia cessions.

It cannot, however, be contended that there was any obligation, legal or moral, resting upon the Government of the United States toward any of the citizens of the United States, or any of the Commonwealths, to maintain slavery in the province of Louisiana and in the Territories carved out of it. There was, as we have seen, a provision in the Treaty of cession of 1803, by which the United States Government obligated itself to France to protect the property of the inhabitants of the province. But the Government of the United States was under no obligation to any citizen of the United States, or to any Commonwealth of the Union, to keep this Treaty inviolate. It may be affirmed, then, that the United States Government had, in the case of Louisiana, for the first time, permitted and maintained slavery in territory where it was perfectly free to act in regard to this subject as it would, in so far as its own citizens were concerned. This certainly manifested a great increase in the power of the slave-holders over the general Government.

Interest in slavery
in Maryland and
Virginia increased
by the acquisition
of Louisiana.

In consequence of this vast territorial extension of slavery the interest of the more Northern of the old slave-holding Commonwealths in slavery was, during this period, greatly re-enlivened. Maryland and Virginia were already, in 1807, overstocked with slaves. The opening up of the virgin lands of the Southwest to the immigration of masters and slaves from the older Commonwealths, and the abolition of the foreign slave-trade, now made the Southwest an excellent market for the surplus slave population of these older Commonwealths.

The domestic
slave-trade.

The domestic slave-trade began now to be one of the chief sources of the wealth of Maryland and Virginia especially. Those who participated in this traffic justified it by the claim that it was better for the slaves themselves to be removed to new homes, where they could be better supported, than to be kept in their old homes and suffer for the want of the necessaries of life, and that the distribution of the slave population over a larger area would make future emancipation easier, and less dangerous to the supremacy of the white race. There was a certain force in this reasoning. The mass of the slave-holders seem to have been fully convinced of its soundness, although it did not entirely quiet the consciences of the best men among them to the many painful incidents connected with the separation of the slaves, made subject to this traffic, from their old homes and associations.

It is easy to see, however, that the raising of negro slaves, having become a most profitable industry in the older Commonwealths, acted as a vast bribe upon the ideas of men in regard to the questions of the perpetuation and extension of slavery, and beclouded their consciences in respect thereto.

The relation of
slavery to the
diplomacy of the
United States.

Finally, the capture and abduction of negro slaves by the British forces during the War of 1812, and the demand of the slave-holders that the United States Government should secure the restitution of their slaves, or compensation for the loss of them, from the British Government, moved the United States Government to assume its attitude toward slavery in the administration of the international affairs of the country. The cardinal political principle of the slave-holding statesmen, at that period, was that slavery was a "State" matter with which the United States Government had no concern, and in regard to which it had no powers. This appeal to the Government to voice and enforce their demands against Great Britain in respect to their slave property has seemed, therefore, to some of the later and more radical critics of American history to have been a gross inconsistency, and they have represented it as a proof of the insincerity of the slave-holders wherever their pecuniary interests were involved.

This criticism is rather taking, but a sound view of the Constitution will hardly support it. In making the United States Government the exclusive organ for dealing with foreign countries, the Constitution impliedly confers upon that Government a protectorate against foreign states over interests which are regulated, internally, only by the powers of the respective Commonwealths of the Union. It is true that this doctrine rests upon a national view of the federal system of government in the United States, a view which the slave-holding statesmen did not later share. From their later particularistic principle of the fundamental character of the Union, such a general protectorate over "State" interests by the United States Government against foreign countries could hardly be inferred from the Constitution. If this principle could be assumed by these critics as having been held at that time by the slave-holding statesmen, their charge of inconsistency, if not of insincerity, would be fairly made out. But such, as we have seen, was not the case. Many of the slave-holding statesmen of 1816 were stronger in the national view of the character of the Union than were the statesmen of New England itself.

The United States Government recognized its duty to extend the protection demanded in the case, and it secured from the British Government compensation to the masters for the loss of slave property occasioned by the acts of the British officers during the War.

Such was the status of the slavery question at the close of the War of 1812-15, at the commencement, therefore, of the period when, withdrawing themselves from foreign complications, the people of the United States began to adjust the different parts of their political system, chiefly if not solely, to the demands of their internal interests, and to solve the problems of their polity from the point of view of their domestic institutions. It is not strange, then, that from this point of time onward the powerful institution of negro slavery recognized more and more clearly its natural relations to all of these questions of internal policy and law, and sought more and more determinedly to bring the political system and the policies of the United States into accord with its own exclusive interests. For the first three or four years after the close of the War this tendency did not, as has been pointed out, appear upon the surface, but it was working in the depths. From 1820 to 1861, certainly, it furnishes the point of view for the correct elucidation of the majority of the great problems of the history of the United States.

CHAPTER IV.

THE CREATION OF THE COMMONWEALTH OF MISSOURI

The Growth of Slavery not Seriously Checked by the Prohibition of the Foreign Slave-trade—The General Government Powerless Against Slavery in the Existing Commonwealths—The Powers of the General Government in Respect to Slavery in the Territories—The Powers of Congress in the Admission of new "States" into the Union—Slavery in the Missouri Territory—The First Petition from Missouri Territory for the Permission to form a Commonwealth—The Second Petition, and the First Bill in Congress, for the Admission of Missouri—The Tallmadge Amendment to the Bill—Passage of the Amendment by the House of Representatives—Passage of the Original Bill by the Senate—The Missouri Bill during the Session of 1819-20—Mr. Taylor's Proposition—The Bill for the Admission of Maine Reported and Passed by the House of Representatives—The Failure of Mr. Taylor's Plan—The Missouri Bill again before the House of Representatives—Mr. Taylor's Amendment to the Bill—The Independent Missouri Bill of the Senate—The Refusal of the Senate to Disconnect the two Measures—The Conference on the Subject, and the First Missouri Compromise—President Monroe's Approval of the Compromise—Review of the Points Involved in the Contest—The Revival of the Missouri Struggle—The Missouri Constitution in Congress—Mr. Lowndes' Bill for the Admission of Missouri with the Instrument Unchanged—Defeat of the Lowndes Bill in the House—Passage of the Senate Bill with a Proviso by the Senate—The Senate Bill Tabled by the House—Mr. Clay and the Second Missouri Compromise—Passage of the Second Missouri Compromise Act—The General Effects of the Decisions Reached in the Missouri Question.

The growth of slavery
not seriously checked
by the prohibition
of the foreign
slave-trade.

Already before the year 1819, as we have seen in the preceding chapter, had it become manifest that the influences and measures relied upon by the forefathers for the ultimate extirpation of negro slavery were not effecting the desired result in the Commonwealths south of the line of Pennsylvania and of the Ohio. It was evident that the revolutionary enthusiasm for universal liberty and the rights of man was not so strongly felt by the generation which grew up after "'76" as by the generation of "'76," that the laws against the importation of slaves were being evaded, and that the slaves were increasing by birth many times more rapidly than they were decreasing by emancipation and removal to the colonies of the American Society for Emancipation. Moreover, four new Commonwealths had been established—Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, and Mississippi—in which slavery was legalized, and a fifth—Alabama—was even then in process of creation. It was manifest from all sides to the friends of universal freedom that other means than those hitherto relied upon must be found, if any progress was to be made in the advancement of liberty, yea if the evident retrogression in respect to this prime element of political civilization was to be checked.

The general Government
powerless against
slavery in the existing
Commonwealths.

All had been done by the United States Government, however, against slavery within the existing Commonwealths that the Constitution allowed. Before anything more could be undertaken, the Constitution itself would have to be so amended as to authorize it. The extraordinary majorities required for the initiation and adoption of amendments made it practically impossible to effect anything by such means. Of the thirteen original Commonwealths, seven had abolished slavery and six had retained it. To these had now been added four—Vermont, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois—in which slavery was forbidden, and five in which it was permitted—Kentucky, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama—making thus the number upon each side the same. And although the population in the Commonwealths north of the line of Pennsylvania and the Ohio had outstripped, in increase, that in those south of this line by near half a million of souls in thirty years, and the representation in the national House of Representatives stood consequently in favor of the former section in the ratio of 104 to 79, still the method of representation in the Senate, and the equality in the number of the Commonwealths permitting, with those prohibiting, slavery, stood firmly in the way of any amendment of the Constitution, either favorable or unfavorable to the slavery interest.

The powers of the
general Government
in respect to slavery
in the Territories.

The Constitution furnished, however, an indirect way of reaching the desired result. It gave the Congress general powers within the Territories and did not restrict these powers in behalf of slavery. Congress might thus prohibit slavery in the Territories, and the Territories would thus become settled by a free population, an anti-slavery population, which would form Commonwealths at the proper time, in which the free status would be perpetuated by Commonwealth law. And when a sufficient number of free Commonwealths had been thus created to give the necessary majorities to amend the Constitution in the direction of abolition, slavery might be extinguished in the Commonwealths which had already legalized it. But the first difficulty in the way of the effectiveness of this line of action was the fact that Congress had already forfeited, in part, the opportunity, by failing to keep the southern portion of Louisiana Territory under a Territorial organization until slavery could have been eradicated in it. And it was probably, in 1819, already too late to attempt to keep the remaining parts of this vast region, so far as it had been settled at all, under Territorial organization until this result could have been effected. At least, the advocates of freedom in 1819 evidently thought so, for they searched the Constitution to find some other power in the general Government by which to deal with the question.

The powers of
Congress in the
admission of new
"States" into the
Union.

There was another provision which had been already several times applied to this very subject and to other subjects. It was the provision which conferred upon Congress the power to create, or co-operate in creating, new Commonwealths out of the Territories of the United States. This power is expressed in general terms, and in its employment Congress had imposed a number of limitations upon the powers of the new Commonwealths which the Constitution did not impose upon those of the original Commonwealths. Here, then, was a possible way for those seeking the advancement of liberty to effect their purpose. If their interpretation of the Constitution, in regard to the extent of this power, was correct, and they could only command the President and a simple majority in both branches of Congress, they could abolish slavery in every new Commonwealth at the time of its creation, and make the continuance of the free status the perpetual condition of its continued existence as a Commonwealth. It would then be only a question of time when sufficient majorities would be secured for so amending the Constitution of the United States as to expel slavery from the old Commonwealths through the regular forms for constitutional development. It was an attractive scheme, and appeared to provide the means for ridding the country peaceably of its great evil at no very far distant day. It was the last possible means which the Constitution afforded. It was tried in the creation of the Commonwealth of Missouri and it failed. It is this which constitutes the significance of the great movement. The result attained made the abolition of slavery by the United States Government, through legal and peaceable means, an utter impossibility. It contributed, at least, toward making the War of 1861 an historical necessity.

As we have seen in the preceding chapter, slaveholding had become established by custom in the vast region known as the Louisiana province, wherever it was inhabited, during the periods when it belonged to Spain and France, and had been permitted to continue after its acquisition by the United States; and that in 1812 this province was divided into one slave-holding Commonwealth, Louisiana, and one slave-holding Territory, Missouri.

Slavery in
the Missouri
Territory.

From 1812 to 1818 Congress did nothing toward the extinction of slavery in the Missouri Territory, or preventing the free immigration of masters with their slaves into the Territory. Neither had the legislature of the Territory done anything touching these subjects. It may, therefore, be assumed that in the year 1818, the holding of negroes as slaves was legal by custom, if not by positive law, in the whole of the Missouri Territory, so far as it had been settled, and that unless something should thereafter be done, either by the United States Government or by the Territorial government, forbidding it, slavery would be likewise legal wherever the Territory might become settled.

The first petition from
Missouri Territory
for the permission to
form a Commonwealth.

Before the beginning of the year 1818, the population in the Territory which looked to the town of St. Louis as its centre had begun to agitate the question of the establishment of Commonwealth government. During the Congressional session of 1817-18, petitions appeared in the House of Representatives from this population, praying for the erection of that part of Missouri Territory, bounded roughly by the thirty-sixth parallel of latitude on the south, the line of longitude passing through the point of confluence of the Kansas River and the Missouri River on the west, the Falls of the Des Moines River and the course of that river on the north, and the Mississippi on the east, into a Commonwealth of the Union. The petitions were referred and reported on, and the bill presented reached the stage for debate in the committee of the Whole House, but was not taken up during the session.

The second petition, and
the first bill in Congress, for
the admission of Missouri.

Early in the following session, that of 1818-19, the Speaker of the House of Representatives presented a memorial from the Territorial legislature of Missouri which contained substantially the same prayer as the petitions presented at the preceding session. This memorial was immediately referred to a committee for report, but the bill which grew out of the petitions and the memorial was not brought forward for debate in the committee of the Whole House until February 13th, 1819.

The Tallmadge
amendment to
the bill.

It was upon this day, and during this first debate, that Mr. James Tallmadge, of New York, offered the famous amendment to the bill, which precipitated a discussion, that lasted for more than a year, upon the great subject of the distribution of powers between the United States Government and the Commonwealths, a discussion in which all the great legal lights of both Houses of Congress participated, and during the course of which the whole country hung with painful anxiety upon the outcome. It was the first great trial of the Constitution under the issue of a domestic question, a question which threatened to divide the country upon geographic lines, a question which, therefore, threatened the dissolution of the Union.

The exact words of this amendment are essential to a correct comprehension of the question involved. It reads: "And provided that the further introduction of slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be free at the age of twenty-five years."

The debate upon the
Tallmadge amendment.

The debate upon this motion is not fully reported in the annals of Congress, but it is sufficiently reported to give a correct idea of the constitutional questions involved. The discussion proceeded from the two points of view of constitutional powers and public policy. Of course the first point for the restrictionists, as those who favored the amendment were termed, to establish was the constitutionality of the power of Congress to impose this restriction in erecting a Territory into a Commonwealth. If Congress has, or had, no such power, the question of policy need not have been considered. They claimed the power, and based it upon that paragraph of Article IV. section three, which reads: "New States may be admitted by the Congress into this Union." It will be readily seen that this is a very loose statement concerning the powers of Congress in establishing this most fundamental relation. Taken apart from all connections, its most natural meaning is that foreign states may become politically joined with the United States by an Act of Congress, in so far as this country is concerned. On the other hand, taken with the context, it appears to mean that Congress may establish Commonwealth governments, or, in the language of the Constitution, "States," upon the territory belonging to the United States, or to some "State" or "States" already within the Union. This is, without any reasonable doubt, its only meaning. For if it had any reference to the connection of foreign states with the United States, it would confer the most important diplomatic power of the United States Government upon the Congress, while the Constitution certainly confers the whole of this class of powers upon the President and the Senate.

The exact question
at issue in the
first debate on the
Missouri question.

This was not, however, the point at issue in the Missouri question. That point was, whether, in the creation of new Commonwealths by Congress upon territory already within the Union, and subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the general Government, Congress had the constitutional power to impose restrictions upon the new Commonwealths thus created, which the Constitution did not impose upon the original Commonwealths. The restrictionists, led by Mr. Tallmadge and Mr. Taylor, of New York, and Mr. Fuller, of Massachusetts, contended that Congress possessed this power. Their argument, reduced to a pair of propositions, was, that the Constitution did not require Congress to "admit new States into this Union," but only empowered Congress to do so at its discretion; that therefore Congress could refuse to admit at its discretion, and that if Congress could admit or refuse to admit at its own discretion, it could admit upon conditions, upon such conditions as it might deem wise to impose, and could make the continued existence of the new Commonwealth, as a Commonwealth, depend upon the continued observance by it of these conditions.

The precedents cited
in support of the
Tallmadge amendment.

They pointed to the precedents of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, upon all of which Congress had imposed, as a condition of their assumption of Commonwealth powers and government as "States of the Union," the requirement that their constitutions should not be repugnant to the "Ordinance of the Northwest Territory of 1787," the sixth article of which provided that there should be neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a criminal penalty, in the Territory, from which these Commonwealths were carved out. They contended that Congress thus prohibited slavery in these new Commonwealths as the condition of its assent to their assumption of the status of Commonwealths of the Union and of their continued existence with that status.

They further pointed to the precedent of Louisiana, upon whose "admission into the Union as a State," Congress imposed the conditions that the new Commonwealth should use the English language as its official language, should guarantee the writ of habeas corpus and trial by jury in all criminal cases, and should incorporate in its organic law the fundamental principles of civil and religious liberty.

Argument for the amendment from
the duty of the United States to
guarantee a republican form of
government to every Commonwealth.

They went so far as to assert that the Constitution not only permitted Congress to lay the prohibition of slavery upon every new Commonwealth which it might "admit into the Union," but obligated Congress to do so by the constitutional provision which makes it the duty of the United States Government to guarantee a republican form of government to every Commonwealth of the Union. That is, they claimed that slavery was incompatible with the republican form of government, and that Congress was therefore bound by the Constitution to prohibit slavery whenever called upon to act in regard to it.

Argument from
morals and policy.

Having thus, from their point of view, vindicated the constitutional power and duty of Congress to enact the restriction, they claimed the personal liberty of every human being to be a self-evident principle of ethics, specifically recognized in the Declaration of Independence, and therefore a principle of the political system of the United States. And, finally, they demonstrated the ruinous policy of the system of slave labor in the economy of the country.

There is no question that Mr. Tallmadge and his friends had taken strong ground, and that it would require extraordinary efforts to dislodge them.

Replies to the
arguments of the
restrictionists.

During the first debate upon the subject, the opponents of the restriction do not seem to have been so clear in their own minds in reference to the principles involved as they became later, and their arguments do not appear so convincing. Nevertheless, they touched the point which was the real gist of the contention, and dealt with it ably from the first. Mr. Scott, the delegate from Missouri Territory, and Mr. P. P. Barbour, of Virginia, made a vigorous attack upon the claim of a power in Congress to enact the restriction, as a condition of admitting Missouri, "as a State," into the Union. They demonstrated quite clearly that the interpretation which the restrictionists placed upon the constitutional provision empowering Congress "to admit new States into the Union" would enable Congress to establish inequalities ad libitum between the original Commonwealths and the new ones; would, in principle, enable Congress to make mere provinces of the new Commonwealths. They showed conclusively that the real question of the controversy was not whether slavery should exist in Missouri or not, but was whether the Commonwealth of Missouri should be allowed to determine that matter for herself or should have it determined for her by the Congress of the United States. They pointed to the facts that the original Commonwealths exercised, before the formation of the existing Constitution of the United States, exclusive power over this matter, each for itself; that the Constitution had not withdrawn this power from them, nor prohibited it to them; and that the Constitution declared all powers not delegated to the United States Government, nor prohibited to the "States," to be reserved to the "States" respectively or to the people. They, therefore, claimed that the determination of the question whether slavery should exist in any Commonwealth or not was a power reserved by the Constitution to each Commonwealth for itself, and that the attempt to introduce a distinction between the old Commonwealths and the new, in regard to the possession of this power, was an attack upon the first principle of federal liberty, the principle of equality in powers and duties between the members of the Union, an attack which could be justified legally only by an express warrant from the Constitution itself.

They disputed outright the constitutionality of the restrictions in regard to slavery which Congress had imposed upon the Commonwealths of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and held that these Commonwealths might, at any time, so amend their organic law as to introduce slavery; and they justified the restrictions imposed upon Louisiana as having express warrant from the Constitution.

They did not deny the claims of the restrictionists that slavery was ethically wrong and economically destructive, but they contended that the evil and the impolicy of it would be mitigated by allowing the slaves to be spread over a larger extent of territory, reducing thus their numerical ratio to the white population in the older Commonwealths, and enabling their masters to emigrate with them from poor and exhausted lands to rich virgin soil, instead of being obliged to keep them in want, or sell them to new and, therefore, less considerate masters. They argued, upon this point, that all importation of slaves from foreign countries having been strictly prohibited, not one slave could be added to the number already existing by allowing their movement into new territory, but that their condition would be vastly improved by the increased products of their labor.

The pledge to maintain
slave property in Louisiana
in the Treaty of cession.

They contended, finally, that the treaty with France by which Louisiana was ceded to the United States contained an express provision pledging the United States Government to protect all the existing property rights of the inhabitants of the province, and to admit these inhabitants, so soon as consistent with the principles of the Constitution of the United States, to the enjoyment of Commonwealth powers on an equality with those of the other Commonwealths of the Union.

There is no question that hostility to slavery colored the views of the restrictionists in regard to the constitutional powers of Congress, and there is also no question that the anxiety of the slaveholders to maintain the security of their property led them to exaggerate all of the defences of the Constitution in its behalf. It must, however, be conceded that the opponents of the restriction had, from the outset, the better of the argument in the question of constitutional law, and maintained it throughout the debate. They did not express themselves as clearly and as exactly as the political scientist of this age would do, but they demonstrated quite convincingly that the questions of political ethics and public policy were, at the moment, entirely impertinent, unless it could be satisfactorily established that Congress possessed the constitutional power to act in the premises. And they showed that no federal system of government could exist, as to the new Commonwealths, if Congress had the unlimited authority to distribute powers between the general Government and these Commonwealths, which the interpretation that the restrictionists placed upon the clause of the Constitution vesting Congress with the authority to "admit new States into this Union" involved.

The ethical and economical influences and considerations weighed more heavily in the minds of the Northern members than the arguments from constitutional law, although they asserted that the Constitution also was upon their side.

Passage of the Tallmadge
amendment by the House
of Representatives.

They carried the first part of Mr. Tallmadge's amendment, the prohibition upon the further introduction of slavery into Missouri, by a majority of eleven votes, and the second part, the provision for the emancipation of all slaves born in Missouri, after its admission as a Commonwealth, when they should have reached the age of twenty-five years, by a majority of four votes.

The leading men from the North who voted against the amendment were Parrot, of New Hampshire, Holmes, Mason, and Shaw, of Massachusetts, Storrs, of New York, Bloomfield, of New Jersey, Harrison, of Ohio, and McLean, of Illinois. They were strong and fearless men and no friends to slavery, but they were good constitutional lawyers, and they felt that it was better to stand by the Constitution with slavery than to expose it to the strain of exaggerated interpretations.

The Missouri bill
in the Senate.

It was upon February 17th, 1819, that the Missouri bill was finally passed by the House and sent to the Senate. It was immediately read twice in the Senate and referred to the committee in charge of the bill for admitting Alabama.

On the 22nd, Mr. Tait, of Georgia, in behalf of the committee, reported the bill to the Senate, with the recommendation that the Tallmadge amendment be stricken out.

The annals of Congress state that "a long and animated debate" took place upon this recommendation, but the speeches are not reported. It may be safely concluded, however, that the argument against the power of Congress to pass the amendment prevailed very decidedly in the minds of the members of this more calm and judicial body. They voted, twenty-two to sixteen, against the first part of the amendment, and thirty-one to seven against the second part. Such men as Otis, of Massachusetts, and Lacock, of Pennsylvania, voted against the entire amendment, and Daggett, of Connecticut, and even Rufus King, of New York, recorded their voices against the second part of it.

Passage of the
original bill
by the Senate.

The bill admitting Missouri, without the Tallmadge amendment, passed the Senate on March 2nd, and was returned to the House substantially in this form. The House immediately refused to agree to the striking out of the amendment, and the Senate resolved thereupon to adhere to its own act. The bill was thus lost for the session, and the Missouri question became the firebrand with which to light up fanatical and incendiary passions, both at the North and at the South, during the following recess of the Congress.

The Missouri bill
during the session
of 1819-20.

At the beginning of the session of 1819-20, Mr. Scott secured the reference of the memorials concerning the admission of Missouri, presented at the preceding session, to a select committee. On the following day, December 9th, Mr. Scott reported a bill from this committee, which authorized the inhabitants of that part of Missouri Territory already described to form a constitution and Commonwealth government. This new bill was read twice and referred to the committee of the Whole House for discussion.

The policy of the restrictionists
to delay the admission
of any new Commonwealths.

Warned by the experiences of the preceding session, the restrictionists now took another tack. They developed the plan of delaying the formation of any more Commonwealths in the Missouri Territory until Congress could abolish slavery in the whole of it.

During the debate of the preceding session upon the power of Congress to impose upon new Commonwealths, at the time of their creation, limitations not prescribed by the Constitution, it had been asserted by the restrictionists, and not denied by their opponents, that Congress could control the status of the Territories, and keep slavery out of them or abolish it in them, at its own discretion, during the period before the Territories should be permitted to assume Commonwealth government. This seems to have been considered by nearly all, if not quite all, as a fair interpretation of that provision of the Constitution which vests in Congress the power to make all needful rules and regulations respecting the Territories of the United States. The friends of slavery restriction now determined to take advantage of this possibility, even at this late day, and go back to the work of clearing all the Territories west of the Mississippi of slavery by a Congressional Act; after which the formation of new Commonwealths in these Territories might be delayed until they could be settled by a population, which would, by local law, maintain the free status. Mr. John W. Taylor, of New York, seems to have formulated the plan. On the 14th of December he moved the appointment of a committee to consider the question of prohibiting the further introduction of slavery into the Territories of the United States west of the Mississippi. The proposition was voted, and Mr. Taylor himself was appointed the chairman of the committee. Mr. Taylor then moved that the consideration of the Missouri bill be postponed to the first Monday of the following February. The friends of this bill objected most strenuously to this proposition, and Mr. Taylor's party compromised with them by agreeing to shorten the period of the proposed postponement to the second Monday of January.

Mr. Taylor's
proposition.

Mr. Taylor's plan was moderate in its character. He did not propose to emancipate slaves already held within these Territories or their issue born therein, but simply to prevent any further increase by immigration or importation. It is difficult to see how the slaveholders themselves could have opposed this proposition with much vigor. They had, nearly all of them, professed to regard slavery as an evil, though they had suggested that the evil would be mitigated by the spreading of the slaves over more territory. It was at any rate to be expected that those Representatives and Senators from the North, who had voted against the Tallmadge amendment from legal scruples only, would join with the restrictionists in the support of Mr. Taylor's measure, since they all regarded slavery restriction as sound policy wherever the Constitution would permit it. There certainly seemed to be a fair chance for the passage of a law which would protect the Territories from, at least, any considerable increase of the slave population which might already be within them, and give white immigration a chance to occupy and fill them, and form free Commonwealths in them. But this passing hope was dashed by a conjunction of events, the elements of which had already presented themselves.

The petition from the
convention in Maine for
the admission of Maine.


The bill for the admission
of Maine reported and
passed by the House
of Representatives.

The people resident in that part of Massachusetts known as the district of Maine had, through delegates in convention assembled, framed a Commonwealth constitution and government. The assent of Massachusetts had been regularly given to the division of the old Commonwealth. And on December 8th, 1819, Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, presented to the House of Representatives a petition from the constitutional convention in the district of Maine, praying for the admission of Maine, as a Commonwealth, into the Union, on an equality with the Commonwealths already existing. The people of this district had not asked the permission of Congress to form a constitution and government, for the reason afterwards alleged that they were already in the enjoyment of this status as a part of Massachusetts. The reason offered was not, however, entirely satisfactory, and the people of the district were hardly able to clear themselves from the charge of an undue assumption of powers. The petition was, however, immediately referred to a committee, with Mr. Holmes as chairman. On the 21st, Mr. Holmes reported a bill to the House providing for the admission of the district as a Commonwealth. On the 30th, the House, in committee of the Whole, took up the bill for consideration, and in the course of the debate upon it Mr. Clay suggested the connection of the Missouri bill with the Maine bill. Mr. Clay did not, however, put his suggestion into the form of a motion, and therefore the House came to no vote upon the point at this juncture. The bill for the admission of Maine was passed on January 3rd, 1820, without any connection with the Missouri bill, and without any restrictions or limitations upon the powers of the new Commonwealth beyond what the Constitution of the United States placed upon those of the original Commonwealths. Mr. Clay's suggestion was not, however, lost upon the Senate, as will be seen later.

The failure of Mr. Taylor's
plan for preventing
slavery extension.

Meanwhile Mr. Taylor's committee had not been able to come to any agreement. On December 28th, 1819, before the final passage of the Maine bill, Mr. Taylor stated to the House that the committee had instructed him to ask for its discharge. The House agreed to his request, and he immediately moved that a new committee be appointed, and "instructed to report a bill" prohibiting the further admission of slaves into the Territories of the United States west of the Mississippi River. This motion evidently appeared to the House to be a prejudgment of the whole question, since it postponed the consideration of it indefinitely.

The Missouri bill
again before the House
of Representatives.

The Missouri bill was, however, also allowed to rest until January 24th, 1820, and when, upon that day, the Speaker announced the bill as the first order, Mr. Taylor moved for another week's delay, and the motion was lost by only a single vote. On the next day the House, in committee of the Whole, proceeded to consider the bill. On the 26th, Mr. Storrs, of New York, undertook to connect the prohibition of slavery in the region north of the thirty-eighth parallel of latitude and west of the Mississippi River and the proposed Missouri boundary with the grant of the permission to form a Commonwealth in Missouri. The opponents of slavery extension did not, however, regard this as sufficient compensation for their support of the bill, and Mr. Storrs' motion was lost.

Mr. Taylor's
amendment
to the bill.

Whereupon Mr. Taylor moved that the people of Missouri should be required to ordain and establish in their constitution the prohibition of slavery and involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime, in the proposed Commonwealth. Conceding, as the result of the discussions, and the action of the Congress during the preceding session, that Congress had no constitutional authority to impose restrictions upon new Commonwealths, as the condition of their admission into the Union, which the Constitution did not impose upon the original Commonwealths, the new question involved in Mr. Taylor's motion, from the point of view of constitutional law, now was, whether Congress could require of a new Commonwealth, as the condition of its admission to the Union, that it should impose any limitations upon itself which the Constitution of the United States did not impose upon the original Commonwealths. Could Congress effect indirectly what it could not do directly?

Mr. Taylor's
argument in
support of
his amendment.

Mr. Taylor's argument rested substantially upon the proposition, upheld by the restrictionists during the preceding session, that if Congress could admit, it could refuse to admit, and if it could admit or refuse to admit, it could admit upon conditions. He, however, advanced other propositions and suggestions. He held that the admission of a new Commonwealth into the Union was a procedure in the nature of a contract between the United States Government and the people of the new Commonwealth, and, therefore, admitted of any terms accepted by both parties. He further held that the provision of the Constitution, which impliedly vested in Congress the power to prohibit, after 1808, the importation or migration of slaves, covered the case, in that the word migration meant passage from one Commonwealth into another, in distinction from importation, which meant the bringing of slaves into the United States from foreign countries. And he suggested that territory acquired by the United States subsequent to the formation of the Constitution need not be treated with the same consideration, as to the rights of its inhabitants, as that which belonged to the United States at the time of the formation of the Constitution.

Replies to
Mr. Taylor's
reasoning.

Of course the members from the South resisted Mr. Taylor's conclusions. But they were not alone in their position. Some of the strongest opponents of slavery from the North stood up with them in resisting what they considered to be an attack upon the principle of federal government. Mr. Holmes, of Massachusetts, was again chief among them, and it is to his argument that one must look for the most scientific and unprejudiced view of the subject.

Mr. Holmes'
argument
against the
amendment.

After demonstrating most convincingly that the clauses of the Constitution which vested in Congress the power to prohibit the migration of persons into the United States after 1808 and to regulate commerce between the Commonwealths could not be interpreted as giving Congress the power to prevent the transportation of slaves from one Commonwealth into another, Mr. Holmes attacked the fundamental proposition upon which Mr. Taylor relied, the proposition that if Congress could admit, it could refuse to admit, and if it could admit or refuse to admit at pleasure, it could admit upon conditions. Mr. Holmes contended that the power to determine whether slavery should exist or not in any community was possessed by each Colony before the Revolution, and by each "State" after the Revolution, and that the Constitution of 1787 had not deprived the "States" of it, but had recognized it as belonging to each of them exclusively; that new "States" admitted by Congress into the Union must have all the rights, and be subject to all the duties, which the original "States" possessed, on the one side, and were obligated to discharge, on the other; that Congress could not increase the powers of the general Government within the new Commonwealths by selling the Territories a license to the Commonwealth status, and taking the pay for it in powers to be exercised by the general Government in the new Commonwealths, which that Government could not, by the Constitution, exercise within the original Commonwealths; and that if Congress assumed to exercise such power, and the people of the Territory seeking the Commonwealth status should even accept the imposed condition, the new Commonwealth had the right and the power to free itself from the condition, and the Congress was powerless to prevent it.

Mr. McLane's
argument
against the
amendment.

Mr. McLane, of Delaware, a Commonwealth whose legislature had instructed the representatives from the Commonwealth in Congress to support all measures for preventing the spread of slavery in the Territories of the Union west of the Mississippi, presented the question with even greater clearness and conciseness. He simply analyzed the words of the Constitution which make up the clause conferring power on Congress "to admit new States into this Union." He said that the power to admit was not the power to create; that the very use of the word presupposed that the power to create the "State" resided elsewhere than in Congress; that Congress must admit a "State," not a Territory or a province or anything but a "State;" that a "State," in the system of federal government of the United States, was an organization whose powers and duties had been determined by the Constitution of the United States itself, and could not be altered by Congressional definitions and limitations; that Congress must admit the "State" into this Union, not into some other union; and that this Union was a system of federal government, in which the relations between the general Government and the "States" had been fixed by the Constitution of the United States, and could not be altered by a mere Congressional act. This was strong reasoning, and it had a powerful effect upon the minds of all who heard it and of all who read it.

The independent
Missouri bill
of the Senate.

Meanwhile events were occurring in the Senate which were to exercise a controlling influence over the fate of the bill in the House. On December 29th, 1819, a memorial from the Territorial legislature of Missouri, praying for the admission of that part of the Territory already described in the memorial to the House, had been presented in the Senate, and referred to the Judiciary committee. On January 3rd, 1820, the House bill admitting Maine was sent into the Senate. Mr. James Barbour, of Virginia, immediately gave notice of his intention to move the connection of the two subjects in the same bill, and on the same terms. As we have seen, Mr. Clay had already made this suggestion in the House, but had not formally proposed it.

The connection of the
House bill admitting
Maine with the Senate's
bill admitting Missouri.

The House bill admitting Maine was immediately referred to the Judiciary committee, which committee already had the Missouri bill in its charge, and on January 6th, Mr. Smith, of South Carolina, the chairman of this committee, reported from it to the Senate the House bill admitting Maine, with an amendment authorizing the people of Missouri, within the general geographical boundaries already described, to form a constitution and Commonwealth government. The amendment contained no restrictions or conditions with regard to slavery.

On January 13th, the day fixed for considering the report of the committee, Mr. Roberts, of Pennsylvania, moved the recommitment of the Maine bill to the Judiciary committee, with the instruction that the bill should be divested of the amendment in regard to Missouri. The vote upon this motion would, therefore, reveal the attitude of the Senate upon the question of tacking the two subjects together. Such men as Mr. Roberts, Mr. Mellen, Mr. Burrill, and Mr. Otis argued that they should be disconnected, on the ground of the discordance of the two provisions. The people of Maine, they said, had already formed their constitution and government, and were simply asking for admission, while the Missouri bill was a measure for enabling the people of a part of the Missouri Territory to form a constitution and government, under which they might be admitted later, provided that constitution should prove satisfactory to Congress.

On the other hand, such men as Mr. Barbour, Mr. Smith, and Mr. Macon contended that the two subjects were entirely germane, and that any contrary appearance was caused by the unwarranted action of the people of Maine in proceeding so far as they had done without asking the consent of Congress, for which wrongful procedure presumptuous Maine should not be rewarded and respectful Missouri punished.

The refusal of the
Senate to disconnect
the two measures.

On the 14th, the vote was taken upon the motion to recommit, and it was lost by a majority of seven votes in forty-three. A number of the Senators from the Northern Commonwealths voted with the Southerners in refusing to separate the two subjects.

The question then came upon the contents of the bill as reported by the Judiciary committee. Mr. Roberts immediately moved to amend the bill by a provision prohibiting the further introduction of slavery into Missouri. The arguments upon this motion were substantially a repetition of what had already been said upon the subject in the House of Representatives. The amendment was voted down, on February 1st, by a large majority.

Mr. Thomas'
amendment to
the joint measure.

On the 3rd, Mr. Thomas, of Illinois, offered an amendment, which was destined to play a very important part in the further development of the subject. It was the proposition to exclude slavery from the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, except within the limits of the proposed Commonwealth of Missouri. The Senate was not yet prepared, however, to consider this, the question before it, at the moment, being the question of procedure, the question whether the two subjects should be united in one bill. The Senate had only voted not to recommit the bill to the Judiciary committee with instructions, and it was thought necessary to take a formal vote upon the question of the connection of the two subjects as proposed by the committee before considering any further amendments to it. Mr. Thomas, therefore, withdrew his motion for the moment.

Mr. Pinkney's great argument
against the power of Congress
to lay restrictions on new
Commonwealths not imposed
by the Constitution on the
original Commonwealths.

It was at this stage of the proceedings, when apparently there was nothing before the Senate but the question of the union of the two subjects, that Mr. Pinkney of Maryland made his brilliant and unanswerable argument upon the question of the powers of Congress in the premises. It differed logically very little from Mr. McLane's powerful analysis of the subject in the House, but it was elaborated and embellished as only Mr. Pinkney's beautiful diction could do it. The gist of the reasoning was, however, contained in a few sentences which ran as follows: "What, then, is the professed result? To admit a State into this Union. What is this Union? A confederation of States, equal in sovereignty, capable of everything which the Constitution does not forbid, or authorize Congress to forbid. It is an equal union between parties equally sovereign. They were sovereign, independent of the Union. The object of the Union was common protection for the exercise of already existing sovereignty. The parties gave up a portion of that sovereignty to insure the remainder. As far as they gave it up by the common compact, they have ceased to be sovereign. The Union provides the means for securing the residue; and it is into that Union that a new State is to come. By acceding to it, the new State is placed on the same footing with the original States. It accedes for the same purpose, that is, protection for its unsurrendered sovereignty. If it comes in shorn of its beams, crippled and disparaged beyond the original States, it is not into the original Union that it comes. For it is a different sort of Union. The first was a Union inter pares. This is a Union inter disparates, between giants and a dwarf, between power and feebleness, between full proportioned sovereignties and a miserable image of power—a thing which that very Union has shrunk and shrivelled from its just size instead of preserving it in its true dimensions. It is into this Union, that is the Union of the Federal Constitution, that you are to admit or refuse to admit. You can admit into no other. You cannot make the Union, as to the new States, what it is not as to the old; for then it is not this Union that you open for the entrance of a new party. If you make it enter into a new and additional compact is it any longer the same Union?... But it is a State which you are to admit. What is a State in the sense of the Constitution? It is not a State in general, but a State as you find it in the Constitution.... Ask the Constitution. It shows you what it means by a State by reference to the parties to it. It must be such a State as Massachusetts, Virginia, and the other members of the American Confederacy—a State with full sovereignty except as the Constitution restricts it. The whole amount of the argument on the other side is, that you may refuse to admit a new State, and that, therefore, if you admit, you may prescribe the terms. The answer to that argument is, that even if you can refuse, you can prescribe no terms which are inconsistent with the act you are to do. You can prescribe no conditions which, if carried into effect, would make the new State less a sovereign State than, under the Union as it stands, it would be. You can prescribe no terms which will make the compact of Union between it and the original States essentially different from that compact among the original States. You may admit or refuse to admit, but if you admit, you must admit a State in the sense of the Constitution—a State with all such sovereignty as belongs to the original parties; and it must be into this Union that you are to admit it, not into a Union of your own dictating, formed out of the existing Union by qualifications and new compacts, altering its character and effect, and making it fall short of its protecting energy in reference to the new State, whilst it requires an energy of another sort—the energy of restraint and destruction."

This is the old-fashioned political and rhetorical way of saying what the modern publicist would state in such language as this: In a federal system of government, all powers are distributed by the state, the nation, the ultimate sovereignty, through the Constitution, between the central Government and the Commonwealths. The assumption by the central Government of the authority to redistribute these powers in a different manner, in any given case, is an assumption of sovereignty, the Constitution-making power, and the possession of any such power by the central Government makes a federal system of government impossible. It makes the Commonwealths only creatures and agencies of the central Government. It changes the whole system from federal government to centralized government. In the federal system of government as it existed, in 1820, in the United States, the determination of the question whether slavery should exist or not in any Commonwealth was reserved through the Constitution to each Commonwealth for itself, since this power was neither vested in the central Government nor denied to the Commonwealths. If Congress could assume this power, it could assume any and every other power and right which the Commonwealths possessed. Such authority in the central Government would destroy in principle the federal system, at once, and make the government a centralized form.

Pinkney's
argument
successful.

There was nobody in the Senate who did, or could, answer this argument. The amendments proposed after this to the bill as reported from the Judiciary committee contained no further restrictions upon the Commonwealth powers of Missouri, but had reference only to what remained of the Louisiana territory north and west of the boundaries of the proposed Commonwealth.

The adoption of Mr.
Thomas' amendment
by the Senate, and
the passage of the
Maine-Missouri bill
thus amended.

The formal vote connecting the two subjects of Maine and Missouri was taken in the Senate on February 16th, and after this was resolved upon, Mr. Thomas immediately renewed his motion to amend the bill by the addition of a clause prohibiting slavery in the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes, outside of the boundaries of the proposed Commonwealth of Missouri. After an attempt, on the one side, to carry this line up to the fortieth parallel, and a counter attempt on the other to make the prohibition extend to all the territory west of the Mississippi, except that already under Commonwealth government, or in process of being put under Commonwealth government by the existing bill—the result of which would have been the prohibition of slavery in the just organized Territory of Arkansas—Mr. Thomas' amendment was adopted as the fair compromise. The bill, as thus amended, passed the Senate on February 18th, 1820, and was sent immediately to the House of Representatives.

The House of
Representatives'
refusal to agree
to the combination.


The conference on the
subject, and the first
Missouri compromise.

The form of the bill was now the House bill in regard to Maine, with the Missouri bill and the Thomas proposition attached to it as amendments. The House voted to disagree to these amendments, and sent the bill, stripped of them, back to the Senate. The Senate voted immediately to insist upon its amendments, and the House answered with a vote insisting upon its position. Thereupon, the Senate requested a conference with the House upon the subject, and appointed Mr. Pinkney, Mr. Barbour, and Mr. Thomas as its representatives. The House acceded to the request and appointed Mr. Holmes, Mr. Taylor, Mr. Lowndes, Mr. Parker, and Mr. Kinsey as its representatives. These gentlemen met and agreed without much difficulty to the following points: That the Senate should withdraw its amendments to the House bill for the admission of Maine; that both the Senate and the House should pass the Missouri bill, without the condition in reference to the restriction of slavery in the proposed Commonwealth; and that both the Senate and the House should add a provision to the Missouri bill prohibiting slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana territory north of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. That is, the House should gain its point of order in the separation of the two subjects; the Senate should gain its point of constitutional law in defending the new Commonwealth against restrictions not imposed by the Constitution upon the original Commonwealths; and the two should compromise upon a fair division of the remaining parts of the Louisiana territory between the interests of the North and those of the South. The Senate accepted the recommendations of the committee without much difficulty, and voted the measures contained in them. The House also accepted the recommendations and voted the necessary provisions upon its part.

President Monroe's
approval of
the Compromise.

When the measures were placed before President Monroe for his approval, he called a meeting of the Cabinet to consider the subject. There was no difficulty except upon a single point, the prohibition of slavery in the remainder of the Louisiana territory above thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes north latitude. Was this to be taken as prohibiting slavery in the Commonwealths which might be formed upon this territory in the future, or did the Congress only intend to lay this restriction upon this territory merely for the period during which it might continue subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the general Government, the period of Territorial organization? If the former, the Missouri question would have to be fought over again whenever a new Commonwealth should be formed in this territory. The Cabinet interpreted the prohibition as applying only during the period before the Commonwealth organization should be established, and upon the basis of this interpretation advised the President that the measure was constitutional. The President signed the Maine bill on the 3rd of March and the Missouri bill on the 6th (1820).

Review of the
points involved
in the contest.

So far as the questions of constitutional and parliamentary law were concerned, the settlement reached was in accordance with right principles. It was right that the two subjects, which the Senate united in one bill, should be separated. The only justification for this act of the Senate was the manifest determination on the part of the House to impose an unconstitutional restriction as the condition upon which the people of Missouri should be allowed to assume the status and the powers of a Commonwealth of the Union. It was the only weapon left to the more conservative Senate, by which to defend the Constitution against the rashness of the more radical House. It need astonish no impartial student of our history that the Senate used it. No such momentous question was involved in this point of parliamentary procedure as there was in the exaggerated interpretation of the powers of Congress by the House. The Senate showed its willingness to yield its position upon this point so soon as the House would return to sound constitutional principle in the Missouri question. It was fortunate for the development of the parliamentary practice of Congress that the House so changed its position in reference to the greater question of constitutional law as to enable the Senate to return to the true parliamentary principle of the separation of subjects which differ in essence or in circumstances in the slightest degree. While, therefore, the Senate should not be too strongly criticised for using its power over its own rules of procedure, as a means of retaliation, it is a matter of great satisfaction that expedients were at last found for maintaining right principle and sound parliamentary custom in the case. And it was surely right that the attempt to make Congress the distributor of powers between the general Government and the Commonwealths was abandoned. The power which made the Constitution can alone set up the metes and bounds between the realm of authority of the general Government and that of the Commonwealths. This is the indispensable condition of federal government. If the general Government possesses such power, the system is centralized in theory, and may become so in fact at the pleasure of the general Government. If, on the other hand, the Commonwealths possess such power, the system is the loosest form of confederation, an international league.

It is true that the Constitution may authorize the general Government to limit the powers of the Commonwealths in regard to certain specified points and the federal system be still preserved, but a general authority in the general Government to do so, such as was claimed by the restrictionists from the vague provision vesting in Congress the power to "admit new States into this Union," amounts to nothing less than a claim of sovereignty by Congress over the new Commonwealths. Such was not the system which those who framed and ratified the Constitution intended to establish. Such is not the system which comports with the vast territorial extent and the climatic differences of the United States, and with the ethnical variety of the population of the country.

It is also true that those who resisted the restriction upon Missouri used terms and propositions, in reference to the genesis of the Union and the relation of the general Government to the Commonwealths, which will hardly bear the test of correct history and exact political science, but they had the true principle in respect to the point at issue, when they held that "the State," in the sense of the Constitution, is defined in the Constitution; that its powers are the residue after what the Constitution vests exclusively in the general Government and denies to the "States" shall have been subtracted from sovereignty; and that Congress cannot vary these relations under an interpretation of a general provision. They conceded that Congress might, as the general principle, admit or not admit, as it might judge proper, with all that this involved in reference to geographical boundaries and ripeness of the population for self-government, but they held that the thing admitted was created by the Constitution, through the people inhabiting the district to be formed into a Commonwealth, and not by Congress. And they repudiated the idea that the Declaration of Independence is any part of the constitutional law of the country, or that Congress can define the republican form of government which the United States is obligated by the Constitution to guarantee to every Commonwealth, in any other sense than that concretely expressed in the original Commonwealths.

They held this ground under enormous strain and pressure brought from without. Cross-roads assemblies, town and city meetings, and Commonwealth legislatures poured petitions and memorials in upon them in behalf of slavery restriction. The excitement, throughout the Northeast especially, was intense. They had to fight their battle under an ignoble issue. But it will not be denied by any impartial constitutional lawyer that they were, for this time, the upholders of the Constitution against an unwarranted attempt to stretch Congressional power.

Finally, the compromise provision, drawing the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes through the Louisiana territory, and securing all north of it, which was by far the greater part, against the introduction of slavery during the period that it might remain under the exclusive jurisdiction of the general Government, was tantamount to a surrender, forever, of this vast domain to immigration from the North almost exclusively, and to the creation therein of new Commonwealths into which slaveholders could not take their slave property. Many American historians treat the express exclusion of slavery north of this line as no concession to the North, but as a mask under which the real concession, the concession to the South, was hidden. This they claim to have been the implied concession to hold slaves south of that line. But slavery was legal by custom in the whole of the province of Louisiana, when the United States received it from France. That is, a master might have taken slaves into any part of it, into which he might have gone himself, and would not thereby have violated any law, and the United States Government had not, down to 1820, changed this state of things by any act of its own.

The compromise upon the line of thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes was, therefore, a very decided limitation upon the existing rights of slave-masters. And even if slavery had not already penetrated into this region, it can hardly be claimed that the balance of advantage created by the compromise provision lay with the South, except upon the principle that the South ought not to have had anything, and the North ought to have had everything. Ethically, perhaps, this is the correct principle from which to judge the question, but politically and legally it was not, at that moment.

The Union consisted of Commonwealths, in all of which slavery existed at the time of and during the War for Independence, in almost all of which it existed when the Constitution of 1787 was framed and adopted, and in about half of which it existed, as the most important institution, at the period of the Missouri controversy. Further, it can hardly be denied that the Constitution contained recognition and guarantees of slave property. The vague phrases of the Declaration of Independence, even if intended to touch the relation of master and slave within the country, were not law. It is true that slavery was regarded both in the North and in the South as an evil, but men differed in opinion as to whether confining the slaves to a particular section was a better means for its mitigation than spreading them over a larger area, and reducing thus their number relative to the white population in any particular section.

Surrounded in thought with the ideas and conditions of 1820, it is difficult to see why the balance of advantage contained in the compromise provision of the Missouri bill did not lie with the North. Compromise or no compromise about the remainder of the Louisiana territory, Missouri was bound to be admitted without restriction as to slavery. The customary law of the region seeking to become a Commonwealth permitted slaveholding. The population was sufficient to warrant the assumption of Commonwealth powers. The Constitution did not authorize Congress to impose the slavery restriction, and the people of the region had protested against it. The admission of Missouri was, therefore, no legitimate element in the compromise. Neither was the agreement on the part of the Senate to separate Maine from Missouri any proper element in the compromise. The restriction placed by the House on Missouri rested on a false interpretation of constitutional law, and the connection of the two subjects in the same bill rested on a false interpretation of parliamentary law. In principle both had to be abandoned. The compromise was in reality only about the remainder of the Louisiana territory after the admission of Missouri, in no part of which had slavery, to that moment, been prohibited. How much of it should continue open to the further introduction of slavery by the immigration of masters with their slaves, and how much should be given over to practically exclusive immigration from the North—these were the only proper terms of the compromise. What the South finally obtained out of it was one Commonwealth, while the vast region from which slavery was excluded has produced eight or nine Commonwealths. In the light of these considerations it certainly appears that the cause of free labor won a substantial triumph in the Missouri compromise, and that, in place of that shameful surrender of freedom to slavery, so emphasized by certain historians, a mighty step forward in the progress of liberty was taken.

It was confidently hoped and believed that the compromise had solved the slavery problem, in so far as Congress could solve it. The whole country breathed more easily and the thoughts of men were turned to other subjects.

The revival of the Missouri struggle.

But the peace proved to be only an armistice. In less than twelve months the battle was raging again with more than its former fury.

The Missouri convention, which drew up and voted, in the middle of the year 1820, the organic law for the new Commonwealth, inserted a paragraph therein which made it the duty of the legislature, proposed to be established by that law, to enact measures for preventing mulattoes and free negroes from immigrating into and settling within the Commonwealth.

The Missouri
constitution
in Congress.

On November 14th, 1820, this instrument was presented to the Senate of the United States, and on the 16th to the House of Representatives, for the purpose of moving these bodies to pass an act admitting Missouri into the Union as a Commonwealth. The instrument was immediately referred by each House to a committee; and on the 23rd, Mr. Lowndes, the chairman of the House Committee, reported a bill for effecting this result, and, on the 29th, Mr. Smith reported a bill of like tenor to the Senate.

Mr. Lowndes' bill
for the admission
of Missouri with
the instrument
unchanged.

Mr. Lowndes' bill was prefaced by a statement of views, which presented the questions of constitutional interpretation to which the provision referred to in the Missouri instrument gave rise. He alluded to the possible repugnance of the provision to that clause in the Constitution of the United States which guarantees to the citizens of each Commonwealth all the privileges and immunities of citizens in every other Commonwealth; but said that the provision in the Missouri instrument could be interpreted to mean only such mulattoes and free negroes as were not citizens in any Commonwealth. And he held that, whether this be the true interpretation or not, the judiciary of the United States, and not the Congress, should determine the question of repugnance between the Missouri instrument and the Constitution of the United States. He finally took the ground that Missouri was now already a Commonwealth by virtue of the Act of Congress giving her people permission to form Commonwealth government, and by virtue of the act of her people in forming a Commonwealth constitution, and he declared that the refusal or failure of Congress, at this time, to pass a formal act of admission could not reduce her again to the Territorial status.

Serious opposition
to the Lowndes bill.

Mr. Sergeant, the spokesman of the opposition to Mr. Lowndes' report, met these propositions with the counter-propositions, that a Territory becomes a Commonwealth of the Union only by a Congressional Act admitting it to that status; that no other kind of a Commonwealth than a Commonwealth in the Union is known to the political system of the United States; that all the acts done by Congress and by the people resident within a Territory before the Congressional Act of admission are nothing more than preliminaries, and that a Territory remains a Territory until the passage of this latter act; that the provision in the Missouri instrument in regard to the exclusion of mulattoes and free negroes was repugnant to that clause in the Constitution of the United States which guarantees to the citizens of any Commonwealth the privileges and immunities of citizens in every other Commonwealth of the Union into which they may go; and that Congress, not the Judiciary, is the body which should determine whether such repugnance exists, and, if so, correct it.

There is no doubt that, from the point of view of a correct political logic, the opponents of Mr. Lowndes' propositions in regard to the making of a Commonwealth of the Union stood upon the firmer ground, despite the fact that the precedents did not sustain fully their claims. As a fact, Congress had been guilty of such irregularities in the admission of some of the Commonwealths as to give much support to the notion that there could be a Commonwealth in the political system of the United States before its formal admission into the Union. But the argument is unanswerable, that a Commonwealth not in the Union is a foreign state; that in order that a Territory shall attain this latter position and status its constitutional right to secede from the United States must be recognized, which is absurd; and that, therefore, the Congressional Act of admission is what makes a Territory of the Union into a Commonwealth of the Union, the only kind of a Commonwealth known to the political system of the United States.

They also stood upon the firmer ground in holding that it is the duty of Congress to scrutinize closely the measures proposed for enactment by it from the point of view of their constitutionality, and to pass no act, of the constitutionality of which it is not reasonably convinced, under the pretext that the Judiciary is the proper body to correct the usurpation. The members of Congress take the same oath to uphold the Constitution as the judges do. The revisory powers of the Judiciary over the acts of Congress were not given in order to excuse the Congress from exercising its preliminary judgment upon the constitutionality of its own acts. They were given simply to correct errors in judgment.

The protection of the
rights of citizens of one
Commonwealth within
the territory of another
by the United States.

On the other hand, when a citizen of one Commonwealth immigrated into and settled in another, it was a question whether he did not lose the right to be treated as a citizen in the latter Commonwealth, in so far as the Constitution of the United States, as it was in 1820, was concerned, and become subject to the laws of the latter Commonwealth as to his status. If he were only passing through, or sojourning temporarily in, the latter Commonwealth, it was clear that the Constitution of the United States protected him as a citizen of another Commonwealth, but when he changed his residence and citizenship to the latter Commonwealth, the question became much more complicated. It was now whether the laws of one Commonwealth were, by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, valid in another Commonwealth for the protection of persons against the laws of the latter Commonwealth, who had become citizens and residents of the latter Commonwealth.

It must be remembered, however, that the immediate question involved in the provision of the Missouri instrument was whether a Commonwealth could prohibit the citizens of other Commonwealths from immigrating into, and gaining residence and citizenship within, itself. How it might treat such persons after these things had been accomplished was a subsequent matter. But even limiting the question to this point, it was certainly a startling thing to the Southerners to be told that, by virtue of the Constitution of the United States, a negro citizen of Massachusetts had the right to immigrate into, and become a citizen of, South Carolina, when the laws of South Carolina did not admit negroes to citizenship.

Defeat of the Lowndes
bill in the House.

On December 13th (1820), after a long, earnest, and, at times, acrimonious debate, the Lowndes measure for the admission of Missouri was defeated by a vote of ninety-three to seventy-nine.

Passage of the
Senate bill
with a proviso
by the Senate.

The bill presented by Mr. Smith in the Senate was taken up for consideration on December 4th. The arguments pro and con were about the same as those offered in the House, but the bitterness of feeling which seemed to animate the members of the opposition to the measure in the House was not manifested by those adverse to it in the Senate. Nevertheless, there was a majority in the Senate against passing a simple measure for admission without any limitations. They finally voted the bill, with the proviso attached: "That nothing herein contained shall be so construed as to give the assent of Congress to any provision in the constitution of Missouri, if any such there be, which contravenes that clause in the Constitution of the United States which declares that 'the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all the privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.'"

The Senate bill
tabled by the House.

The House tabled this bill on the same day that it rejected the measure offered by its own committee. But what now was the status of Missouri? Her people had elected a governor and members of the legislature under the organic law formed in July, and it was considered doubtful whether there still existed any Territorial officials exercising governmental powers. The House, however, would not even inquire into this fact. They said the question before them was one of law and not of fact at all.

Mr. Clay and the second
Missouri Compromise.

After some futile attempts made by Mr. Eustis, of Massachusetts, for the admission of Missouri upon a future day, provided the obnoxious clause should be expunged from her organic law before that day, Mr. Clay came forward and assumed the management of the question.

On January 29th, 1821, he asked the House to go into committee of the Whole to consider the Senate bill admitting Missouri. This proposition was naturally agreed to, and, after several unsuccessful attempts made by others at an immediate amendment of the Senate bill in the committee of the Whole House, Mr. Clay moved the reference of the bill to a select committee of thirteen persons. This motion was passed, and the committee was chosen, with Mr. Clay as its chairman.

On February 10th, 1821, Mr. Clay reported the recommendations of the committee. They were expressed in the proposition: That Missouri should be "admitted into this Union on an equal footing with the original States, in all respects whatever, upon the fundamental condition that the said State shall never pass any law preventing any description of persons from coming to and settling in the said State, who may now be or hereafter become citizens of any of the States of this Union; and provided also, that the legislature of the said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition, and shall transmit to the President of the United States, on or before the fourth Monday of November next, an authentic copy of the said act: upon the reception whereof, the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact: whereupon, and without any further proceedings on the part of Congress, the admission of the said State shall be considered as complete: and provided further, that nothing herein contained shall be construed to take from the said State of Missouri, when admitted into this Union, the exercise of any right or power, which can now be constitutionally exercised by any of the original States."

The failure of Mr.
Clay's first attempt.

Mr. Tomlinson, of the committee, took the floor against the report, and showed so conclusively that the legislature of a Commonwealth could not bind the makers of the organic law of the Commonwealth, and that, therefore, any obligation which the legislature of Missouri might assume toward Congress might prove nugatory, that the Senate bill, with the amendment offered by Mr. Clay's committee, was voted down.

Mr. Clay's second attempt
to secure a compromise.

Mr. Clay waited ten days after this in order to let the feelings of the members become mollified, and on February 22nd, one of the most significant days in American history, made his final attempt to secure a compromise. He moved that members to a conference committee be appointed by the House. The motion was carried, and on the next day the members of the House contingent of the committee, consisting of twenty-three persons, under the lead of Mr. Clay, were appointed. The Senate met the advance promptly and appointed seven members to represent it.

The second
Missouri
Compromise.

On the 26th, Mr. Clay reported the results of the conference, in the form of a resolution of the following tenor: "Resolved, by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States, in Congress assembled, that Missouri shall be admitted into this Union on an equal footing with the original States in all respects whatever, upon the fundamental condition, that the fourth clause of the twenty-sixth section of the third article of the constitution submitted on the part of said State to Congress shall never be construed to authorize the passage of any law, and that no law shall be passed in conformity thereto, by which any citizen of either of the States of this Union shall be excluded from the enjoyment of any of the privileges and immunities to which such citizen is entitled under the Constitution of the United States: Provided that the legislature of the said State, by a solemn public act, shall declare the assent of the said State to the said fundamental condition, and shall transmit to the President of the United States, on or before the fourth Monday in November next, an authentic copy of the said act; upon the receipt whereof the President, by proclamation, shall announce the fact; whereupon, and without any further proceeding on the part of Congress, the admission of the said State into this Union shall be considered as complete."

Passage of the
second Missouri
Compromise Act.

It will be seen that this recommendation contained the same objectionable feature as did that of the committee of Thirteen of the House, that is, the proposition to rely upon the Missouri legislature to enter into an obligation to Congress, which should bind all future legislatures and also the constituent power of the Commonwealth. It was, therefore, attacked upon the same ground, but the supporters urged so strongly that Congress should put a reasonable faith in the honor of Missouri to keep the pledge made by her first legislature, that the resolution was finally adopted by the House, by a very small majority, on the same day that it was reported. It was immediately sent to the Senate for concurrence, and, after a brief debate, was voted by that body on the 28th, by a large majority.

The great struggle was at last over, and it was sincerely hoped that the "era of good feeling," so suddenly interrupted by it, had been restored. Apparently it was so, but while the decision finally reached saved the country from one great danger, it sowed the seeds of another. A brief review of the effects of that decision upon the constitutional law, political science, and social conditions of the Republic will make this apparent.

The general effects
of the decisions
reached in the
Missouri question.

In the first place, the decision involved the constitutional and political principle that, in the federal system of government generally, and in the system of the United States in particular, the powers of government are, and must be, distributed by the sovereignty behind, and supreme over, both the general Government and the Commonwealths, and not by either of the two governments, unless expressly empowered to do so, in specific cases, by the sovereignty through the Constitution. This is undoubtedly a sound principle, both of political science and constitutional law, but it taught the Southerners that protection of their property in slaves would depend upon strict construction of the Constitution. It caused their leaders to desert the broad national ground in the interpretation of the Constitution which they had occupied since 1812, and to seek more and more to limit and restrict the powers of Congress, in which the majority of the members of one House, at least, must always come from the North, and in the other House of which no more than an exact balance could be maintained.

It introduced, therefore, the principle which led necessarily to a division of the all-comprehending Republican party into two branches, the one branch holding to the latitudinarian and national views of the party from 1812 to 1819, and the other to the earlier creed of 1798 to 1812. The former finally coalesced with the remnants of the Federal party and formed the National Republican or Whig party, while the latter called itself the Democratic party.

It is necessary to keep clearly in mind the cause of the division of the Republican party into its two branches in order to understand the principles which distinguished them, for their names are somewhat misleading. For example, it is quite difficult to understand, upon general principles, why the slaveholders of the South should be called Democrats, while many of the little farmers and the artisans of the North should be called Whigs. The element of democracy which was to be found in the political creed of the Southern masters was strict construction of governmental powers, the least possible interference of government in private affairs, and the largest possible individual autonomy—in a word, individual immunity against government. The master could take care of himself, if left free to rule his slaves.

In the second place, the Missouri decision involved the principle of constitutional law that the Congress has general powers of legislation in the Territories, and may do anything therein not forbidden by the Constitution. This is also a sound and valuable principle. It was this which won the great Northwest for free labor, so far as government could affect the question, and gave the Union the strength to meet the crisis of 1861-65. The Southerners eventually saw what they had lost in conceding this interpretation of the powers of Congress, and, as will be seen further on, sought to repudiate it; but their long acquiescence in it had allowed it to gain the power of constitutional precedent, too strong to be successfully overcome.

In the third place, the Missouri decision involved the principle that there was, before the Fourteenth Amendment was adopted, an United States citizenship which carried with it immunities and privileges which no Commonwealth could lawfully deny or abridge, and which the United States Government was bound to protect and defend against any Commonwealth seeking to impair them. It demonstrated the difficulties which could arise by allowing a Commonwealth to confer United States citizenship, and thereby bind the United States Government to sustain the acts of one Commonwealth within the jurisdiction of another Commonwealth, whose laws might be directly contradictory to those of the first Commonwealth upon the subject in point. It did not undertake to solve the difficulty. It only held firmly to the principle, while it made many of the best minds aware that this most national provision of the Constitution would, sooner or later, certainly require an advance all along the line in the further development of the governmental system of the country.

In the fourth place, the Missouri decision taught the inhabitants of the older Commonwealths that the West could not be held in a provincial or quasi-provincial status; that it must be carved up and formed into Commonwealths having the same powers and privileges as the older Commonwealths; and that, therefore, the political centre of the United States was bound to move westward, and the East was ultimately to come, in large degree, under the influence of the West. It was this which has helped powerfully to carry the brain and the money of the East to the West, and is making in the West a new, and, in some respects, more enterprising, East.

Finally, the Missouri decision taught the South that there was a provision in the Constitution of the United States which probably made it possible for the Northern Commonwealths to force, through the power of the general Government, a class of persons upon the Southern Commonwealths, in the enjoyment of the full rights of citizenship, whom these Commonwealths did not and would not recognize as citizens in any respect; and that there was a growing disposition at the North to make an advance against slavery at every possible point. The effect of this conviction was most baleful both upon the spirit of the masters and the status of the slaves. It created that resentment in the minds of the Southerners against interference in their domestic affairs, which closed their ears to all arguments against slavery, and it moved them to the enactment of measures in their several Commonwealths for the purpose of keeping the slaves under stricter discipline and in denser ignorance. It increased vastly, if it did not introduce, that utter misunderstanding of each other's feelings and motives between the people of the two sections, which made it possible for the people of the North to believe, finally, that the story of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was the sober truth, and the general rule of conduct of master toward slave in the South, and for the people of the South to believe that jealousy of riches and comfort was the sole spirit which prompted the attacks of the North upon slavery—a misunderstanding, therefore, which proved irreconcilable so long as the subject of it remained.

The Missouri decision made thus both for good and for evil—for good, surely, in that it produced clearer ideas upon the character of federal government, and preserved the East from an illiberal political policy toward the West; and in that it secured the great Northwest for free labor;—for evil, possibly, in that it estranged the two sections of the Union, and put a stop to any movement in the South for the gradual and peaceable emancipation of the slaves, or for the substantial amelioration of their condition. It is not very likely, however, that any such movement would have proved successful, and it is, therefore, probable that what appears on the outside to have been an evil was in reality a good, in that it drove the disease in the body politic of the South onward toward the crisis, which must be passed in order that the permanent cure might be effected.

CHAPTER V.

THE BEGINNING OF THE PARTICULARISTIC REACTION

Slavery and the Industrial Policies of the Union—President Monroe and Protection after 1820—The Committee on Manufactures—The Tariff Bill of 1823—The General Character of the Bill, and its Failure to Pass—President Monroe's Message of 1823, and Protection—The Tariff Bill of 1824—Mr. Clay's Argument in its Support—Mr. Clay's Argument Answered—The First Expression of the Doctrine that Protection and Slavery were Hostile Interests—The Bill Amended and Passed—The Tariff of 1824 not yet Considered Sectional Legislation—South Carolina and the Tariff of 1824—The Historical Development of the Doctrine of Internal Improvements—Madison's Ideas upon Internal Improvements—The Bill of 1822 for Internal Improvements—Passage of the Bill, and Analysis of the Vote upon it—The Bill in the Interests of the West—President Monroe's Veto, and Communication of May 4th, 1822—President Monroe's Argument, and the Vote upon the Veto—Congressional Act of 1824 for Distinguishing National from Local Improvements—Foreign Relations During Monroe's Second Term—Russia and the Northwest Coast of America—The Holy Alliance—The Congress at Verona—Mr. Adams' Declaration to Baron Tuyl—Mr. Canning's Proposal to Mr. Rush—Mr. Canning's Declaration to Prince Polignac—The "Monroe Doctrine"—The Meaning of the Monroe Propositions in 1824—Failure to Commit Congress to these Propositions—The Particularistic Reaction Scarcely Discoverable before 1824.

Slavery and the
industrial policies
of the Union.

It was hoped and believed that the settlement of the Missouri question and the compromise in reference to the remainder of the Louisiana cession had put the problem of negro slavery out of the realm of national politics. In fact, however, the struggle over these questions had introduced it into that realm, and had first opened the eyes of the slaveholders to the bearings of the slavery interest upon all the questions of constitutional law and public policy. From the point of view of that interest their attitude toward all these questions was more and more determined as they came to understand more and more clearly the relation of these questions to that interest. While, therefore, the settlement and the compromise served to withdraw the question of slavery from the direct and immediate issue, they, at the same time, left it the secret influence over views and actions in many, if not most, directions.

At the next session, beginning in December of 1821, propositions were introduced into the Senate to limit and decrease the admiralty jurisdiction of the United States courts, to make the Senate itself a court of appeal from the regular Judiciary in cases where a "State" should be a party, and to limit to two hundred the number of members in the House of Representatives.

The purpose of all these projects is apparent. Indeed, their proposers said openly and frankly that their purpose was to lessen and limit the powers of the general Government in the interests of "States'-rights."

It was natural, however, that the new spirit of particularism should attack the policies of the Government rather than the structure of the political system, or, more correctly, should undertake to control these policies before it sought to transform that system.

President Monroe
and protection
after 1820.

We have seen with what unanimity and national enthusiasm the protection of home industries was regarded, in the half decade between 1815 and 1820, as a measure indispensable to the attainment and maintenance of industrial independence. Not even Calhoun then understood the relation between this policy and the interests of slavery. The Presidents, Madison and Monroe, were utterly oblivious to it. Even after the Missouri struggle, Mr. Monroe continued to recommend the protection of manufactures for the attainment of industrial independence as the true national policy. His annual messages of 1821 and of 1822 contain this recommendation. He either did not comprehend the relation of the slavery interests to the protective system or disregarded it. It could hardly have been the latter, for, although he was no radical supporter of slavery, he was a slaveholder and a very conservative man.

The committee
on Manufactures.

The House of Representatives, the body which had upheld even radically national views of the character of the political system during the Missouri struggle, very naturally responded to Mr. Monroe's recommendation, and referred it to its committee on Manufactures for consideration and support. Heretofore this subject had been referred to the committee on Ways and Means, the regular revenue-raising committee. Its reference now to the committee on Manufactures is good evidence that the House of Representatives regarded a protective tariff as a subject which Congress might deal with independently, and without any necessary connection with the subject of the revenue. Such a view is radically national. It rests upon the doctrine that Congress may do anything in the regulation of foreign trade and commerce which, in its own opinion, is conducive to the general welfare, regardless of the pecuniary needs of the Government.

The Tariff
Bill of 1823.

On January 9th, 1823, Mr. Tod, of Pennsylvania, the chairman of the committee on Manufactures, reported a tariff bill. It proposed to nearly double the existing duty upon iron, quadruple that upon coarse woollens, and to increase the custom-house valuation of dyed cotton goods by some forty per centum.

Moreover, the bill made no provision for the future reduction of these duties. It therefore indicated that protection was to be the permanent policy, protection so high as to amount to the prohibition of the importation of coarse cottons and woollens and bar iron. In fact, Mr. Tod conceded that the prohibition of the importation of coarse woollens was intended. He said that the tariff of 1816 on coarse cotton goods had given a monopoly of the domestic markets for such goods to the home manufacturers, while the price of the goods had been reduced through home competition by one-half, and that his committee desired to bring about the same result in regard to the manufacture of coarse woollens.

The general character
of the bill, and its
failure to pass.

Mr. Tod was not able to get a vote upon his bill at this session of the Congress. Three significant facts, however, were elicited in the course of the debate upon it, facts which indicated the trend of political history. These facts were that the bill was a Pennsylvania measure, that the South would oppose it, and that Massachusetts and New York City would unite with the South in this opposition. It was, in fact, a Massachusetts man, Mr. Gorham, who denounced the bill as sectional legislation, and advised the South to resist it to the utmost. Cotton and commerce, and that meant slavery and commerce, were beginning to discover their affinity.

President Monroe's
Message of 1823,
and protection.

President Monroe, however, does not seem to have shared this view of the subject. In his message of December 2nd, 1823, he again recommended additional protection to "those articles which we are prepared to manufacture, or which are more immediately connected with the defence and independence of the country."

Thus encouraged by the President, the House of Representatives again referred the question of increasing the tariff to Mr. Tod's committee.

The Tariff Bill of 1824.

On January 9th, 1824, Mr. Tod brought in his new bill. It was a more moderate proposition than that of the preceding session; still it provided for a substantial increase of the duties on woollens and iron.

Mr. Tod assumed the constitutionality of the bill to be a settled question, and supported the policy of it by arguments from the necessity of attaining industrial independence in the manufacture of the necessaries of life, from the necessity of creating new and more remunerative employments for labor, and from the policy of developing better home markets for agricultural products. He predicted that an ultimate reduction of the prices of manufactured goods would be the result of the increased home competition produced by higher duties. He did not, however, make out any very satisfactory prospects for commerce. This branch of the national pursuits was to make the sacrifice.

Mr. Clay's
argument
in its support.

Mr. Clay made the great argument in defence of the measure. He elaborated the patriotic reason in every direction. He pointed out the utter dependence of the country upon foreign markets, both for the sale of its agricultural products and for the purchase of manufactured goods. He demonstrated that these relations had been created by the quarter of a century of war in Europe, forcing the European countries to buy the agricultural products of the United States to an unusual amount, and at high prices, and showed how the restoration of general peace in Europe had reduced the demand for, and the price of, these products, while it left the United States dependent upon Europe for manufactured articles. And he urged the accomplishment of industrial independence as a necessary corollary of political independence. He contended that the aid granted to the manufacturing interests would impose no sacrifice upon the agricultural and commercial interests; that by the establishment of new manufacturing centres new home markets for the products of agriculture would be created, which would not only emancipate the country from the necessity of foreign markets for these products, but would give the country steady and certain markets, under its own control; and that the growth of manufactures would speedily result in the establishment of an export trade in manufactured goods to all parts of the world, and especially to South America, which would ultimately more than compensate the commercial interests for the temporary losses they might incur by reason of the increased duties. This was a strongly tinted picture upon both sides. It represented the distress of the country too darkly, and it painted the speculative benefits of the high tariff in too vivid colors. Moreover, Mr. Clay now omitted any reference to the temporary character of protection. It now appeared to be a permanent article of his creed.

Mr. Clay's argument
answered.


The first expression of the
doctrine that protection and
slavery were hostile interests.

Webster for Massachusetts, Cambreleng for the city of New York, and Barbour for the South, denied Mr. Clay's statement in regard to the intense and general financial distress throughout the country, and demonstrated the destructive effects of a high tariff upon agriculture and commerce, and upon the existing manufacturing interests themselves. They contended that such a tariff would so prohibit importation of foreign products as to make it impossible for Europe to buy the agricultural products of the United States, since Europe would not be able to pay for them; that the promised increase of domestic markets would not at all compensate for the loss of foreign markets; that commerce would thus be destroyed both ways; and that even the manufacturing industries already established would suffer from the unnatural competition which would be created by the inducements which the high tariff would hold out to capital otherwise employed. Mr. Barbour frankly declared that the slave labor of the South could not be used in the development of manufactures, and that, therefore, the high tariff must inure to the benefit of the North, by making the South tributary to the North for all manufactured goods.

The theory accepted by all parties, however, at the moment, was, that the duties were paid ultimately by the consumers of the imported goods. Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, pronounced this doctrine himself. Upon this view the North must pay the duties equally, at least, with the South. So long, then, as this idea was held, and so long as the commercial interests of Massachusetts, Maine, and the city of New York made common cause with the agricultural interests of the South against the bill, it could not be strictly regarded as sectional legislation, it could not develop into a political and constitutional question between the North and the South.

The bill amended
and passed.

While this combination of interests was not able to prevent the House from finally passing the bill by a narrow majority, it did succeed in imposing several very substantial modifications upon it in the direction of more moderate protection.

In the Senate the bill suffered still further modification in the same direction. The burden of the Senate's amendments fell, however, on the wool- and hemp-growing and liquor-distilling West. It was for this reason that the House of Representatives refused to concur in them. Recourse was then had to a conference committee, which arranged a compromise that gave a little less protection than the House had voted, and a little more than the Senate had voted.

The tariff of May, 1824, was still only a moderately protective tariff. It was certainly in only one particular anything like prohibitory; it preserved the high tariff of 1816 on coarse cotton goods. In other respects it was not much more than a continuation of the reasonable duties already imposed.

The tariff of 1824
not yet considered
sectional legislation.

So long as the tariff remained moderately protective, and was approved in Kentucky and Missouri, and disapproved in Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and the city of New York, and so long as its burdens were generally believed to fall ultimately upon the consumers of the dutiable articles, it could not take on the form of a sectional issue, dominated by the question of slavery. Some of the Southerners had, indeed, discovered that slave labor could not be employed in the mills, and that, therefore, protection of manufactures would not secure the establishment of these industries in the South, and had begun to treat the tariff question in a manner to develop a party issue out of it. But this tendency had not advanced far enough in 1824 to produce a division of the all-comprehending Republican party. It needed another four years of personal differences among the leaders, another revision of the tariff in the direction of higher duties, and a more complete consolidation of the North for protection, before this result could be attained.

South Carolina and
the tariff of 1824.

During the passage of the bill public meetings had been held throughout South Carolina protesting against it, and the year subsequent to its enactment the South Carolina legislature denounced it as unconstitutional, but the people of the Commonwealth acquiesced, though with very bad temper, in the execution of the law.

The other question of internal policy, to which certain of the historians refer as suffering under the baleful influences of the slavery interest immediately after 1820, was the question of national internal improvements.

The historical development
of the doctrine of
internal improvements.

This question became a definite issue in Congress for the first time on December 19th, 1805, when a committee of the Senate, charged with the duty of reporting to the Senate an opinion as to how the money appropriated in the Enabling Act for Ohio ought to be applied, recommended the use of it for the building of a road across the Alleghanies from Cumberland, in Maryland, to a point upon the Ohio River, near Wheeling, in Virginia.

If we may take the first Act passed by Congress, that of March 29th, 1806, in regard to the matter as expressing the views of the Government and the people upon the subject, we must conclude that the first matured ideas were that the general Government had the power to lay out and construct roads within and through the Commonwealths, by and with the consent of the Commonwealths through which they might pass. The Cumberland road was originally built by the general Government, after the consent thereto of Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia had been obtained. The appropriations for subsequent repairs upon the road were, however, not considered as requiring the consent of those Commonwealths before being made or expended.

Madison's ideas
upon internal
improvements.

The second stage in the evolution of opinion upon the subject was attained in the year 1817, when Mr. Madison vetoed Mr. Calhoun's bill for setting aside the bonus and the dividends to be paid to the Government by the United States Bank as a fund for constructing roads and canals, and improving the navigation of water-courses in the several Commonwealths. This bill proposed to authorize the general Government to expend the money, thus appropriated, only with the consent of the Commonwealth, or Commonwealths, in which the proposed improvement might lay, antecedently given, and distributed the sum to be spent among the Commonwealths according to the ratio of their representation in the national House of Representatives. As has been pointed out, Madison vetoed this bill on the ground that the power to enact it was not to be found among the enumerated powers of Congress, and could not be regarded as a necessary and proper means for carrying out any of the enumerated powers.

The President drew no distinction between the power to construct internal improvements and the power to appropriate money for their construction, nor between such powers and the power to administer them, or to exercise jurisdiction over them. He regarded all, or any of these things, as unwarranted by the Constitution. He furthermore declared that the consent of the several Commonwealths to the exercise of such powers by the general Government could not make the exercise of them constitutional, unless that consent should be given in the form of an amendment to the Constitution.

The vote upon the vetoed bill in the House of Representatives manifested the fact that a substantial majority of that body remained unconvinced by the President's argument. It is reasonably certain that Mr. Madison's views were not the views of the country at that moment. A large majority of the people felt that he had abandoned his earlier faith in regard to this subject. An analysis of the vote upon the vetoed bill shows that New England was almost unanimous in opposing the measure; that Virginia and North Carolina also opposed it, though less decidedly; that New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and the Northwest, together with South Carolina and Georgia, favored it; and that Kentucky and Tennessee inclined to favor it. Certainly, down to 1817, no influence of the slavery interest upon the question of internal improvements is discoverable. It was evident that the general opinion was, that the middle Atlantic section and the Northwest would receive the larger share of the benefits of a national system of internal improvements. It was also evident that New England viewed the matter purely in that light, and that Virginia was impelled wholly by her ancient principle of strict construction of the powers of the general Government. It was South Carolina and Georgia whose actions appeared at this juncture to spring from unselfish and patriotic motives.

The bill of 1822
for internal
improvements.

The third stage in the development of constitutional interpretation in reference to this subject was attained in the year 1822. In May of that year Congress passed a bill appropriating money for the repair of the Cumberland road, and authorizing the President to cause the erection of toll-gates upon it, and to appoint toll-gatherers. The toll charges, and penalties for attempting to avoid paying them, and for not keeping to the left in passing, were fixed in the bill itself. That is, this bill assumed for the general Government not only the powers of appropriating and expending money for the construction of the road, but the power of operating the road and jurisdiction over it. The passage of such a bill is certainly very good evidence that President Madison's views, as expressed in his veto message of March 3rd, 1817, were not the views of the country in 1822 upon the subject of internal improvements.

Passage of the
bill, and analysis of
the vote upon it.

It is interesting and instructive to analyze the vote upon this bill. In the House of Representatives the members from the New England section were nearly evenly divided, pro and con. The majority of the New Yorkers voted against it. The Pennsylvanians were nearly balanced. The Marylanders voted for it. The Virginians were against it by a decided majority. The North Carolinians were indifferent. The South Carolinians and Georgians abandoned their high national ground of 1817, and voted unanimously against it. The Representatives from the Northwest went unanimously for it; and those from Kentucky now wheeled into line with them. Lastly, while the Tennesseeans still maintained their attitude of indifference, the members from the Commonwealths south of Tennessee, and west of Georgia, all voted for the bill.

In the Senate the majority in favor of the measure was very large. Only the Senators from the Carolinas and Alabama, and one Senator from Missouri, voted against it.

There is somewhat more of an appearance of slavery influence in the vote upon this bill than upon the bill of 1817, in that South Carolina showed herself practically a unit against this bill. Still it is probable that this opposition rested upon other grounds. Certainly when we read in the "Annals of Congress," that so stanch a friend of free labor, so eminent a lawyer, and so honorable a man as John W. Taylor, of New York, said of this bill that it was so important in its character, and proposed such a violation of the Constitution, that he felt obliged to call for the yeas and nays upon it, we must concede that other motives may have influenced the statesmen of South Carolina than such as might have sprung from subserviency to the interests of slavery.

The bill in the
interests of
the West.

If we review the analysis of the vote in the House of Representatives we shall see that the entire West—taking the Appalachian range as the dividing line, for that period, between the East and the West—was for the bill, while the whole East, with the exception of Maryland, which was specially interested in the road, was either against it or indifferent to it. The Eastern Commonwealths had made their roads with Commonwealth money, and did not wish to assist the Western Commonwealths to make theirs by giving them national money with which to do it. The West, on the other hand, was new and comparatively poor, and wanted the nation to help it out of the mud. This is unquestionably the plain statement of the situation from the point of view of interests. The interests of slavery played but little part, if any at all, in the distribution of the vote.

President Monroe's
veto, and
communication
of May 4th, 1822.

President Monroe promptly vetoed the bill, on the ground that it was in excess of the powers granted to Congress by the Constitution. He also sent a communication, of the same date as the veto, to the House of Representatives, explaining his views upon those principles of the Constitution generally, and upon those provisions specially, which could be regarded as vesting powers in the general Government concerning internal improvements. The paper is prolix, confused, and confusing, but, upon the specific question at issue, the propositions advanced are definite and intelligible. He held that the power of Congress in regard to internal improvements was to be found in the Constitution only by implication, by implication from the power to appropriate money, and that, therefore, its nature and limitations were to be drawn from the character of the power to appropriate money. He contended, on the one side, that the power of Congress to appropriate money was not limited to the objects enumerated in the Constitution, but was, on the other side, limited by the spirit of the Constitution to national purposes. He concluded, therefore, that Congress was empowered to appropriate money to internal improvements of a national character. But he asserted that Congress could not, under the power to appropriate money, establish jurisdiction over such improvements, or authorize the executive department of the Government to administer them. The bill in question did just that, and it was for this reason that the President returned it with his objections.

President Monroe's
argument, and the
vote upon the veto.

The President's views were apparently convincing to many who had voted for the bill. Upon its passage, the vote in the House of Representatives was eighty-seven for, and sixty-eight against, the measure. After the veto, it stood sixty-eight yeas and seventy-two nays.

It may be safely assumed that the view expressed by President Monroe in the paper accompanying the veto of this bill was the view which prevailed throughout the country in the year 1824. It may be also said that the power of Congress to authorize the President to expend the appropriation by causing the improvements to be planned and constructed was generally regarded, in 1824, as a necessary consequence of the power to appropriate money for the same. The acts of Congress appropriating money for the construction and repair of roads, canals, etc., after, as well as before, that date, seem to proceed upon this theory.

Congressional Act of 1824
for distinguishing national
from local improvements.

The great difficulty which lay in the way of the realization of President Monroe's principle of the appropriation of national money for internal improvements of a national character was the proper determination of the question as to what improvements were really of that character. The danger was that the appropriation bills would become log-rolling measures for the purpose of obtaining national money for matters of local concern. This difficulty was distinctly felt, and Congress undertook to meet it by the Act of April 30th, 1824, which authorized the President to cause "surveys, plans, and estimates to be made of the routes of such roads and canals as he might deem of national importance," and required him to lay the same before Congress.

From all this it is apparent that, down to the presidential election of 1824, the development of a pro-slavery, strict-constructionist, "States' rights" party is hardly to be discovered in the attitude of the different sections of the country toward the question of internal improvements. Despite the fact that the slaveholders had become conscious during the Missouri struggle that their interests demanded the establishment of a particularistic view of the Constitution and a particularistic practice in the working of the governmental system of the country, not much progress had been made, in the period between 1820 and 1824, in the way of twisting the policies developed during the previous eight years into line with such a view. In fact the foreign relations of the United States were again, in 1822, of a somewhat threatening character, and the consideration of these relations was acting as a certain hindrance to the development of parties upon internal issues.

Foreign relations during
Monroe's second term.

The menace, or perhaps it would be more correct to say the apparent menace, came from two quarters; but in neither case did it relate immediately to the territory or interests of the United States. In both cases it was consequential and more or less remote.

Russia and the
northwest coast
of America.

In the first place, the movements of Russia in the North Pacific had created grave apprehensions. At the close of the first decade of the century the Russian American Company put forward a claim to the territory of the North American continent along the Pacific coast from Behring's Strait to the mouth of the Columbia River, and even to points south of the Columbia. Really this claim came into conflict only with the rights of Great Britain and Spain, but the United States, having the presentiment of its future, if not a legal claim to any part of this territory as a part of Louisiana, regarded the Russian movement with jealous discontent. And when, on September 16th, the Russian Czar issued an edict, asserting Russia's rights to the North Pacific territory from Behring's Strait to the fifty-first parallel of north latitude, it was natural that this discontent should become hostile in its nature. The Government of the United States declared its dissent from the Russian pretensions, and the matter rested momentarily with that.

The Holy
Alliance.

At the same time the other danger was developing. The European reaction against the terrible excesses of the Revolution and the despotism of Bonaparte had assumed the form of an alliance between the Governments of the great continental states, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and France, for the purpose of maintaining each by the power of all against the reappearance of revolutionary movements anywhere. Great Britain had scented in this Holy Alliance a combination of continental powers which might prove, in some degree at least, as dangerous to her continental relations as the commercial system of Bonaparte had been. There is no doubt, too, that there was a large party in England which repudiated the fundamental political doctrine of the Holy Alliance Powers, the doctrine of the jure divino monarchy. England had, in fact, repudiated that doctrine at the close of the seventeenth century. For these reasons the British Government had declined to enter the Holy League, and regarded it with suspicion and ill-concealed hostility.

The Congress
at Verona.

The United States Government paid little attention to its workings so long as they were confined to purely European relations, but when, in 1822, at the congress of these powers at Verona, which had been assembled to consider the question of aiding the Spanish Government to suppress the insurrection against its authority in Spain, the subject of aiding that Government to re-establish its authority over Spain's revolting colonies in North and South America was discussed, serious apprehensions were roused in both Great Britain and the United States. It was stated, and generally believed, in the United States, that the plan was the re-establishment of the Spanish power over all of Spain's American possessions, except Mexico and California, and the cession of Mexico to France, and of California to Russia, in consideration of the military aid to be rendered to Spain by these two great powers in the work of restoration.

Mr. Adams'
declaration to
Baron Tuyl.

To the United States the supposed intentions of Russia in respect to the Pacific coast appeared the more immediate danger, and the United States Government addressed its diplomacy to this question first. On July 17th, 1823, the Secretary of State, Mr. John Quincy Adams, declared to the Russian Minister at Washington, Baron Tuyl, that "we should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments."

Mr. Canning's
proposal to
Mr. Rush.

The following month, the British Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. George Canning, proposed to the Minister of the United States at the Court of St. James, Mr. Richard Rush, a joint declaration by the British Government and the Government of the United States to Europe, that the two Governments would not remain indifferent to an intervention by the Holy Alliance Powers to restore the Spanish authority over Spain's revolting American colonies. Both commercial interests and political principles moved the British Government to make this proposition.

Mr. Canning's
declaration to
Prince Polignac.

Mr. Rush had not been instructed by his Government in anticipation of the British advances, but he offered to assume the responsibility of joining for the United States in the declaration, provided the British Government would acknowledge the independence of the revolting Spanish colonies in America, as the Government of the United States had already done. The British minister was not then prepared to go so far, and the plan of the joint declaration fell through. But Mr. Canning declared for his Government to the French ambassador at St. James, Prince Polignac, that Great Britain would resist any intervention on the part of the Holy Alliance Powers in the question between Spain and her revolting American colonies, and the President of the United States, in his annual message of December 2nd, 1823, stated the position which the United States Government and the people of the United States ought, in his opinion, to assume, and would, in his opinion, assume, in regard to the whole subject.

The "Monroe Doctrine."

Mr. Monroe dealt first with the question of Russian colonization upon the Pacific coast. After informing Congress of the instructions which had been given to the Minister representing the United States at St. Petersburg for negotiating with the Czar's Government, he said: "In the discussions to which this interest has given rise, and in the arrangements by which they may terminate, the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintained, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."

Toward the close of the message Mr. Monroe addressed himself to the other question, the question of intervention by the Holy Alliance Powers in the contest between Spain and her revolting American colonies in the following language: "In the wars of European powers, in matters relating to themselves, we have never taken any part, nor does it comport with our policy so to do. It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced that we resent injuries or make preparations for our defence. With the movements in this hemisphere we are, of necessity, more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America. This difference proceeds from that which exists in their respective governments, and to the defence of our own, which has been achieved by the loss of so much blood and treasure, and matured by the wisdom of our most enlightened citizens, and under which we have enjoyed unexampled felicity, this whole nation is devoted. We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers, to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere, but with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have on great consideration and on just principles acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power, in any other light than as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States.... It is impossible that the allied powers should extend their political system to any portion of either continent without endangering our peace and happiness; nor can anyone believe that our Southern brethren, if left to themselves, would adopt it of their own accord. It is equally impossible, therefore, that we should behold such interposition, in any form, with indifference. If we look to the comparative strength and resources of Spain and these new Governments, and their distance from each other, it must be obvious that she can never subdue them. It is still the true policy of the United States to leave the parties to themselves, in the hope that other powers will pursue the same course."

The meaning of the
Monroe propositions
in 1824.

These statements by Mr. Monroe of his opinion as to what the diplomacy of the United States ought to be, and would be, upon the subjects of the establishment of new European colonies in America, the intervention of the Holy Alliance Powers in the question between Spain and her revolting American colonies, and the forcible imposition by these powers of the jure divino monarchy upon these peoples, who had established republican forms of government for themselves, have had the name fixed upon them by a later generation of "The Monroe Doctrine." There is no difficulty in understanding these statements as Mr. Monroe understood them.

Neither he nor his Secretary of State ever called them a "Doctrine." With them they were simply the opinions of the Administration in regard to the course which the United States ought to pursue, and would probably pursue, in meeting certain exigencies, the possibility of the arising of which passed entirely away before the close of the first half of this century. These opinions were simply that the United States ought to resist, and would resist, the planting of any new colonial establishments in America, or the intervention of the Holy Alliance Powers in the question between Spain and her revolting American colonies, or the forcible imposition of the jure divino monarchy, the political system of these powers, upon the new republican governments of South and Middle America.

Failure to commit
Congress to
these propositions.

The month following the publication of this message, January, 1824, Mr. Clay attempted to move Congress to indorse that part of the President's opinions which referred to the intervention of the Allied Powers in the conflict between Spain and her revolting colonies, but the resolution which he offered to that effect was laid on the table, and never called up. Mr. Poinsett, of South Carolina, made a like attempt later, but with no more success. The Congress of that day had altogether too much intelligence to make diplomatic opinions, advanced by the Administration, either laws of the land, or joint or concurrent resolutions of the legislative department of the Government.

The particularistic
reaction scarcely
discoverable
before 1824.

Thus neither in the question of the tariff, nor in that of internal improvements, nor, naturally, in the diplomatic questions, is anything more than the faint beginnings of the particularistic reaction to be discovered in the period between 1820 and 1824. In fact, it may be said that the year 1820 marks roughly the date of the extinction of the old Federal party, and of the almost complete absorption of the whole voting population in the Republican party. In the presidential election of that year the candidate of the Republican party, Mr. Monroe, received two hundred and thirty-one of the two hundred and thirty-two electoral votes cast, and the one elector who did not vote for him was a Republican. The Federal party did not even undertake to present a ticket. From the point of view of the preservation of its own dominance, the Federal party had committed two grave errors, one of principle and one of policy. It had held to the principle that the mass of men are not fit to govern themselves, but should be governed by the few who are wise and good; and it had adopted the policy of too close alliance with the commercial interests of the country. The levelling, not to say debasing, influences of the French political philosophy, which rolled like a tidal wave over the country during the last decade of the eighteenth century, and was worked up into a political dogma by Jefferson and his disciples, together with the reflex influence of the practical equality which established itself among the first adventurers who settled the lands beyond the Alleghanies, destroyed the Federal party, upon the side of principle; while the great extension of the agricultural interests, produced by these same settlements, made it intolerable upon the side of policy. The earlier advantage which the Federal party, as the upholder of centralization, enjoyed over the Republican party, as the champion of "States'-rights," had been lost by the nationalization of the Republican party through the War of 1812, and the denationalization of the Federal party through the same experiences. In 1820, therefore, there was only one party in fact and in principle. It is undoubtedly true that the struggle of the years 1819 and 1820 over the Missouri question had sowed the seeds of dissension in this all-comprehending party; but four years did not constitute a period of time sufficient for their completed growth and fructification. The presidential contest of 1824 could not, therefore, he fought under the issues of party principles. It was little more, and, under the circumstances, it could be little more, than a personal contest between the leaders of the Republican party. The result of it, however, contributed very largely to the development of political differences, and to the organization of parties upon the basis of these differences. It must, therefore, be described with some particularity.

CHAPTER VI.

THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION OF 1824

General Character of the Presidential Contest of 1824—John Quincy Adams—DeWitt Clinton—William H. Crawford—John C. Calhoun—Daniel Webster—Henry Clay—Andrew Jackson—The Nomination of Presidential Candidates in 1824—Failure of the Electors to Elect the President—Territorial Distribution of the Electoral Vote—New York in the Election of 1824—South Carolina in the Election of 1824—Pennsylvania in the Election of 1824—The Election in the House of Representatives—Clay Master of the Situation—Clay's Support of Adams, and Kremer's Charge of Bargain and Corruption—The Election of Adams by the House of Representatives—Clay and the Secretaryship of State—Threats of the Organization of an Anti-administration Party—The Bargain between Clay and Adams a mere Suspicion—Clay's Nomination to the Secretaryship of State in the Senate—The Composition of the new Anti-administration Party.

General character
of the presidential
contest of 1824.

As has been pointed out, from 1820 to 1824 the political arena was clear of the combats of principles, and furnished the tilting-ground for the jousts of personal ambition. The "Virginia dynasty" became extinct with the expiration of Monroe's second term, and the way was open for anyone to enter the lists who was willing to risk the shocks of the encounter.

At no time in our history has the roll of our political nobility been more full of brilliant names and characters.

John
Quincy
Adams.

First of all, there was John Quincy Adams, the Secretary of State, the "knight without fear and without reproach," blunt, grim, almost rude, through an unconscious suspicion that politeness might encourage the approach of temptation; now fifty-seven years old, and trained in statecraft and diplomacy almost from childhood; the best equipped statesman and the most experienced statesman that America had up to that time produced; ready to serve his country in any honorable capacity to which that country might freely call him, and just as ready to withdraw from that service when his country indicated the desire to dispense with him; puritanic, austere, and to the last degree patriotic, his one qualification for the presidential office was the capacity to discharge its duties wisely, honestly, and loyally, a qualification which too rarely wins in popular elections.

DeWitt
Clinton.

Then, there was DeWitt Clinton, noble in personal appearance, dignified in manners, eloquent in debate, sagacious and far-sighted in business, a lover of science and a scientist himself; the great promoter of the Erie Canal, which was now on the point of completion, and which was destined to revolutionize the commerce of the country; still only fifty-five years of age, although he had been considered more than twenty years before as the most promising man of the nation, and had within that period been United States Senator, mayor of New York City, candidate for the presidency against Mr. Madison, and twice Governor of New York.

William H.
Crawford.

Then, there was William H. Crawford, a Virginian by birth and a Georgian by education; a man of large wealth and of imposing bearing; enjoying a very great reputation for statesmanship without any easily discoverable foundation therefor; now fifty-two years of age, and having already been United States Senator, Minister to France, Secretary of War, and Secretary of the Treasury, which latter office he still held; with the exception, perhaps, of Martin Van Buren, the most astute politician among the great men of his time. He had the political friendship and support of Van Buren. The two seem to have been attracted to each other by the similarity of their methods. He was the author of the law of 1820, limiting the term of the officials of the Treasury to four years, the first step in the direction of making the United States civil service a political machine, such as Van Buren and his fellows in the "Regency" had made out of the civil service of the Commonwealth of New York. It is not astonishing that he, rather than any of the other aspirants for the presidency, procured the assembling of a caucus of the members of Congress, and secured a nomination from it, thus making himself the "regular" candidate. Not a third of the members, however, appeared at the caucus, and the nomination did him more harm than good.

John C.
Calhoun.

Then, there was Calhoun, grave, pure, and patriotic as Adams himself, and almost as puritanic; South Carolinian by birth, Scotch-Irish by blood, Presbyterian in religion, and New Englander by education; great, both in dialectics and in the administration of affairs; rather more given to introspection than to objective research; speculative, therefore, rather than inductive in his mental processes; most fascinating in conversation, kind and generous in his feelings, and a gentleman everywhere and upon all occasions; a personality to be looked up to with reverence, admiration, and confidence. He was still only forty-two years of age, and yet he had already passed fourteen years in public service, first as member of the South Carolina Legislature, then as member of Congress, and then as Monroe's Secretary of War for both terms, which office he still held.

Daniel
Webster.

Then, there was Webster, of the same age with Calhoun, though as yet only five years in public service; the most majestic personality which America has ever produced, though born of the hardy yeomanry of New England; profound in thought, grandly eloquent in speech, and royally impressive in bearing; full of good cheer, in spite of the puritanism of his ancestry, enjoying his friends and adored by his friends; a splendid lawyer, a great statesman, and an incomparable orator—in a word, a demigod; by no means so austere in character as in appearance; liable, as genius too often is, to sometimes break over the restraints of customary morality, but doing it in so grand and natural a manner as to make the rule which he had broken seem narrow, insignificant, and mean.

Henry
Clay.

And then, there was Clay, the most genuine American of them all; rather superficial in thought, entrancing in his oratory, with a voice as winning as the siren's song, elegant and gallant in his manners, perfectly irresistible in conversation, jovial and cheery and happy, the prince of good fellows, loved and worshipped by everybody who knew him; enthusiastic in his patriotism, seeking to make his country not only independent of the world in all its policies but the leader of the world in civilization, a zealous propagandist of American republicanism, the "lion-hearted knight" of American statesmen. He was now in the prime of his manhood, forty-seven years of age. He had been a member of the Senate of the United States at thirty, but it was upon the floor of the House of Representatives, and as Speaker of the House, which office he again held, that he had won his most brilliant laurels. He was at the moment the great champion of the tariff, of national internal improvements, and of the cause of the South American States in their struggle for independence against Spain and Portugal—of what he called the American system of political and industrial independence. Of his competitors only Crawford differed with him in regard to these principles in anything more than a slight degree. Crawford was considered as rather more particularistic, especially in his views on the question of internal improvements. But Clay, with his genial self-confidence and irresistible self-assertion, had assumed in the popular mind, as well as in the Congress, the part of the leading representative of these policies. He had the advantage or the disadvantage of that, whichever it might prove to be.

Andrew
Jackson.

And lastly, Jackson, the noblest Roman of them all; ignorant and irascible indeed, but virtuous, brave, and patriotic beyond any cavil or question; faithful and devoted in his domestic life, absolutely unapproachable by pecuniary inducements; the best of friends and the most implacable of enemies; quick, hasty in forming his judgments and tenacious beyond expression in holding to them; prone to elevate every whim and impulse to a behest of conscience; earnest, terrible in the inflexibility of his purposes; excited by opposition to an ever-increasing degree of determination; unflinching and recklessly daring in the performance of what he felt to be his duty; restless under the legal restraints which might appear to hinder him in the discharge of duty and the accomplishment of any great enterprise intrusted to him; hostile to all gradations of power and privilege, and inclined to break through any official net-work interposed between himself and the rank and file subject to his command; a great soldier, and yet a man of the people; the military hero of the country and a martyr to the persecutions of the politicians—here were certainly qualities calculated to rouse the enthusiasm of the masses, if not of the classes. He was now fifty-seven years of age, and was not in strong health. He had shown no qualities of statesmanship, although he had been twice a member of the Senate of the United States, and was at the moment holding that most advantageous position for a display of civic talent; but he had the fortune to live at a time and in a country when and where the lower strata of society were just coming to a full participation in political power, and when and where high qualifications simply to discharge the duties of an office were beginning to be regarded by the majority of the people as disqualifications for holding the office.

These were by no means all of the great characters from among whom the nation had its choice in 1824, but they were unquestionably the first on the list. Different as they were in personal qualities, they were not yet far apart in political opinions. Crawford leaned more toward "States' rights" than the others. Clay was more pronounced in the opposite direction. While Jackson was rather more uncommitted.

The nomination
of presidential
candidates in 1824.

Webster was not put forward by anybody, and did not offer himself as a candidate. Clay was nominated by the legislature of Kentucky. Jackson was nominated by the legislature of Tennessee, and by two Pennsylvania conventions. While Adams had the advantage of the precedent which, for nearly a quarter of a century, had pointed to the Secretary of State as the natural successor to the presidential office.

Failure of the
electors to elect
the President.

As was to be expected, the electors did not choose any one of the four, since the Constitution requires a majority of the whole number of the electors for a choice. Jackson led with ninety-nine votes; Adams was next with eighty-four; Crawford followed with forty-one; and Clay came last with thirty-seven.

Territorial distribution
of the electoral vote.

The electoral vote was distributed territorially as might have been naturally anticipated, except in two particulars. These were, the failure of Van Buren to secure the electoral vote of New York for Crawford, and the solid vote of Pennsylvania and South Carolina for Jackson. These facts had some significance in connection with subsequent developments, and require a little explanation.

New York in
the Election
of 1824.

New York was one of the Commonwealths which, down to 1824, permitted the legislature to choose the presidential electors. In 1823 the legislature was still under the control of Van Buren and his colleagues in the "Regency," the Albany machine, and had the election taken place in 1823 he could doubtless have delivered the electoral vote entire to Crawford. But one of Jackson's shrewdest supporters, probably Clinton, started the scheme for transferring the choice of the electors from the legislature to the voters. This, if successful, would destroy the control of the "Regency" over the electoral vote. The opposition of the "Regency" to the bill, when it appeared in the legislature, caused its rejection by that body; but the popular indignation was roused to such a pitch against the "Regency" and its adherents in the legislature, in consequence of this act, that, in the Commonwealth elections of 1824, the "Regency" party was driven from power, and the new legislature chose electors who cast the electoral vote of the Commonwealth chiefly for Adams, as the Northern candidate.

South Carolina
in the Election
of 1824.

The fact that South Carolina cast her electoral vote for Jackson instead of for Crawford is good evidence that there was still no question of "States' rights" versus the powers of the Union at issue, or that South Carolina was still nationally disposed; and that, either there was no tariff question at issue, or South Carolina had not yet clearly discovered the hostility of the tariff to her interests, or she believed Jackson to be opposed to the tariff.

Jackson, or rather his manager, William B. Lewis, a most astute politician, had written a letter to a Dr. Coleman, of Warrenton, Va., upon the subject of the tariff. The letter was ostensibly a reply to one from Dr. Coleman, inquiring of Jackson his views upon this question. Very probably, however, Dr. Coleman's letter was also dictated by Mr. Lewis. Jackson's reply contained nothing definite in regard to the subject. It was a first-class political document, that is, it was a document which could be interpreted to mean anything which might be made necessary or desirable by time, place, and circumstances. In a word, Lewis had made for Jackson a sort of tabula rasa record on the subject of the tariff. In such a state of things it is certainly reasonable to ascribe South Carolina's preference for Jackson to the facts that he claimed to be her son by birth, and that Calhoun, rightly discerning Jackson to be the coming man, withdrew from the race for the presidency, and was regarded as running for the vice-presidency on the Jackson ticket.

Pennsylvania
in the Election
of 1824.

It is somewhat more difficult to account for the attitude of Pennsylvania. We are now so accustomed to consider Pennsylvania the "tariff State" par excellence, that it is difficult to conceive of a time when she was not such. She was indeed, in 1824, for the tariff, but her interests had not then become so completely linked together with it as after 1840. In 1824 her vast beds of anthracite had not been applied to the preparation of her iron ores, in fact had hardly been discovered. Pennsylvania west of the Alleghanies was then an agricultural country, and was filled with a population intensely democratic and almost lawless. So far as they had any political science it was based upon the most radical postulates of the French philosophy. The principal "plank" of the platform of the Harrisburg convention of March 4th, 1824, which nominated Jackson, read as follows: "This artificial system of cabinet succession to the presidency is little less dangerous and anti-republican than the hereditary monarchies of Europe. If a link in this chain of successive secretary dynasties be not broken now, then may we be fettered by it forever. Andrew Jackson comes pure, untrammelled, and unpledged from the people." Adams, Crawford, and Calhoun were then members of President Monroe's cabinet, and Clay was Speaker of the House of Representatives. Jackson alone of all the candidates seemed to possess the qualifications required by the Harrisburg doctrine. While this may explain the attachment of the Pennsylvania Republicans to Jackson, we must not forget that the remnant of the Pennsylvania Federalists were also for him. In 1816 Jackson had written some letters to President Monroe advising him not to ignore the Federalists in his appointments to office, but to unite the country by showing himself superior to the distinctions of party in his Administration. These letters were now drawn forth and published by Jackson's manager, and the inference which they conveyed was that Jackson would follow this policy, in case he should be chosen to the presidency. Even Webster was inclined to him, and Mrs. Webster was entirely won by his gallantry. Jackson in the rôle of a fascinating gentleman and a popular ladies' man is hardly the usual character under which the imagination of this generation pictures him. It is, nevertheless, strictly true that the "Old Hero" knew how to make himself very acceptable to the ladies. Pennsylvania was, chiefly, by this conjunction of influences, carried for Jackson by an overwhelming majority.

The Election in the House
of Representatives.

The failure of the electors to give a majority to any one of the candidates threw the election into the House of Representatives, which is empowered by the Constitution to choose, in such a case, one of the three who shall have received the highest number of electoral votes.

Clay
master
of the
situation.

From the day when it became known that the new President must be chosen in this manner to the day of the election by the House, that is, from about the middle of December to the ninth day of February, the politicians in Washington were "laying pipe," "pulling wires," and "making deals." It soon became manifest that Clay, while he could not be chosen himself, since he could not be legally voted for, was the master of the situation. So great was his popularity with the House that, it is almost certain, he would have been chosen to the great office himself had he been among the three having the highest number of electoral votes. Everybody reasoned, therefore, that not only the Representatives from the Commonwealths which had given their electoral votes to Clay would follow his lead in voting in the House, but that many others from other Commonwealths would act under inspiration from him. After a good deal of talk among the members of the House and the politicians generally as to whether the members were bound to vote as the electors from their respective Commonwealths had voted, and as to whether the legislatures of the respective Commonwealths possessed any power to instruct the members of the House of Representatives from the several Commonwealths in regard to the casting of their votes, the opinion finally prevailed that each Representative was entirely free to vote according to his own judgment and preference; and that meant that the popular and persuasive Speaker would be able to carry enough votes with him to elect the candidate upon whom his favor might fall.

Clay's support of
Adams, and Kremer's
charge of bargain
and corruption.

Propositions were made to him from the friends of the different candidates, but he held them all at arm's length. It might have been easily foreseen that he would support Adams. Crawford was a man of exhausted powers, unfit physically and mentally to discharge the duties of the great office. Jackson was only a military chieftain, according to Clay's view a very dangerous character for the presidency. There remained only Adams, probably the best-fitted man in the country for the office. It was generally felt, for several days before the election, that these considerations would determine Clay's course of action. There were those, however, who were ready to ascribe Clay's supposed attitude to other, and more selfish, motives. An insignificant member from Pennsylvania, Kremer by name, gave it out in public print that there was a bargain between Adams and Clay, according to which Clay was to support Adams, and to receive in return the secretaryship of State. This happened on January 28th, 1825, just after the delegations from Ohio and Kentucky in the House had declared their intention of supporting Adams. The small mind of Kremer could not conceive of this attitude on the part of Clay save from the point of view of selfish interests. Clay immediately called for an investigation of the charge by the House, but Kremer sneaked out of it.

The election of
Adams by the House
of Representatives.

On February 9th, 1825, the two Houses of Congress met in joint assembly to count the electoral vote. It was immediately found that no candidate had a majority, and that, therefore, the choice lay with the House. The House, on the same day, and on the first ballot, elected Adams. The delegations from thirteen of the twenty-four Commonwealths voted for him. The delegations from seven voted for Jackson; and those from four for Crawford. Adams received the votes of the delegations from all of the Commonwealths which had given their electoral votes, or the majority of their electoral votes, to himself and to Clay, and from three of the Commonwealths which had given the majority of their electoral vote to Jackson.

Clay and the
Secretaryship
of State.

The twelfth day of February, 1825, is the date in Mr. Adams' diary under which he recorded his offer of the secretaryship of State to Mr. Clay. We find in the diary, for the day before this, an account of a visit from a Mr. G. Sullivan, who told Mr. Adams "that the Calhounites said that if Mr. Clay should be appointed Secretary of State, a determined opposition to the administration would be organized from the outset; that the opposition would use the name of General Jackson as its head; and that the administration would be supported only by the New England States—New York being doubtful, the West much divided, and strongly favoring Jackson as a Western man, Virginia already in opposition, and all the South decidedly adverse."

Threats of the
organization of an
anti-administration
party.

Exactly who the Calhounites were at that moment, as distinct from the followers of Adams and Clay, is difficult to determine, since all the electors who voted for Adams for President also voted for Calhoun for Vice-President, except eight electors from Connecticut and one from New Hampshire, and of the thirty-seven electors who voted for Clay, at least seven of them voted also for Calhoun. It was Crawford's supporters who had opposed Calhoun for the second place, not one of them having voted for him. This declaration made by Mr. Sullivan meant, therefore, that Jackson's friends were going to organize an opposition party to the Adams-Clay Administration and that the Vice-President was going to cast his lot with them.

This was certainly a threat of danger, but Adams was not the man to be frightened from the course which he had chosen as just and politic. He immediately offered the first position in the cabinet to Clay, and, after some six days of reflection and of consultation with friends, Clay accepted.

The bargain between
Clay and Adams
a mere suspicion.

No sufficient evidence has ever been produced to convince a judicial mind that Adams and Clay had come to any understanding in regard to this matter either before Clay announced publicly that he should support Adams, or afterward. But men generally do not have judicial minds. "Diffused distrust and indiscriminate suspicion" mark the attitude of the vulgar mind toward personages in high station. Politicians know only too well that this is one of the most potent forces which can be called into play, and they know only too well how to take advantage of it. Conscious as both Adams and Clay doubtless were of their own rectitude, they did not sufficiently appreciate the proneness of the masses to believe in the corruption of their superiors. Neither did they correctly appreciate the ungenerous and uncandid spirit of the leaders among their opponents in clinging to this charge, and reiterating it, after they had failed to substantiate it by any credible evidence. They certainly did not comprehend that they had given their opponents a shibboleth which would lead them to certain victory.

Clay's nomination
to the secretaryship
of State in the Senate.

The opposition began at once their attack in the Senate under the issue of Clay's appointment. Fifteen of the forty-one Senators present voted against it. Among the fifteen was Jackson, who, upon his way, a few days later, from Washington to his home in Tennessee, repeated and re-enlivened the charge of "bargain and corruption." It is more than probable that Jackson believed in it himself. He was so convinced of his own honesty that he believed every one who differed with him to be dishonest. This is a trait of character frequently met with, and it is a most dangerous force with which to deal. The "Old Hero" possessed it in an extraordinary degree.

The composition
of the new
Anti-administration
party.

Despite the fact that there were no material differences in political principles, and the further fact that Adams retained Monroe's cabinet so far as he could, appointing new members only to positions made vacant therein by his own and Calhoun's promotion to the presidency and the vice-presidency, and by Crawford's refusal to accept the Treasury for another term, it was now perfectly evident that Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, with their followers, were determined upon an organized opposition to the Adams-Clay Administration, no matter what principles and policies that Administration should follow; that Jackson would, on account of his popularity with the masses, be put forward as the head of the new party; and that the cry of "bargain and corruption" between the President and the chief officer of his Administration, for robbing the "Old Hero" of his rights and the people of their choice, was to be their watchword in the conflict.

CHAPTER VII.

THE DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

Personal Differences, and Party Division—Military Confederation of the Spanish-American States—Invitation to the United States to send Representatives to the Congress at Panama—The Acceptance of the Invitation—Opposition in the Senate to the sending of Representatives to Panama—Popular Sympathy in the United States for the South-American States—The President's Nominations Confirmed—The Haytian Question at the Congress—Cuba and Porto Rico—Real Nature of the Opposition to the Panama Mission—The Failure of the Panama Congress—Adams on Internal Improvements in his Message of December 6th, 1825—Van Buren's Resolution against Internal Improvements—The Practices of the Adams Administration in respect to Internal Improvements—The Chief Practical Difficulty in the way of a National System of Internal Improvements—The Tariff of 1824 a Failure—The Tariff Bill of 1827—Development of the Industrial Antithesis between the North and the South—Hostility to the Measure in South Carolina—The Tariff of 1828—The Character of the Bill as Reflected in the Analysis of the Vote Upon It—The Tariff of 1828 not a Complete Party Measure—The Presidential Campaign of 1828 still Dominated by Personal Considerations—Election of Jackson—Advent of the Parvenus—Foreign Affairs under Jackson's Administration—The Democratic Party and its Divisions.

Personal differences,
and party division.

In the absence of any well defined differences in political opinions, and in the state of determined personal hostility between the leaders developed by the election of 1824, the fact that Adams and Clay took broad national views, placed a liberal construction upon the Constitution, and insisted upon the employment of all the powers vested by it in the general Government to the highest point of their usefulness in the promotion of the general welfare, had the natural effect of forcing the opposition upon the opposite grounds, and, therefore, tended to make a particularistic party, the so-called "States' rights" party, out of the Jackson-Calhoun-Crawford faction.

One of the most patent indications of the correctness of the proposition that the opposition in principle between the National Republican party and the Democratic party, as the Administrationists and the Anti-administrationists were soon termed, took its rise largely in the personal hostility of the leaders, is to be found in the history of the chief question of the foreign relations with which the Adams Administration had to deal in the years 1825 and 1826.

Spanish-American
interpretations of
"the Monroe Doctrine."

The Spanish Americans had taken the cautious utterances of President Monroe, in his December message of 1823, for much more than he meant them. They thought, or professed to think, that the Government had pledged itself to meet any intervention of the Allied Powers of Europe in American affairs by any resistance necessary to defeat it. They were also acquainted with the fact that both Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay were more pronounced than President Monroe in favor of going to the support of the new republics of South and Middle America. Naturally then, when these two men came to the head of the Government, on March 4th, 1825, the Spanish Americans felt encouraged to expect some substantial aid from the United States in the further course of their struggle with Spain and her possible allies.

Military
Confederation
of the
Spanish-American
states.

Already in the summer of 1822 the Republic of Colombia had initiated the plan of a Confederation of the Spanish-American states. By a treaty with Peru, bearing date of July 12th, 1823, by another with Chili of the same date, by another with the United Provinces of Central America, of April 12th, 1825, and by another with Mexico, of September 20th, 1825, the Republic of Colombia had established a military confederation between these five states, and had pledged them to send plenipotentiaries to a "general assembly of American states ... with the charge of cementing, in the most solid and stable manner, the intimate relations which ought to exist between all and every one of them." According to this agreement the assembly of plenipotentiaries was to serve as a council in conflicts, as a rallying-point in common dangers, as a faithful interpreter of treaties between their respective states, and as an umpire and conciliator in the disputes and differences which might arise between their respective states.

Invitation to the
United States to
send representatives
to the congress at
Panama.

During the spring of the year 1825 the Ministers of Colombia and Mexico sought Mr. Clay, and communicated to him the desires of their respective governments to have the United States send representatives to this proposed congress; but before giving the formal invitation they asked to know if it would be accepted. They stated to Mr. Clay that they did not expect the United States to abandon the attitude of neutrality, or to take part in those deliberations of the congress which might relate to the prosecution of the existing war.

The President's
hesitation to
accept the
invitation.

Clay's genial spirit was much excited by the grand prospect of a league of the American states under the hegemony of the United States. It satisfied the plan of his daring imagination. It filled the bounds of his far-reaching vision. He immediately communicated the propositions of the two ministers, Mr. Salazar and Mr. Obregon, to President Adams, and urged the President to allow him to give them the assurance that the invitation to send representatives to the congress, to be held the following October at Panama, would be accepted by the United States. The President, however, proceeded rather cautiously. He was, indeed, very friendly in his feelings toward the Spanish-American states, and was ready to aid their cause in any manner consistent with the duties of a neutral. But he had a calmer way of regarding things than his brilliant Secretary of State, and, moreover, upon him rested the ultimate responsibility. He required Mr. Clay to procure from Messrs. Salazar and Obregon some information in regard to the subjects which would be considered by the congress, the nature and form of the powers to be given to the diplomatic agents which were to compose it, and the mode of its organization and procedure. At the same time he allowed Mr. Clay to encourage them to believe that, if satisfactory answers should be returned to these inquiries, their invitation would be accepted. He also caused Mr. Clay to warn them that the United States could not become a party to the existing war with Spain, or give any counsel in regard to its further prosecution.

The acceptance
of the invitation.

The answers to these inquiries were not received until the following November, and in Mr. Clay's letter acknowledging their receipt, they were said to be not entirely satisfactory to the President. The ministers were informed, however, that the President had resolved to send commissioners to the congress at Panama, in case the Senate, which was to assemble in a few days, should assent to it; but that the commissioners would not be empowered to do or say anything which would compromise the neutrality of the United States.

The President too
hasty after all.

As a matter of fact, the replies from the Governments of Colombia and Mexico to President Adams' questions would have been regarded as highly unsatisfactory by any judicious mind, entirely uncommitted; for, while they left the President's second and third questions entirely unanswered, they suggested a joint resistance of all the American states to European interference in American affairs, and to any further European colonization upon the American continents, as the principal subjects in the discussion and determination of which the United States would be expected to take part. They referred to the fact that President Monroe in his noted message had characterized these things as being matters of common interest to both North and South America.

Opposition in
the Senate to
the sending of
representatives
to Panama.

Here was certainly a fine opportunity for all sorts of entanglements; and it is not at all astonishing that, when the subject was brought before the Senate of the United States by the President's message of December 26th, 1825, asking the Senate to approve his nominations of Richard C. Anderson and John Sergeant as ministers from the United States to the "Assembly of American Nations at Panama," a very strong opposition to the project was developed in that body. The Senate referred the nominations to a committee, and called for the diplomatic correspondence and other papers relating to the subject, which, upon examination, revealed the facts briefly stated above.

The committee, which was the regular committee on Foreign Relations, reported against the nominations, or rather against the policy of having representatives at the congress at all, on the ground that it might compromise the neutrality of the United States, and involve the United States in entangling connections with foreign powers. This report was made to the Senate on January 16th, 1826. The Senate debated, in secret session, the questions involved in the report during the latter half of February and the first half of March. The view held by those who favored the report was that the Panama congress was to have the character of a military confederation, and that membership in it would be inconsistent with a status of neutrality toward Spain and her revolting American colonies. The view of those who opposed the report and desired to send representatives to the congress was, that the congress was only a meeting, in one place, of the plenipotentiaries of the different states for an interchange of opinions, and would not necessarily alter the attitude of any of the powers taking part in it upon any subject, or toward any other power.

Popular sympathy in the
United States for the
South-American states.

The strong sympathy of the people of the United States for the cause of independence in Middle and South America really violated the spirit of neutrality, and the influence of this sympathy upon the Senators and Representatives in Congress was very disturbing to a cool and judicial consideration of the attitude which the Government should preserve in the matter of the Panama mission.

The President's
nominations
confirmed.


No influence of
slavery perceptible
in the vote upon
the nominations.

The friends of the mission at last won the day by a vote of twenty-four to nineteen. Fifteen Northern Senators voted to send representatives to the congress, and seven voted against doing so. Nine Southern Senators voted to send representatives, and twelve voted against doing so. This vote hardly sustains the claim of certain of the historians, that the slavery interest was the primal cause of the opposition to the Panama mission. One of the most eminent among these says that the historical significance of the contest over the question was that slavery threw aside its municipal character, its character as a Commonwealth institution, and demanded to prescribe both the internal and external policies of the nation. This sounds dramatic, but if it means, as it appears to mean, that when, in a federal system of government, any interest or institution regulated by Commonwealth law asks protection from the general Government against foreign influence and interference it thereby asserts command over the nation, it is a proposition which also sounds decidedly outré to an American lawyer. The Constitution of the United States imposed the international protection of all such interests and institutions upon the general Government when it reserved such interests and institutions to the jurisdiction of the Commonwealths and gave the general Government alone international standing. When, then, such interests and institutions claim that protection, they are only asking for a right guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and are by no means asserting an authority over the Constitution and the country.

The Haytian
question at
the congress.

It is true that Mr. Salazar said in his communication something about the status of Hayti being a subject of deliberation for the congress. It was also true that Hayti had been for thirty years in a state of chronic insurrection and revolution, and that the former negro slave population had, by the assassination of their former masters and mistresses, freed themselves from bondage, taken possession of the country, and were reducing it to barbarism at a rapid pace. It is furthermore true that the slaveholders in the United States did not wish their own homes to be made the scenes of any such ruin and savagery, or themselves or their families to be made subject to any such fate; and, it may be confidently hazarded, that no Northerner, at that day, viewed such possibilities with anything but aversion and horror. It required a quarter of a century of radical abolition recklessness, the blunder-crime of secession, and the desperation of long-continued, and at first unsuccessful, war, to make the men of the North regard without sympathy such dangers to their Southern brethren. The North and the South simply could not have divided, at that time, upon the question of the relation to Hayti. There was only one view upon that subject, and that was that the example and influence of Hayti must be held far away from these shores. This could have been accomplished, however, as well by attending the congress as by staying away, perhaps better. At least, the Haytian question was no chief ground of opposition to the mission, and certainly no chief ground in favor of the mission.

Cuba and
Porto Rico.

It is more probable that one of the reasons which moved President Adams and Mr. Clay to urge attendance upon the congress was to be in a position to restrain the Spanish-American states from attempting to seize Cuba and Porto Rico. During the latter half of the year 1825, at the very moment when the Government was communicating with the Spanish-American states in regard to the congress, Mr. Clay was urging the Czar of Russia, on the one side, to exercise his influence upon the Spanish court for the cessation of hostilities on the part of Spain against the revolting American colonies, on the ground that Spain could never resubjugate them, and would by a continuance of hostilities exasperate them and excite them to attack Cuba and Porto Rico with the purpose of expelling the Spanish power from these islands, and was urging the Spanish-American states, on the other side, to refrain from such an attack, on the ground that if they did attempt to seize these islands the Czar would not only cease his good offices with the Spanish King to end the war, but might bring the entire power of the Holy Alliance to the aid of the Spanish King for the resubjection of his former American colonies. The policy of President Adams' Administration was clearly opposed to the occupation of Cuba and Porto Rico, either by the Spanish Americans or by any European state other than Spain herself. In this matter, also, the Administration and the opposition held the same view.

Real nature of the
opposition to the
Panama mission.

The only natural explanations of the determined opposition to the Panama mission were, thus, either the dread of embarrassing entanglements with the Spanish-American states, and the consequent compromise of the status of neutrality toward them and their motherland, or the spirit of personal hostility to the Administration. From the merits of the question the former would seem the more likely. It was certainly, to any candid mind, a sufficient reason. On the other hand, an expression uttered by Mr. Van Buren as he left the Senate chamber, after having just made a most earnest appeal against the mission and cast his vote against it, would indicate that the opposition fought the Administration in this matter from factional motives purely. He is reported to have said: "They have beaten us by a few votes, after a hard battle; but if they had only taken the other side and refused the mission, we should have had them."

The failure of the
Panama congress.

The debate continued so long, however, that the congress at Panama adjourned to Tacubaya before the representatives from the United States appeared. Spain ceased to wage war against her former colonies. The Holy Alliance did not interfere. The Spanish-American states suspended their operations against Cuba and Porto Rico. Hayti remained in isolated barbarism. And the congress of the American nations never reassembled.

It is possible that the jingo policy of the Administration may have helped to produce all these results. It is probable that the same results would have followed had the Senate refused the mission to Panama. It is certainly most fortunate that these results were attained without the attendance of the representatives of the United States upon the congress. All possible entanglements were thus avoided, while the purposes of the Administration, in so far at least as they subserved the true interests of the country, were substantially accomplished.

It is true that the special commercial advantages which Clay had hoped for were not secured, nor his dream of an American Confederacy under the protectorate of the United States realized. Neither were the President's ideas in regard to methods for settling mooted questions of international relations, nor those in regard to the advancement of religious liberty, fulfilled. But these things were all premature, to say the least, and none of them would, probably, have been helped onward by any discussion in the congress of the American nations. With the exception of the United States, those nations were altogether too immature to deal with such problems; and the United States itself was not sufficiently consolidated and powerful to assume the duties of instructor and guardian over them. It is not probable that any opportunity for doing good or receiving good was lost by the non-attendance of representatives from the United States upon the deliberations of the Panama congress. It is far more probable that both the doing and the suffering of injury were escaped.

While the question of the relation of the United States to the other states upon the American continents is by no means transitory, the question of the Panama mission was so, at least so much so as not to serve well as an issue for the division of the Republican party into two permanently hostile forces.

Adams on
internal improvements
in his message of
December 6th, 1825.


Van Buren's
resolution against
internal improvements.

The question of internal improvements was a better issue, from this point of view. In his first annual message President Adams took high national ground upon this subject. He seemed to attribute to the general Government unlimited power to construct roads and canals, establish universities and observatories, and to do any and every thing conducive to the improvement of the people. Clay himself, it is said, was a little staggered by the exceeding broadness of Mr. Adams' ideas. While Mr. Van Buren, the leader of the opposition in the Senate, offered a resolution in that body, a fortnight after the message, which declared that Congress did not possess the power to make roads and canals within the respective Commonwealths, and proposed the formation of an amendment to the Constitution, which should prescribe the powers that the general Government should have over the subject of internal improvements.

The practices
of the Adams
Administration
in respect to
internal
improvements.

Mr. Adams seems to have yielded before the opposition in this matter, and to have thus avoided making it a further issue. In his subsequent messages he confined himself chiefly to observations upon the work done by the engineers appointed under the Congressional Act of April 30th, 1824, for making surveys, plans, and estimates for national routes. The Administration and Congress simply put into practice the Monroe ideas upon the subject. Money was appropriated by Congress for the construction and repair of roads, and was expended under the supervision of the President, and stock was taken by the Government in private corporations, organized under Commonwealth law, and subject to Commonwealth jurisdiction, for the construction of canals; but no jurisdiction and no administrative powers were exercised or asserted by the general Government over such improvements, except, perhaps, the power of eminent domain.

The opposition, however, which had been excited at first by Mr. Adams' proposition to make a large advance upon Mr. Monroe's principles, was not satisfied with his return in practice to those principles. They professed to entertain the fear that the Administration had a settled policy of encroachment upon the reserved rights and powers of the Commonwealths, and they now began to watch and combat the movements of the Administration chiefly from this point of view. This attitude must not yet, however, be ascribed wholly or chiefly to the conscious influences of the slavery interest. Factional hostility to the Administration, and the general settling back into the "States' rights" view of the Constitution, which manifests itself all through the history of the United States as a reaction from the tension of war and the enthusiasm of strong national exertion, did more to determine it than the views of the slaveholders in regard to the interests of their peculiar institution.

The chief practical
difficulty in the way
of a national system of
internal improvements.

The great practical difficulty in regard to the subject was in making such determinations as to the national or local character of the proposed improvements as would be satisfactory to the mass of the people. Naturally every Congressman considered the roads of his district as matters of national concern; and, in spite of the law of 1824 vesting in the President and his board of engineers the laying out of such routes as the President might decide to be required by the general welfare, the scramble for national money to be expended for local purposes increased from one session to another.

It was the question of the tariff which showed more clearly than anything else the influence of the interests of slavery in the attitude which the slaveholders would finally take toward the industrial policies of the nation, and which would contribute more than anything else to the division of the Republican party from the point of view of principle.

The Tariff
of 1824
a failure.

The great purpose of the Tariff of 1824 was to give the American manufacturers of coarse woollens a substantial control of the home markets. In two years of trial this result had not been realized. A vast amount of capital had been transferred from other enterprises to build new woollen mills, and the markets were so glutted with their fabrics that sale for them could only be found by virtually excluding foreign goods of the same material and grade. It was claimed that the foreign goods were sold upon foreign account, and not by bona fide American merchants, and that the goods were thus undervalued by the fictitious parties to the importation, and the duty thus so largely avoided as to make the importation practically free. It was, therefore, contended that the agent of the foreign manufacturer or merchant was ruining the American manufacturer, on the one hand, and the American merchant, on the other. President Adams himself, in his message of December 5th, 1826, referred to the frauds thus committed on the revenue. The manufacturers of woollens in New England and Pennsylvania memorialized Congress, during the latter part of the year 1826, representing themselves to be in dire distress and praying for aid. These memorials were referred to the Committee on Manufactures of the House of Representatives for report. On January 10th, 1827, the chairman of this committee, Mr. Mallary, of Vermont, introduced a bill to meet the difficulties above described.

The Tariff
Bill of 1827.

This bill proposed to introduce a system of minimal valuations at the custom-house instead of taking the foreign invoice as the basis for the levy of the duty, as was the existing practice, and it placed the valuation of coarse woollens so high as practically to prohibit their importation. The bill proposed, however, to raise the tariff on wool to such a rate as would deprive the manufacturers very largely of the benefit to be secured by the system of minimal valuations. It was questionable whether the manufacturers would get any very material aid out of this bill, which contained so high a rate of duty upon the raw material, but it was necessary to incorporate the provision in order to secure the support of the West to the measure.

Development of the
industrial antithesis
between the North
and the South.

The industrial antithesis between the North and the South became more exactly organized under the issue presented by this bill. Massachusetts joined the high protection ranks, and Kentucky went over to the side of the South. Missouri, however, still voted for the tariff, while New York City still preserved its attitude of opposition, and Maine's Representatives were evenly divided in the final vote on the bill. The protection phalanx from Pennsylvania was broken, too, by the defection of her two most important Representatives, Ingham and Buchanan. The attitude of Buchanan was a matter of especial note. He held that the constitutionality of the tariff and the policy of a moderate protection had been completely settled by the founders of the Constitution and by the uniform practice of the Government, but that so high a tariff as the one now proposed on woollens was impolitic, from the point of view of the general welfare, and unjust, from that of an equal distribution of the burdens of taxation. Mr. Buchanan owed much of his subsequent success to the moderate views which he advanced and adhered to at this juncture.

The bill passed by the
House of Representatives.

It will be seen, however, that the support of, and the opposition to, the tariff respectively had not yet become entirely sectional, though an advance had been made since 1824 toward that result. The bill passed the House on February 10th, 1827, but the Senate did not reach its consideration before the conclusion of the session.

Hostility to
the measure in
South Carolina.

It had the effect, however, of arousing most intense excitement and bitter opposition in South Carolina. In fact, it is from this date and issue that we must trace the history of nullification in South Carolina. In the summer following the Congressional session of 1826-27 the chief personages of the Commonwealth assembled at Columbia. The Governor, Mr. Taylor, presided, and the principal orator of the occasion was the President of the College of the Commonwealth, Dr. Cooper, a man of rare powers and great learning, an Englishman by birth and education, a free-trader in his political economy, and a "States' rights" man in his political science. In his speech he suggested disunion as preferable to submission to the tariff legislation of Congress. The resolutions passed by the assembly were not so inflammatory as the Doctor's speech, but they declared that such legislation was calculated to give rise to the inquiry whether the Union was of any benefit, under such conditions, to the Southern Commonwealths.

The bill neglected
by the Senate.

Copies of these resolutions were sent to the legislative bodies of the several Southern Commonwealths, but they evoked no response whatsoever. The proposed tariff had, by the inaction of the Senate, been virtually abandoned, and it was therefore unnecessary to protest against its passage as law, or make threats against its execution.

The Tariff
of 1828.

At the beginning of the next session of Congress, that of 1827-28, the committee on Manufactures brought in another bill. It advanced the duty on iron by from ten to fifteen per centum; it advanced the duty on wool by from about fifty to more than one hundred per centum, imposing both a specific and an ad valorem duty upon it. It changed the duty upon woollen goods costing less than $2.50 a square yard from an ad valorem to a specific duty, and increased the duty by about twenty per centum. It retained the ad valorem duty on woollens costing more than $2.50 a square yard, and increased the same by about twenty per centum, and in addition thereto it imposed a minimum valuation of $4 a square yard upon all such goods costing between $2.50 and $4 a square yard, which would effect an additional increase of duty of about fifty per centum on the average. It finally increased the duty on hemp by about twenty-five per centum immediately, and by about eighty per centum in three years.

This was a far more moderate protection upon woollen fabrics than that proposed at the previous session, on account of the fact that the duty on the raw material was so greatly increased. It was at least questionable whether the manufacturers would receive any substantial benefit out of the measure. Mr. Mallary, the chairman of the committee, felt so dubious about this that he dissented from the committee's report in regard to woollen fabrics, and offered an amendment to the bill for the purpose of curing this defect. He could not, however, bring the House to accept his proposition, but his opposition to the committee's report opened the way for some modification of the bill to the advantage of the manufacturers. It was still, however, no great boon to the manufacturers. It was about as much a wool- and hemp-grower's bill as a manufacturer's bill. Nobody could tell whether it would be more beneficial to the manufacturers than to the wool- and hemp-growers.

One thing alone was certain, and that was, that the cotton-planters and those engaged in foreign commerce would have no direct share in the benefits of the measure. And it was also very difficult to figure out any indirect benefits for them. It would not widen the domestic market for raw cotton. It would increase the price of woollen fabrics. It would increase the domestic demand for the products of Western agriculture, and thereby increase the price of these products to the Southern consumers of them. And it would discourage the importation of woollen goods. These were all the results easily discernible, and every one of them bore hard upon the planting and shipping interests. The representatives from the Southern Commonwealths pointed out these things, but they were told to establish manufactures themselves, and then they would be tributary to nobody.

The Southerners not
yet agreed that slave
labor could not be
employed in manufacture.

Some of the Southerners, like Colonel Hayne, frankly replied that they could not establish manufactures with slave labor; while others, like Mr. McDuffie, threatened ruin to the Northern manufacturers if they succeeded in having the duties raised so high as to drive the South, with its cheap slave labor, into manufactures.

The character of the bill
as reflected in the analysis
of the vote upon it.

The vote in the House of Representatives reflects quite perfectly the character of the bill. The members from the wool- and hemp-growing sections supported the bill; those from the manufacturing section were indifferent; those from the shipping and commercial sections opposed it; and those from the planting section opposed it unanimously.

In the Senate, amendments were made to the bill which altered it in the direction of a slightly increased protection to the manufacturers. Still, Mr. Webster, who had become a champion of protection since his section had become a manufacturing section, claimed that the bill was of little worth to the manufacturers, while the increased duty on hemp would bear heavily on the shipping interests of New England. He voted for the bill, however, while his colleague, Mr. Silsbee, voted against it. The vote in the Senate differed only slightly, as regards sectional distribution, from that in the House. It was finally passed by both Houses as amended by the Senate, and was signed by the President on the nineteenth day of May, 1828; and opposition to it thereafter must take on the form of petition for its repeal, or that of resistance to its execution. Before it could come to the latter, however, three things must be accomplished. The first was the invention of the morale of such resistance. The second was the creation of the party of resistance. And the last was the capture of some existing governmental organization by that party.

The Tariff of 1828
not a complete
party measure.

While thus it cannot be said that the "Jackson men" voted against this bill and the Administration men for it, still there was something which looked like an approach toward this relation. Certainly the Southern wing of the Jacksonians, or of the Democratic party, as the Jacksonians now called themselves in distinction from the National Republicans, opposed the measure with something like unanimity. Many of Jackson's Northern supporters, however, voted for the bill, and it may be said that the Democratic party of the North was then in favor of moderate protection to all the interests of the country.

The party divisions of 1828 were still largely dominated by considerations of personal partisanship, and the organization of the two parties, which had now emerged from the all-comprehending Republican party, upon the basis of different political creeds, still lacked much of completion.

The presidential campaign
of 1828 still dominated by
personal considerations.

The campaign of 1828 was not fought upon the issues of any well established differences in political and economic policies. Jackson and his followers simply appealed to the mass of the people, especially to the lower classes, "to turn the rascals out," on the ground that the "Old Hero," the friend of the people, had been cheated, by a corrupt bargain between the two chiefs of the Administration, out of his rights in 1824, and that the whole pack of officials serving under them had been corrupted by the venality of their superiors. The people must take possession of their Government and send the wicked aristocracy of office holders to the right about, was the chief demand of the Democracy of 1828, and it was with the empty phrases, with which they rang the changes upon this demand, that they won the battle.

Election of
Jackson.

Jackson and Calhoun were elected by an electoral vote of more than two to one. Every Commonwealth west of the Alleghanies, and every one south of Mason and Dixon's line, except Delaware and Maryland, gave its electoral vote entire to Jackson and Calhoun; and in addition thereto Pennsylvania gave them its entire vote, New York gave them twenty of its thirty-six votes, Maine one of its nine, and Maryland five of its eleven.

Advent of
the parvenus.

It was a tremendous bouleversement. The mob of malcontents had gotten together, had pulled together, and had accomplished their purpose. The old ruling class in American society was driven from place and power, and a new, untried, and inexperienced set of men seized the reins of Government. It looked something like a combination of the South and West against the East. They had, however, secured the two most important Eastern Commonwealths through Van Buren's activity in New York and Jackson's own popularity in Pennsylvania. It was not yet, however, a socialistic uprising against the wealth of the East. It was a political uprising against the monopoly of office-holding by the old official aristocracy. It was the introduction of a new class of eligibles into the official positions. Whether the subsequent effects of this change would be a modification of the structure of the Union or the policies of the Government remained to be seen.

Foreign affairs
under Jackson's
Administration.

Jackson placed Van Buren at the head of the Department of State, and under the influence of this most astute politician started out upon his presidential career. The foreign diplomacy of the Administration was naturally successful. The disputes with Great Britain in regard to the northeast boundary of the United States, and in regard to trade between the United States and the British colonies, and the dispute with France in regard to indemnity for the spoliations committed by the French upon American commerce in the first years of the century, were successfully dealt with, by a judicious admixture of shrewdness, conciliatoriness, and firmness. These questions were not, however, of sufficient importance to turn the attention from the internal questions of constitutional interpretation and governmental policies.

The Democratic
party and its
divisions.

The Jackson party, or the Democratic party, must make its creed, both political and economic, and it must adjust that creed both to the Constitution and to the working of the Government. The party was composed of three tolerably distinct divisions, which may be termed the Southern, the Western, and the Eastern divisions. Of these, the Western division alone was a real democracy. The Southern and Eastern divisions were rather aristocracies. The Southern division was emphatically so. And when it came to policies, the Western division favored internal improvements, and the Eastern and Southern divisions opposed them; the Western division favored a tariff on wool and hemp, the Eastern favored moderate protection of manufactures, and the Southern division wanted as nearly free trade as the revenues of the Government would allow. It was a great task for the Administration to maintain the combination, and keep a reliable majority in Congress.

CHAPTER VIII.

DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROTECTION

Jackson's Ideas Concerning Internal Improvements—The Maysville Road Bill—The Slavery Question not Involved in the Vote on the Bill or in the Veto—Railway Building Begun—The Commencement of the Struggle for the Repeal of the Tariff of 1828—Jackson on the Tariff of 1828, in his First Annual Message—George McDuffie as South Carolina's Political Economist—Dr. Thomas Cooper—Mr. McDuffie's Tariff Bill—The Tariff Bill of 1830—McDuffie's Amendment—McDuffie's Doctrine that the Producers of Exports Pay Finally the Duties on the Imports—The Acceptance of Mr. McDuffie's Doctrine at the South—Growing Belief in the Incapacity of Slave Labor for Manufacture—The Tariff Pronounced Unconstitutional—Growth of the Protection Idea—Jackson on the Tariff and the Surplus Revenue Derived therefrom, in the Message of December, 1830—Southern Disappointment—"The South Carolina Exposition"—Calhoun's Doctrine of "States' rights"—Nullification in Theory—The Nullification and Anti-nullification Parties in South Carolina—First Attempt to try the Validity of the Tariff in the United States Courts—Nullification and Rebellion—Jackson's Message of December, 1831, on the Tariff Issue—The Bill from the Committee on Ways and Means—The Tariff Bill of 1832 from the Committee on Manufactures—Passage of the Tariff of 1832 by the House of Representatives—The "American System."

Jackson's ideas
concerning
internal
improvements.

In his first annual message President Jackson referred to the general dissatisfaction with the manner of dealing with the question of internal improvements which had prevailed to that time, and proposed that the general Government should abandon the subject entirely and should distribute the surplus of the revenue, above the wants of the Government, among the Commonwealths, and leave to them the expenditure of the money upon internal improvements.

The Maysville
Road Bill.

The Congress, however, paid no regard to the President's recommendation. In May, 1830, it sent up to the President for his approval a bill authorizing and requiring the Government to take stock in a Kentucky turnpike, running from Maysville on the Ohio River to Lexington, some sixty miles inward.

The veto
of the Bill.

The President vetoed the bill, May 27th. His special reason was that the road was not a national, but a local, matter. He did not attack the Monroe principle upon the general subject of internal improvements, but he referred to the recommendation contained in his annual message as still expressing his view of the manner in which the Government should rid itself of the embarrassments into which it was being farther and farther drawn by the practice of voting national money for internal improvements. He argued that the subject must be considered upon its own merits, and not brought into connection with the tariff policy. He thus saw the prospect of the expenditure of millions of national money upon internal improvements in order to relieve the protectionists of the embarrassment of a great surplus, and denounced it. He contended that the Government should adopt its policy upon each of these subjects as if the other did not exist. He urged, finally, that, if the people wanted the general Government to undertake internal improvements, they should so amend the Constitution as to give the Government sufficient jurisdiction over the roads and canals, which it might build, to protect them against wanton injury, and to collect the tolls necessary to keep them in repair. This he declared to be necessary to any satisfactory exercise of powers upon the general subject by the Government.

The veto certainly exerted some influence upon the minds of the Representatives. A majority still voted for the bill, but it was a much reduced majority. The vote upon the vetoed bill stood ninety-six to ninety. The bill was therefore lost.

The slavery question
not involved in the
vote on the bill or
in the veto.

The exact question at issue was not, as we have seen, the general policy of internal improvements, but it was whether the Maysville road was a national improvement. An analysis of the vote upon the subject may not, therefore, have any significance, from the point of view of the general question. Roughly, we may say that a majority of the Representatives from the South voted against the bill, a large majority of those from the Northwest voted for it, a majority of those from Pennsylvania and New Jersey voted for it, while a majority of those from New York voted against it, and, lastly, the Representatives from New England were divided. It thus appears rather far fetched to ascribe the attitude of the opponents of the bill, in any section, to the influence of the slavery interest. Those who voted against the bill said they did so because the object for which the appropriation was sought was a local affair, managed by a private corporation, for private gain. That uncompromising enemy of slavery, Mr. John W. Taylor, of New York, was prominent among those who took this position and voted against the bill. He even pronounced it unconstitutional, and was inclined to the view, as we have seen, that internal improvements generally were left by the Constitution for the Commonwealths to construct and control.

Too much influence in
determining the national
policy toward internal
improvements usually
ascribed to the veto.

It is usual to attribute to the veto of this bill the overthrow of the policy of internal improvements by the general Government. This proposition will hardly bear close examination. Congress continued to make appropriations for internal improvements, which the President usually vetoed, if they were in separate bills, and usually approved, if they were included in the general appropriation bills. It is calculated that while Adams signed appropriations for internal improvements to the amount of less than two millions and a half of dollars, Jackson approved disbursements for these purposes to the amount of more than ten millions of dollars.

Railway
building
begun.

The fact is that the building of railways was the chief force which put an end to road- and canal-making by the general Government. The construction of the Mohawk and Hudson Railroad, the parent of the New York Central system, was begun in 1825. In 1827 the survey of the Boston and Albany line was begun. The same year the Pennsylvania system had its origin. One year later the Baltimore and Ohio system was founded. The year of the veto of the Maysville road bill forty-one miles of railroad were being operated in the United States, and at the close of the decade more than two thousand miles. As the railway system spread over the country, through private enterprise, the appropriations of national money for internal improvements became more and more confined to the specific improvements of rivers and harbors. The roads and canals of a national character were being made unnecessary by the extension of the railways. It is undoubtedly, then, far more plausible and natural to attribute the overthrow of the policy of internal improvements by the general Government to the growth of the railways, constructed and operated by private corporations under Commonwealth charters, on the one side, and, on the other, to the settled conviction that the general Government did not have the constitutional powers adequate to the successful establishment and protection of a system of works based upon that policy, and to the unsatisfactory experience which the country had had in attempting to distinguish local from national enterprises and to confine appropriations to those of the latter character.

It is difficult to see any special connection of the interests of slavery with the decline of the policy. It is true that the slaveholders were becoming strict constructionists generally. They had learned from the Missouri struggle that Congress must not be allowed to magnify its powers when forming the Territories into Commonwealths, and they had learned from the tariff struggles that Congress must not be allowed to magnify its powers in regard to the regulation of foreign commerce and the raising of revenue, but, as to internal improvements, no reliable evidence of a consciousness, on the part of the slaveholders, of any particular connection between their peculiar interest and a policy upon this subject by the general Government is discoverable.

On the contrary, in the struggle for the repeal of the Tariff of 1828 the influence of the slavery interest is easily remarked, and is clearly seen to have been controlling.

The commencement
of the struggle for
the repeal of the
Tariff of 1828.

On February 10th, 1829, Mr. William Smith, the senior Senator from South Carolina, presented to the Senate the protest of the legislature of South Carolina against Congressional protection to domestic manufactures. This memorial pronounced all such acts to be unconstitutional, except as incidental to raising the revenue or regulating commerce, and impolitic even then, when their operation would be unequal upon the different sections of the country, and felt by any section to be oppressive. The language of the paper was respectful, moderate, dignified, and forcible, and it contained no threats of disunion, or of violent or unlawful resistance. The legislature asked that the protest should be entered on the journal of the Senate. The Senate, however, only ordered it to be printed.

The South Carolinians promised themselves, nevertheless, some measure of relief from what they supposed would be the policy of the newly elected President. Being a Southern man, it was naturally supposed that he would recognize Southern interests in the policy upon this subject which he would recommend. But, while Jackson had not committed himself to protection for the sake of the manufacturers or of the producers of raw material, he was a strong Union man and an American, and the argument for the tariff from the point of view of national industrial independence exercised a prevailing influence in determining his attitude toward the subject.

Jackson on the Tariff
of 1828, in his
first annual message.


Jackson's views on
the Tariff as
a general policy.

In his message of December 8th, 1829, he wrote that the Tariff of 1828 had not proved itself so beneficial to the manufacturers or so injurious to commerce and agriculture as had been anticipated; that he regretted that all nations would not abolish restrictions, and refer the management of trade to individual enterprise; that since, however, they would not do so, a tariff was the necessary policy of the United States; but that in the face of the fact that the national debt would soon be paid, and the sinking fund would not be much longer required, a modification of the existing tariff in the direction of a reduction of duties would soon be the true and necessary policy; and that the principle to be followed in making such a modification ought to be to reduce the duties upon such articles as might come into competition with home products no further than would leave to the latter a fair chance in such competition; and that from the general principle of a reduction to this point must be excepted the duties on the implements and prime necessities of war, all of which should enjoy a higher protection than that accorded to other articles. Evidently, according to this doctrine, the chief reductions should fall upon articles not coming into competition with home products, such articles as tea, coffee, etc., at that time termed the unprotected articles. Jackson had thus anticipated Clay's American system of the tariff by nearly three years, as we shall see.

The South Carolinians were greatly disappointed by this expression of the President's views, although they claimed that the message recommended substantial tariff reduction. This part of the message was referred to the committee on Manufactures, according to the rule of procedure which had prevailed in the House of Representatives for nearly a decade, and which showed that the matter of the tariff was not regarded as something purely incidental to the raising of revenue.

George McDuffie
as South Carolina's
political economist.


Dr. Thomas Cooper.

The claim was now put forward, however, that the subject properly belonged to the domain of the committee on Ways and Means. Mr. George McDuffie, of South Carolina, was at this moment the chairman of this committee. He was a man of keen intelligence, strong courage, and great persistence. He was the political economist of the slave-labor system, as Calhoun was its political scientist and constitutional lawyer. It is to be surmised, at least, that he learned much of his political economy from the notorious, if not famous, Dr. Thomas Cooper, the British President of South Carolina College. It is true that Mr. McDuffie's college days had passed before Dr. Cooper taught in the institution, but the Doctor wrote and published much upon economic and political subjects between 1820 and 1830. In fact, he set the direction of thought upon such subjects in South Carolina and throughout a large portion of the South during that period. As has been already mentioned, he was an Englishman by birth. He had spent a part of his earlier life in France, and had imbibed the doctrines of French republicanism. For this reason he was disliked and shunned by conservative men in England to such a degree as to make longer residence in his native country uncomfortable to him. He came to the United States in the last decade of the eighteenth century. His radical views and his violent expressions of them soon drew attention to him here. He was one of the men prosecuted under the Alien and Sedition laws of 1798. He made his way to South Carolina about the beginning of the third decade of this century, and found there a well prepared soil for his Girondist views of federal Government and his free-trade views in political economy. A true estimate of responsibilities for the events of 1832 in South Carolina would probably hold him more culpable than Calhoun himself. It was from such a thinker, and he was a keen and vigorous thinker, that Mr. McDuffie received impulse, if not actual instruction, in his reasoning.

Mr. McDuffie argued that the power to impose a tariff was not expressly vested by the Constitution in the Government; that, therefore, if it existed at all, as a power of the Government, it must be incidental to some express provision; and that it could be incidental only to the power for raising the revenue. He, therefore, contended further that all tariff bills must originate in the House of Representatives, and in the regular revenue committee of that House, the committee of Ways and Means.

Mr. McDuffie's
Tariff Bill.

Congress had disregarded the protest of the South Carolina Legislature of the previous February. It was well known that the committee on Manufactures in the House was favorable to the maintenance of the existing duties. It seemed, therefore, to Mr. McDuffie, and those who thought with him, both natural and necessary that the committee of Ways and Means should claim their constitutional prerogative, and make an effort to get the ear of Congress to their representations. Consequently, on February 5th, 1830, Mr. McDuffie reported a tariff bill from his committee, without having had the subject specifically referred to them by the House. The bill provided for a moderate reduction of the tariff all around, but still left a duty of thirty-three and one-third per centum ad valorem upon woollen fabrics.

The interest attaching to this proposition lies in the fact that it contains substantially the terms upon which the South Carolinians were willing to compromise the tariff question. It shows them to have been still moderate tariff men, rather than out and out free-traders. To the unprejudiced mind of the present day it certainly appears to have been an offer which merited some consideration, but, after a single reading, it was ordered to lie on the table, from which it was never taken up.

The Tariff
Bill of 1830.

Meanwhile the committee on Manufactures were very deliberately maturing a measure. It was reported to the House early in April, and taken up for consideration on the 15th. It was nothing more than an administrative measure for the purpose of securing a stricter execution of the existing tariff.

McDuffie's
Amendment.

Mr. McDuffie made another effort to move the House to consider a reduction of duties, in the form of an amendment to this bill. He offered such an amendment, which provided for a return to the duties imposed before 1824 upon woollens, cottons, iron, hemp, etc.

McDuffie's doctrine
that the producers
of exports pay
finally the duties
on the imports.

It was in support of this amendment that he made his famous argument of April 29th, 1830, in which he developed, for the first time, the doctrine in regard to the final payment of the duties which furnished the economic basis of nullification. That doctrine was that the producers of the exports, which are exchanged in the foreign markets for the imports, pay, finally, the duty upon the imports. His course of reasoning in the establishment of this doctrine was as follows: He reduced all trade ultimately to barter between producers, and then declared it to be self-evident that when a producer of exports should be obliged to pay a duty of twenty-five per centum upon the imports, which he had received in pay for his exports, before he could bring them into the country of his residence, he had received finally twenty-five per centum less for his exports than he would have received had he not been compelled to pay any duty upon his imports.

Mr. McDuffie then drew from the statistics of the foreign trade of the United States the fact that the sections cultivating cotton and rice, constituting less than one-fifth of the Union, both in territory and population, produced thirty of the fifty-eight millions' worth of annual exports; and finally drew the conclusion from these premises that one-fifth of the people, the population of the planting sections, paid more than one-half of the duties on the imports of the country.

The danger in
Mr. McDuffie's
conclusions.

If this were true it was indeed a grievous burden. And if the people of the South, or that part of the South devoted to the production of these staples, believed it to be true, then would the reason for one great scruple against resistance to the execution of the tariff laws be removed, namely, the general belief theretofore prevailing, from the doctrine that the consumers of the imports ultimately pay the duties, that the burden of the duties fell nearly equally upon the different sections. So long as this belief was general the sense of oppression in any particular part or section of the country could not become very keen. Substitute for this old idea, however, the new doctrine advanced by Mr. McDuffie, and, under the existing distribution of the articles of export, there could not fail to be developed a most bitter sense of wrong and oppression on the part of the producers of the Southern staples.

The acceptance of
Mr. McDuffie's
doctrine at the South.

The Southerners, especially the South Carolinians, did embrace the new doctrine, apparently, at least, with all sincerity. It was utterly futile that Mr. Gorham and Mr. Everett pointed out to them the fact that they consumed only a comparatively small portion of the imports received in exchange for their exports, and sold the rest to the people of the other sections with the duties added on, thus shifting the duties upon the other sections. They clung to the new doctrine as if it were something for which they had long been seeking, and to which their hearts were already too much attached to be drawn away by argument.

Growing belief in the
incapacity of slave
labor for manufacture.

It was in this speech, furthermore, that Mr. McDuffie abandoned his former view of the capacity of slave labor for manufacturing industry, and embraced and enounced the doctrine held before this by Colonel Hayne upon that subject, which was that slave labor could only be employed successfully in agriculture. This was, of course, another necessary element in the consolidation of the interests of the South against the tariff.

The Tariff
pronounced
unconstitutional.

It was in this speech, also, that Mr. McDuffie, for the first time, pronounced the tariff unconstitutional. He did not yet declare any and every tariff unconstitutional, but only such a tariff as sacrificed one interest to another, or the interests of one section to those of another. This he claimed the existing tariff did do. The belief in the unconstitutionality of the tariff was, of course, another necessary element in the preparation for resistance to its execution.

McDuffie's threat of
resistance to the execution
of the Tariff laws.

Finally, Mr. McDuffie uttered, in this speech, the threat of resistance to the execution of the tariff laws, the threat of nullification. It was ill timed, as threats generally are, and it had the effect of producing the large majority by which Mr. McDuffie's amendment was voted down.

The bill suffered some modification in the course of its passage, but its principle remained the same. It reduced the duty on no article whatever, but only provided for a stricter enforcement of the existing laws.

Growth of the
protection idea.

By another bill, which received the President's approval on May 20th (1830), eight days before this administrative bill was signed, the duties on tea, coffee, and cocoa had been reduced. This meant that the protectionists were very willing to free those articles from duty which did not come into competition with home productions, in order to preserve and increase the duties on those that did. This was the direction in which the tariff system was growing. It became, two years later, the pronounced principle of the "American system," as we shall see.

Jackson on the Tariff and
the surplus revenue derived
therefrom, in the message
of December, 1830.

In the message of December 7th, 1830, President Jackson defended the constitutionality of the protective system, said that the existing tariff needed some corrections in details, and expressed the opinion that no law reducing duties could be made which would be satisfactory to the American people that would not leave a considerable surplus in the Treasury. He suggested the employment of such surplus upon internal improvements under the direction of the legislatures of the several Commonwealths.

Southern
disappointment.

This was a stunning blow to the hopes of the Southerners. The extinction of the debt and the existence of an unemployed surplus were the conditions to which they had looked forward as necessitating in all conservative minds the reduction of the duties. But here was a plan, suggested by a Southern President, for relieving the Treasury of any amount of surplus for an indefinite period, without the reduction of a single penny of duty upon a single article. Thus encouraged the protectionists in both Houses of Congress refused, during the session of 1830-31, to consider any propositions looking toward a reduction of duties.

It is hardly a cause of wonder that the South Carolinians began to despair of obtaining through Congress any relief from what they regarded as dire oppression, and that some of them were reviewing the Constitution, and the political principles upon which it was founded, with the purpose of finding other means with which to meet the great emergency. It was in this part of the work that Mr. Calhoun took the lead.

"The South Carolina
Exposition."


Calhoun's doctrine
of "States' rights."

As far back as 1828, just after the enactment of the tariff measure which was giving so much offence, Mr. Calhoun had started out in this direction in the paper which he furnished the South Carolina legislature, which served as the basis of the first pronunciamento from that body upon the subject, the so-called South Carolina Exposition. This document by Mr. Calhoun was comparatively temperate in its language and not very clear in its political doctrines and its constitutional interpretation. The great debate between Hayne and Webster on the floor of the Senate, over which body Mr. Calhoun, as Vice-President, presided, in regard to the fundamental principles of the Union, taught Mr. Calhoun several very important points in the evolution of his doctrine of "States' rights." Especially was he warned against the great error, made by Mr. Hayne, of representing the United States Government as one of the parties to the "constitutional pact" and the "States" as the other. Mr. Webster so completely demolished this theory that Mr. Calhoun was preserved from introducing this fallacy or any of its corollaries into his reasoning, if he had ever been inclined to do so. In his "Address on the Relations of the States and Federal Government," and in his "Address to the People of South Carolina," both published in the summer of 1831, he shows that he had maturely reflected upon all that had been said and written upon the fundamental question of the relation of the "States" to the Union and to the general Government. He had given up his hope both in the Congress and in the President. With him the question of the tariff had now, therefore, been removed from the domain of governmental policy into that of constitutional powers and political principle. This was the point of view which he took in the documents just mentioned.

He began, as innovators generally do, with the assertion that his interpretation of the Constitution was no new invention of his own, but was the ancient principle of the Constitution. That principle was, he contended, that the Constitution was made by the "States," as sovereign bodies, and that through it the "States" created only a governmental agent for their general affairs. The term or phrase United States was only the name of the general governmental agent of the "States." Sovereignty was in the "States" only. Consequently, when the United States assumed powers not conferred by the "States" in the Constitution, the "States," by virtue of the sovereign attribute, might and should interpose, interpose individually, not collectively as they, of course, might do constitutionally through the regular form of procedure for amending the Constitution.

Nullification
in theory.

Calhoun, like every other real statesman of his day, held that there is a domain of liberty secured not only to the minority, but to the individual, by the Constitution, upon which the majority shall not encroach. The practical question was how to prevent the majority, in possession of the powers and machinery of the Government, from doing so. The answer to this question developed by precedent, and formulated clearly by Webster at that very moment, was that it could be done only by invoking the aid of the judicial power of the United States. But Calhoun said in reply to this, that the United States courts were a part of the Government, substantially under the control of Congress and the President, through the power of Congress to constitute judgeships at pleasure, and of the President and the Senate to fill them, and that they were interested, therefore, in the usurpations of power by the Government. He further held that these courts could not decide political questions, although these questions might incidentally involve the most sacred rights of individuals, and that, anyhow, they were as much subject to the "States," acting in their sovereign capacities, as any other part of the Government. He could see no way for preserving the rights of the minority and of individuals, in last resort, against governmental usurpation, save through the power of "each of the parties to the compact" to prevent the execution within the territory subject to its jurisdiction of such governmental measures as it might deem usurpations.

The nullification and
anti-nullification
parties in
South Carolina.

Down to the time of these utterances of Calhoun the party in South Carolina opposed to any resistance, by force, to the execution of the tariff laws, had been able to prevent the outbreak of nullification. The leaders of this party were among the most distinguished and influential men of the Commonwealth. They were Mr. Drayton, the member of Congress from the Charleston district, Judge Johnson of the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Petigru, Mr. Grimke, the Lowndes, and others of scarcely less note. In the first half of the year 1831 they still held control of the municipal government of Charleston, and of the legislature of the Commonwealth, although the "States' rights" men had obtained the governorship. Nearly all of the opponents of nullification denounced the tariff laws as unjust and oppressive to the South, but they also denounced the doctrine that the execution of any law of the United States could be constitutionally resisted, except by means of the judicial processes provided for the case by the Constitution itself. Resistance in any other manner, they declared, would be rebellion at the outset, revolution if successful. They said that they were not willing to assume any such responsibilities in opposing the tariff laws, and that they regarded the blessings of the Union as too great and manifold to hazard disunion, even if it could be successfully and peaceably accomplished.

Their views were so candid and reasonable that, in spite of the intense excitement which prevailed during the legislative session following the failure of the attempt to modify the tariff, they prevented the nullifiers from securing a sufficient majority in the legislature to order the call of a convention. The nullifiers had committed themselves to the doctrine that the nullifying power was a power of sovereignty, not of government, and that it resided, therefore, in the convention, not in the legislature. So long, then, as the assembly of the convention could be prevented, nullification could be certainly thwarted.

Capture of the municipal government
of Charleston by the nullifiers.

But the publication of Calhoun's new doctrine in the summer of 1831 gave great strength to the nullifiers, and in the municipal election of the latter part of the year they captured the mayorship of Charleston.

First attempt to try
the validity of the
Tariff in the United
States courts.

One of the strongest moral forces in the hands of the opponents of nullification against which the nullifiers had to contend was the generally received doctrine that the constitutional means for meeting Congressional usurpation in any given case was a process in the United States courts. Unless they could say that they had tried this means in vain, they would still have to suffer the imputation of too hasty action, if nothing more. In order to escape this, two Charleston lawyers imported a package of dutiable goods, gave bonds for the payment of the duty, refused payment, and were sued upon their bonds in the United States District Court. The plan was to have the question of the constitutionality of the tariff submitted to the jury, but the court refused to allow the jury to decide any question except that which pertained to the due execution of the bond.

Nullification
and rebellion.

The nullifiers could now declare that every means suggested by their opponents as regular and lawful had been tried and had failed, and that there now remained only submission to oppression, or nullification, or rebellion. They said that no true South Carolinian could accept the first, and that, therefore, the choice lay between nullification and rebellion. Calhoun taught that there was a vast difference between the two; that the former was a constitutional, as well as a sovereign, method of resistance. He asserted that it was the great conservative principle of the Constitution, and defined it to be that reserved right whereby a "State," in convention assembled, might suspend the operation of a Congressional act upon its citizens which it considered unconstitutional, until conventions in three-fourths of the "States" should pronounce the Congressional act to be constitutional. He did not claim that this right was reserved specifically, but by implication from the general language of the Tenth Amendment. He was doubtless sincere, or at least thought he was. Many of his followers certainly were, and the masses, who could not understand the doctrine, but took it on faith, were so certain of its truth that they were ready to risk anything for its vindication.

The Unionists, however, branded the doctrine as a deception. An editorial in one of their principal newspapers contained this sentence: "But this everlasting cant of devotion to the Union, accompanied by a recommendation to do those acts that must necessarily destroy it, is beyond patient endurance from a people not absolutely confined in their own mad-houses." It was clear to them, at the outset, that nullification was piecemeal secession and rebellion.

Jackson's message of
December, 1831,
on the Tariff issue.

This was the state of things in South Carolina when Congress assembled on the first Monday of December, 1831. On the 6th the President's annual message was laid before the two Houses. It contained a much more distinct and decided recommendation for the reduction of duties than he had ever before expressed. He called attention to the prospect of the early extinguishment of the public debt, when the annual instalment to the sinking fund would be no longer needed, and recommended that Congress should at once deal with the question of the reduction of the duties to a point where they would produce no more revenue than would be necessary for an economical administration of the Government. He farther recommended the readjustment of the duties with a view to equal justice to all national interests, and said that the interests of both merchant and manufacturer required that the change should be prospective.

There was no suggestion in the message of increasing the expenditures of the Government for internal improvements, or for any other purpose. The plain inference from the message was that by March 4th, 1833, the debt would all be paid, and the revenue could then be reduced by ten or twelve millions a year, and should be.

The question of the
proper committee to
frame Tariff Bills.

This was all that the South Carolinians had asked, and it would have been the height of folly for them to have pursued extraordinary means to relieve themselves when regular methods promised at last a prospect of success. This part of the message was referred to the committee on Manufactures, of which ex-President John Quincy Adams was then chairman. Mr. Adams had far more moderate views in regard to the tariff than the majority of his protectionist brethren, and it could be reasonably hoped that he would report a bill from his committee which would be conciliatory in character. The Southerners were not quite willing, however, to rest entirely on his own good will, and raised the contention that the subject of the tariff ought to be referred either to the committee on Ways and Means, or to the committee on Commerce, since the power to impose duties was incident either to the raising of revenue or to the regulation of commerce. The result of the contention was that a resolution was introduced, and taken up, requesting the committee on Commerce to make a report on the working of the tariff, and the committee on Ways and Means was allowed to report a tariff bill, which was read twice and referred to the committee of the Whole House.

The bill from the Committee
on Ways and Means.

The bill from the committee on Ways and Means provided for the reduction of the duty to twelve and one-half per centum ad valorem on all articles; on some, immediately and totally, but on the more important articles gradually, and in a period of a little more than three years.

This was undoubtedly an ill digested measure. It was not only a radical reduction of duties, but it was an indiscriminate reduction. Mr. McDuffie's own committee were not unanimous in recommending it.

The Tariff Bill of 1832
from the Committee
on Manufactures.

On May 23rd Mr. Adams reported the bill from the committee on Manufactures. Mr. Adams based his bill on the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, of December 7th, 1831, and proposed the repeal of the existing system of minimal valuations and the duty on coarse wool altogether, and a slight reduction of the duties on fine wool and woollen fabrics.

It was calculated that Mr. Adams' bill would reduce the receipts from the customs by about five or six millions of dollars, leaving thus still an annual surplus of some five or six millions after the extinguishment of the debt.

Mr. McDuffie's bill was taken up first in the committee of the Whole House. Mr. McDuffie defended it with his argument, already stated, that the producers of the exports pay finally the duties on the imports for which the exports are exchanged in the foreign markets, and cited recent utterances of Professor Senior, the noted political economist of Oxford University, in support of his position. He could not, however, convince the House, and his bill was finally disposed of in less than a week. Mr. Adams' bill was then taken up. It was understood as proposing a slight reduction all around. It was intended to do so. But Mr. McDuffie made an argument against it, in which he undertook to prove, and declared that he did prove, that it discriminated still further against the South, and imposed a heavier burden upon that section than it was even then bearing, grievous as that was. He declared, finally, that he would not submit to it.

Passage of the Tariff of 1832
by the House of Representatives.

The House, however, was neither convinced by his argument nor intimidated by his threat. It passed the bill on June 28th, by a large majority, a majority of more than two to one.

Meanwhile the Senate had been occupying itself with an exhaustive discussion of the principle of the tariff. On January 9th, 1832, Mr. Clay introduced the famous resolution for making the tariff upon articles coming into competition with home manufactures a system of permanent high duties, and for abolishing, or greatly reducing, the duties upon all other articles.

Senator Hayne immediately grasped the import of this proposition. He declared that it marked a new era in the tariff system. He demonstrated that down to that time the protection of manufactures had been regarded by all persons and parties as a temporary policy and had been justified as such, while this proposition looked to its establishment as a permanent principle of the policy of the country, which neither revenue surplus nor manufacturing experience should affect.

The "American
System."

Mr. Clay, who had himself spoken of protection before this as only a temporary policy, acknowledged the truth of Colonel Hayne's criticism, and proceeded, in his famous three days' speech, to develop the arguments for the permanent protective system, the "American System," as he termed it, which made up the text-book for the later supporters of that system. His idea was simply to collect the duties from those foreign products which come into competition in the home markets with domestic products, and prevent the accumulation of a Treasury surplus by fixing the duties so high in rate as to make them largely prohibitory. As we have seen, this idea had been already foreshadowed in one of President Jackson's earlier messages. It now received its complete formulation and its economic justification.

But it was a sad prospect for the South. The South had looked forward to the extinguishment of the debt as necessarily bringing in its train the decrease of duties to the gross amount of at least ten millions of dollars per annum, and now it was called upon to consider the plan for a decrease of revenue by an increase of duties. It is hardly astonishing that the disappointment should have been bitter, and that passionate men should have thought of resistance to what appeared to them so grievously unjust.

The Senate referred Mr. Clay's resolution, together with an amendment to it, proposed by Colonel Hayne, for a general reduction of duties, to its committee on Manufactures. The committee reported a bill based on Mr. Clay's principle. The Constitution does not, however, allow the Senate to originate a bill for raising revenue, and the majority of the Senators voted to lay the bill on the table, and await the movements in the House.

The bill in
the Senate.

On June 29th the House bill appeared in the Senate, and was referred by that body to its committee on Manufactures. On July 2nd Mr. Dickerson reported from this committee the House bill, with a series of amendments to it, proposed by the committee. These amendments were all in the direction of Mr. Clay's idea, and were adopted by the Senate. The bill as thus amended passed the Senate on July 9th, the Senators from every Northern Commonwealth voting for it, and those from every Southern Commonwealth, except Kentucky, Missouri, and Louisiana, voting against it. Missouri was hardly to be then classed as a Southern Commonwealth. Louisiana was won by an increase of the duty on sugar. And only one of the Senators from Kentucky voted against the measure.

The bill as
finally passed.

The House of Representatives refused to concur in some of the amendments, and the measure was sent to a Conference committee. This committee patched up a compromise, and the bill became a law on July 14th.

On the whole, it was doubtful if the bill, with the changes imposed upon it by the Senate, would prove to be any relief to the South. Many of the Southerners claimed that it would increase the burden upon that section, while none of them appeared to think it would lighten it.

What now were the planters to do? They had waited for the extinguishment of the debt, and for the period when the Treasury would no longer require the sixteen millions of dollars per annum applied to its cancellation, hoping for a general reduction of duties by something like this sum as the necessary result; but instead of this they were now offered, as a final solution of the tariff question, a slight reduction of duties on articles coming into competition with home products, a practical abolition of the duties on those which did not come into competition with home products, and an increase in the expenses of the Government to the amount of the receipts whatever they might be. This was to be the permanent policy of the country, the "American System."

They were indeed wofully disappointed, not to say deceived. There seemed now no further hope of aid to them, from either Congress, the President, or the courts. They must yield unconditionally and hopelessly, or resist the execution of the law. The former course was too much to expect from the proud barons of South Carolina. The only question was whether some legal basis for the resistance could be found, or whether it must take on the form of rebellion. We have already considered Calhoun's doctrine of nullification, and his claim that it was a constitutional remedy; it now remains for us to trace briefly the history of the attempt to apply it. Before, however, we can do this intelligently, we must consider the other political developments of the year 1832, occasioned chiefly by the presidential election of that year, but affecting directly or indirectly the attitude of the Administration toward events in South Carolina, and the attitude of Congress toward the President in dealing with nullification.

CHAPTER IX.

THE UNITED STATES BANK AND THE PRESIDENTIAL CONTEST OF 1832

Jackson and the Bank in his First Annual Message—Jackson's Relations to the Portsmouth Branch of the Bank—Jackson's Opposition in Principle to the Bank—The Political Science of the Constitution of 1787—Western Democracy—The West and the "Money Power" of the East—"States' rights" and the Bank—The Case of Brown and Maryland—Democracy and Socialism—Benton's Attack on the Bank—Benton Repulsed—Jackson and Benton—The Bank and the People—The Existence of the Bank made a Political Issue—Jackson's Second Attack on the Bank—Jackson's Plan for a Bank—Benton's Resolution against the Re-charter of the Bank—Jackson's Challenge to make the Continued Existence of the Bank the Issue in the Campaign of 1832—The Challenge Accepted—The Bank's Petition for Re-charter—Benton's Charge of Illegal Practices—Passage of the Bill for Re-charter—The Veto of the Bank Bill—The Bank and Foreign Powers—The Bank and the West—The Bank and the Rich—Structure and Powers of the Bank—Jackson on Executive Independence—Von Holst's Criticism of the Veto Message—The President's Real Meaning.

Jackson and the
Bank in his first
annual message.

In his first annual message, that of December 8th, 1829, President Jackson began his war upon the United States Bank. He declared in it that the constitutionality and expediency of the law creating the Bank were well questioned by a large portion of the people, and that its failure to establish a sound and uniform currency, the great end of its existence, must be admitted by all.

Jackson's relations
to the Portsmouth
branch of the Bank.

Basing themselves chiefly upon an individual report made by Mr. John Quincy Adams on May 14th, 1832, in regard to the condition of the Bank, and upon documents referred to in that report, recent historians attribute President Jackson's first attack upon the United States Bank to a personal feud between his friends in New Hampshire and Mr. Webster's friends there.

Senator Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, the leader of the Jackson party in New Hampshire, endeavored, in the summer of 1829, to have Jeremiah Mason, Mr. Webster's great friend, removed from the presidency of the branch of the United States Bank at Portsmouth, N. H., and Isaac Hill, another New Hampshire friend of the President, attempted at the same time to have the United States pension agency, connected with the Portsmouth branch of the United States Bank, removed to Concord, and connected with a little bank there of which Hill had been president, and in which he was still interested. Jackson's Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Ingham, asked Mr. Biddle, the president of the United States Bank, to have Mason removed, and his Secretary of War, Mr. Eaton, ordered Mason to transfer the pension agency to Hill's bank in Concord. Mr. Biddle looked into the matter, and being convinced that the whole thing was a political scheme, refused to have Mason removed from office, and prevented the execution of Eaton's order in regard to the transfer of the pension agency.

These are, very briefly stated, the facts upon which some of the American historians found the theory that Jackson, entertaining no opposition in principle to the Bank at the beginning of his Administration, became so enraged at its managers, because of their success in these petty bouts with his Cabinet officers, that he resolved upon its destruction. The treatment which Adams and Clay had received at the hands of Jackson and his friends from 1824 onward had led them to feel that Jackson's whole nature was full of personal rancor, and that he could see nothing except from a personal point of view. There is little doubt that this feeling largely determined Adams' ideas of Jackson's attitude in the Bank question, and that the historians have written the account of the Bank controversy under the influence of Adams' representations.

Jackson's
opposition
in principle
to the Bank.

There is undoubtedly some truth in this view of the matter, but it is far from being the whole truth. It is not even that part of the truth which is most valuable to the student of American history. There was an opposition in principle to the United States Bank, as well as a personal conflict between leaders in regard to it. That opposition in principle was the opposition of "States' rights" democracy to centralized privilege.

In all political systems there is a political science as well as a public, or constitutional, law. The political science of a state is based chiefly upon the actual social conditions and relations of its population, and its public or constitutional law ought to be based upon its political science. In fact, however, we seldom see social conditions, political theory, and public law in a state of perfect harmony. It is the prime problem of political and legal progress to work out this great result.

The political science
of the Constitution
of 1787.


Western Democracy.


The West and the
"money power"
of the East.

The political science or theory upon which the Constitution of 1787 was founded was thoroughly English. It recognized social distinctions, and its most fundamental principle was compromise between conflicting interests. It was substantially in harmony with social conditions, on the one side, and was fairly expressed through the Constitution of 1787, on the other. Without the interposition of other forces it would have made out of the United States a new England. But French political science had already gained a foothold in the country. It was contained in the Declaration of Independence, and its prime postulate was "the equality of all men." It did not then comport with the social condition of the country, and the Constitution did not make its principle into positive law. It was, therefore, at the beginning, abstract, and theoretical. The man who taught it, however, became President, and the party which embraced it became the governing party. But their practice was not made consistent with their theory, and could not be, so long as the social conditions of the country contradicted their theory. It was the settlement of the country west of the Alleghanies which first created social conditions in harmony with their theory. The distinction between master and slave was not permitted to enter the larger portion of it; the distinction between the rich and the poor could not at first exist, or be, for many years, developed; and the distinction between the cultivated and the ignorant was likewise obliged to remain long in abeyance; while the dangers and the hardships of frontier life developed, speedily, a strong sense of self-reliance and self-esteem. General equality and practical self-help were the first social results of the levelling experiences of the camp, the wilderness, and the prairie. With such influences operating upon such characters as undertook the making of the West, the most adventurous part of the population of the East, that bold and boastful Democracy was produced, which began after 1820 to make itself powerfully felt in modifying the original conservative principles of the institutions of the country. Connect with these new social conditions, and the political principles evolved out of them, the fact that the West, like all new countries, had little money or capital, and was a constant borrower from the East, in order to furnish itself with roads, implements, means of transportation, and manufactured articles, and we have the forces and the interests which were bound, under the first general financial pressure, to make an onslaught upon the "money power and privilege" of the East, as embodied in the United States Bank.

"States' rights"
and the Bank.

The "States' rights" opposition to the Bank had been aroused more than a decade before Jackson's message of 1829. The Bank and its branches were the sole depositories of the funds of the Government. By refusing to accept on deposit the bills of Commonwealth banks which did not redeem their bills in specie on demand, the Bank could prevent the officers of the Government from accepting such bills for dues to the Government. The Bank used this power to force the Commonwealth banks to specie payment. It was one of the purposes for which Congress created the Bank. It made the Bank, however, very unpopular with the officers and stockholders of the banks chartered by the Commonwealths. These persons were, as a rule, men of influence in their respective communities, and they succeeded in persuading many of the people that the United States Bank was a centralized monopoly, and was using its powers and privileges to oppress the institutions of the Commonwealths.

In 1818 the legislatures of Ohio and Maryland imposed a heavy tax on the branches of the Bank located within their respective jurisdictions. The purpose was to drive them out. The Bank resisted payment, and was sustained by the United States courts.

The case of Brown
and Maryland.

In the February term of 1819 the Supreme Court of the United States decided the famous case of McCulloch and Maryland, declaring the act of Congress creating the Bank constitutional, and the act of the Maryland legislature undertaking to tax it unconstitutional. Maryland submitted at once, but the officers of the government of Ohio forced their way into the branch of the Bank in that State, at Chillicothe, and took one hundred thousand dollars out of the vault, and that too in the face of an injunction issued by the United States Circuit Court. The directors sued the officers of the Commonwealth for trespass, and the Commonwealth refused the use of its jails to confine the persons arrested. At the same time the Commonwealth reduced the tax to ten thousand dollars, and refunded ninety thousand, and finally receded entirely from its unlawful demand.

This defeat of the "States' rights" attack, and the excellent management of the Bank by Langdon Cheves, and then by Nicholas Biddle, seem to have silenced the complaints against the Bank from 1823 to 1828.

Democracy
and Socialism.

It was during this period, however, that the "State socialistic" characteristic of radical democracy received a strong development in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, through the relief measures for debtors; which measures threatened to destroy the constitutional guarantees of private property. The "relief party" secured the legislature and the executive of the Commonwealth. The judiciary, however, stood out against them, and they did not have the necessary two-thirds majority in the legislature to remove the judges. The legislature, however, passed a new judiciary act, and created another supreme court of the Commonwealth. This scandal of judicial anarchy existed for nearly two years, when, at last, in 1826, the "anti-relief" party elected a majority of the legislative members, and the new legislature repealed the act establishing the new court.

Jackson's friends in Kentucky belonged almost exclusively to the "relief party," and it is hardly fanciful to attribute to this movement in Kentucky some influence in the formation of Jackson's ideas in regard to the United States Bank, and in regard to his plan for a Government bank, responsible to the people and managed for the benefit of the people.

Benton's attack
on the Bank.

On March 3rd, 1828, Senator Benton began his warfare upon the Bank. He attacked its privilege of being the depository of Government money. He claimed that there were two or three millions of dollars of Government money used in loans by the Bank, which earned about one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year of interest, all of which went to the stockholders of the Bank and none of it to the Government, while the Government was all the time paying interest on the public debt and taxing the people for the purpose. He wanted to take the surplus deposits out of the Bank and pay a part of the public debt with them. This was the first charge of the Western Democracy upon privilege, as being opposed to the principle of universal equality.

Benton
repulsed.

There were, however, enough practical men in the Senate who considered this privilege as only a fair compensation for the service rendered by the Bank to the Government in transporting the Government funds without any specific return therefor, and who knew that it is not good banking to pay interest on deposits, to reject Mr. Benton's resolution. Benton repeated his motion on January 1st, 1829, but with no greater success.

Jackson
and Benton.

After March 4th, 1829, the leadership of the party was in the hands of the President, and Benton became Jackson's lieutenant in the Senate. There had been personal feuds between the two men, but they now harmonized politically, and in no point did that harmony become more complete than in the war against the Bank.

It is probable that at the moment of his accession to power Jackson had not thought out the relation of the democratic principle to the Bank, but he undoubtedly felt it, and the feeling guided him to the position which he assumed, first toward the questions of detail in the Bank's policy and management, and then toward the general question of its existence. The controversy between his Secretaries and the Bank's officers, upon which Mr. Adams laid so much stress, probably precipitated matters, but the crisis would have developed under other circumstances had not these existed. The social and political forces at play were bound to bring it about under one issue or another. It may have astonished the politicians and statesmen of the East then, and it may astonish the casual reader of American history now, that Jackson attacked the question of the future existence of the Bank in his first annual message, but there is nothing surprising in it to the careful student of American history, who comprehends the development of the democratic spirit of the West during the third decade of the century.

The Bank and
the people.

It is doubtful whether the President was correct in saying, as he did in his message of 1829, that a large portion of the people questioned the constitutionality and expediency of the law creating the Bank, and it is certain that the Bank was not considered by all to have failed in the establishment of a sound and uniform currency. It is far more probable that the people generally acquiesced in the decision of the Court pronouncing the Bank law constitutional, and that the majority of the people, at that moment, regarded it as good policy, and believed that the Bank had fairly fulfilled the purpose of its creation. The President was simply assuming that the people thought as he did, as democratic leaders usually do. Taken in that sense there was nothing extraordinary in what he said. He had a right to disagree in opinion with the Court, and to say so, and to make any recommendation to Congress which seemed wise to him, in regard to the re-charter of the Bank. That an expiring law is constitutional is not always a convincing argument for its re-enactment.

The existence of the Bank
made a political issue.

The President's criticism occasioned an investigation into the principle and status of the Bank, and brought the Bank question into the politics of the day.

The committee on Finance of the Senate, and the committee on Ways and Means of the House, made reports, in March and April of 1830, vigorously defending the constitutionality, the expediency, and the management of the Bank, and demonstrating the great political and financial dangers of such a Government bank as the President suggested. The chairman of the committee on Ways and Means was, it will be remembered, Mr. McDuffie, the political economist of the slavery interest. To his mind the Bank question had evidently little connection with the slavery question.

Jackson's second
attack on the Bank.

The President, however, returned to the attack in his message of December 10th, 1830. He also presented, in this message, an elaboration of his idea of a Government bank. His proposition was for a bank as a branch of the Treasury Department, based on the deposits of the funds of the Government and also on those made by individuals, but having no power to issue notes or make loans or purchase property. Its chief purpose would be to do the business of the Government, and its expenses might be met by selling exchange to private persons at a small rate.

Jackson's plan
for a bank.

The President thought that this scheme avoided all the objections to the existing Bank, and yet preserved all of the latter's advantages. It would require no charter of incorporation, would have neither stockholders, nor debtors, nor property, would require few officers, and would leave to the Commonwealths the creation of their own local paper currency through their own banks, while the new Government bank would be able to check the issues of the Commonwealth banks through its power to refuse to take their bills on deposit or for exchange, unless they redeemed them with specie. In a sentence, his doctrine now was that banking must be left as far as possible to Commonwealth law, and that such powers as the general Government had received from the Constitution over the subject should be exercised by the Government, if at all, through its own officials, for the benefit of the people, and not be conferred as privileges upon a corporation of private persons, to be exercised for their private gain. This will be at once recognized as a democratic, "States' rights," socialistic scheme in the essential elements of its composition.

Benton's resolution
against the re-charter
of the Bank.

Before the report of the Finance committee of the Senate upon this part of the message was presented Senator Benton offered a resolution, on February 2nd, 1831, which provided that the charter of the Bank ought not to be renewed. In his speech supporting the resolution the senator developed the whole "States' rights," socialistic, democratic argument against the Bank with great elaboration, both in principle and in detail.

It is true that Benton did not go so far as Jackson in the socialistic direction. He said that he was willing to vote for the President's Government bank scheme, since it would substitute for the existing Bank an institution which would be divested of the essential features of a bank, the power to make loans and discounts, but that he would prefer to see the charter of the Bank expire without any substitute being created for it.

The Senate was not, however, convinced by Mr. Benton's argument, and refused to allow him to introduce his resolution.

Jackson's challenge to
make the continued
existence of the Bank
the issue in the
campaign of 1832.

In his message of December 6th, 1831, President Jackson referred to what he had said in former messages concerning the Bank, and closed his allusion with the following significant words: "Having thus conscientiously discharged a constitutional duty, I deem it proper, on this occasion, without a more particular reference to the views of the subject then expressed, to leave it for the present to the investigation of an enlightened people and their representatives."

The challenge
accepted.

This language certainly seemed to imply that the President would, so far as he was able, make the question of the re-charter of the Bank one of the issues of the election campaign of 1832. His opponents so interpreted him, and they gladly accepted the challenge, for they believed the Bank to be popular with the voters. They thought that the Senators and Representatives in Congress, a majority of whom favored the Bank, truly represented the views of their constituencies, and they calculated to be able to split the Democratic party itself on the issue.

The president and directors of the Bank, however, were most reluctant to have the existence of the Bank made a party question. The leaders of the National Republicans, on the other hand, insisted upon it. Clay, who, six days after the appearance of the President's message, had been nominated by a national convention at Baltimore as the candidate of the National Republicans for the presidency, was certain that under the issue of the renewal of the Bank's charter Jackson would be signally defeated. The Bank's officers yielded to his advice, enforced by that of Mr. Webster, and on January 9th, 1832, sent in the memorial for a re-charter.

The Bank's petition
for re-charter.

Senator Dallas presented the memorial, but said that he personally had discouraged its presentation at that juncture out of apprehension that the question of the re-charter of the Bank might, at the moment, be drawn into real or imagined conflict with "some higher, some more favorite, some more immediate wish or purpose of the American people." Senator Dallas was a Bank Democrat. The more favorite wish to which he referred was the re-election of Jackson, and the inference to be drawn from his words was that the Bank Democrats did not want to be obliged to choose between the Bank and Jackson at the next election.

The Senate referred the petition for re-charter to a committee composed of Mr. Dallas, Mr. Webster, Mr. Ewing, Mr. Hayne, and Mr. Johnston.

Benton's charge of
illegal practices.

Before the committee made its report Mr. Benton made another attack upon the Bank. This time he charged it with illegal practices in issuing drafts which passed as currency. The Senate, however, repelled the attack and refused to allow Mr. Benton to introduce his resolution declaring such drafts illegal.

Passage of the bill
for re-charter.

On March 13th Mr. Dallas brought in the bill from his committee for the re-charter of the Bank for fifteen years from the expiration of its existing charter in 1836.

While the bill was passing through the Senate a demonstration against the Bank was in progress in the House. Mr. Clayton, of Georgia, an enemy of the Bank, secured the appointment of a committee by the Speaker of the House, Mr. Stevenson, another enemy of the Bank, to inquire into the affairs of the Bank, and make report thereof to the House. A majority report was offered by Mr. Clayton severely criticising the Bank, and a minority report by Mr. McDuffie defending the Bank most ably and vigorously, and, if we may judge from the vote of the House upon the Senate bill for re-charter, which had passed the Senate, and appeared at this moment in the House for concurrence, most successfully. The House passed the Senate bill, with a few immaterial changes, by a vote of one hundred and seven to eighty-five.

The National Republicans felt sure that they had driven Jackson into a blind alley. But the "Old Hero" stood his ground and hurled a veto at the bill, which both killed it and conquered the National Republican party in the election of 1832 with its own chosen weapon.

The veto of
the Bank Bill.


The Bank and
foreign powers.

The veto message was a curious pot-pourri of strength and weakness, of sound statesmanship and cheap demagogism, of shrewd politics and silly commonplaces. We may arrange its score of points under five principal heads, or rather ends in view. The first was the attempt to rouse the national spirit against the Bank, on account of the fact that some eight millions of dollars' worth of the stock was in the hands of foreigners. The President made out that this was a great danger to the United States, both in war and peace. In war, he said, the Bank would be an internal enemy, more terrible than the army and navy of the external foe. Just how the possession of the certificates of stock by foreigners, whose money, which had been paid for them, was in the United States, and therefore under the control of the United States Government, could endanger the United States in case of a war between the United States and the country or countries to which these foreign stockholders belonged, the President failed to explain. It would seem to the ordinary mind that this would be an advantage to the United States, in that the Government of the United States would have within its grasp a part of the money power of the enemy. Moreover, the Bank law prevented the foreign stockholders from voting in the election of the directors of the Bank. How these stockholders could possibly exercise any hostile influence then, except by selling their stock to citizens of the United States, and taking the money which they might receive for it out of the country, was not only not explained but is inexplicable.

The Bank
and the West.

The second object was apparently the excitement of the West against the East. The President declared that the West was being made financially tributary to the East by the Bank. He presented the statistics of stockholding and interest-paying throughout the different sections of the country in proof of this statement. He affirmed that thirteen millions five hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars' worth of the stock was owned in the Northeastern and Middle Commonwealths, that five millions six hundred and twenty-three thousand dollars' worth of it was held in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, and that only one hundred and forty thousand and two hundred dollars' worth of it was held in the nine Western Commonwealths; while one million six hundred and forty thousand and forty-eight dollars of the profits of the Bank came from these Western Commonwealths, one million four hundred and sixty-three thousand and forty-one dollars of them from the Northeastern and Middle Commonwealths, and three hundred and fifty-two thousand and five hundred and seven dollars of them from the Southern Commonwealths. This seems to ordinary intelligence to prove that the Bank was accommodating Western borrowers with Eastern money; and as the Bank was limited by its charter to a maximum of six per centum interest on its loans, it seems that the accommodation was being rendered upon quite moderate consideration. But the President said it proved that the "Eastern money power" was oppressing the West, and the West was quite willing to believe anything against the persons or institutions to whom or to which it owed money.

The Bank
and the rich.

The third object to which the President addressed himself in the message was to call the attention of the poor to the proposition that the Government was favoring the rich through the Bank. The President called the Bank a monopoly, which means privilege conferred by Government on a few at the expense of the many. He calculated that the privilege to be granted to the existing stockholders by the re-charter of the Bank was worth seventeen millions of dollars, while the bonus which they would be required to pay was but three millions. Fourteen millions of dollars would thus be presented by the Government to the Bank, which sum the Government must take by taxation from the people. He arrived at these statistics and results by assuming that the Bank stock, after the re-charter and in consequence of it, would be worth about one hundred and fifty dollars for one hundred par, that some other body of stockholders could be found who would pay seventeen millions for the charter, and that the money thus acquired from the supposed stockholders by the Government would effect the remission of just so much taxation upon the people. The President saw also, with Senator Benton, that the use of the Government deposits by the Bank was a source of income to the stockholders at the popular expense. And he denounced the feature in the new bill, which allowed the Commonwealth banks to pay their indebtedness to any branch of the United States Bank with the notes of any other branch, but did not accord the same privilege to individuals, as favoring the rich and powerful against the poor and weak.

The entire argumentation in this part of the message seems extravagant and exaggerated, to say the least, but it sounded convincing and sympathetic to the masses. It was something which brought the question home to each one of them, and made it appear related to each one's personal interest. The statement was a powerful vote-catcher. It took wonderfully.

Structure
and powers
of the Bank.

The fourth proposition, as we have arranged them, was the criticism on the structure and powers of the Bank provided in the new bill. The President objected to the unnecessarily large amount of the capital stock, to the right to be given the Bank to locate its own branches, to the power of the Government, as a stockholder, to own real estate for general purposes, and to the power of the Bank to coin money, as he called the power to issue its notes.

Jackson on
executive
independence.

The final division of the message, according to our arrangement, contains the disquisition upon the relation of the departments of the Government to each other in operating the Constitution, and the relation of the general Government to the Commonwealths in regard to jurisdiction over the business of banking. The President held, upon the first of these points, that "if the opinion of the Supreme Court," in the case of McCulloch and Maryland, "covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of the Government." "The Congress, the Executive, and the Court," he said, "must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President, to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval, as it is of the Supreme Judges when it may be brought before them for decision. The opinion of the Judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the Judges; and, on that point, the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."

The President also said that he could have furnished a plan for a bank, had it been requested of him, which would have been equal to all the duties required by the Government, a plan which might have been enacted by Congress without straining or overstepping its powers, and without infringing the powers of the Commonwealths; and he complained that the Bank, as an agent of the Executive Department, should be thrust upon the Department without the Department being consulted as to whether it needed or wanted any such agent.

Von Holst's
criticism of
the veto message.


The President's
real meaning.

One of the most celebrated historians of American politics has indulged in a very severe criticism upon this part of the message, claiming that President Jackson virtually asserted therein the power to initiate legislation, full co-ordination with the Houses of Congress in legislation, and an independence of Congress, and especially of the Judiciary, which, in practice, would render constitutional law an impossibility. An impartial examination of the text of the message in all its parts will hardly warrant any such conclusions. It is quite clear, from such examination, that the President meant that in the formation of administrative measures by the Congressional committees in charge of the same, the views of the Administration ought to be obtained; that the President is not limited by the Constitution to any class of subjects in the use of his veto power upon proposed legislation; and that when the Congress and the President are legislating they are not obliged to re-enact a law simply because the Judiciary have declared it constitutional, nor even prevented from repealing a law, simply because the Judiciary have declared it constitutional, and certainly not prohibited from differing in opinion with the Judiciary in regard to the constitutionality of any law already on the statute book, or any proposed measure. Conservative American lawyers, jurists, and publicists approve all of this as not only the letter but also the spirit of the Constitution.

Jackson's
vindication
of executive
independence.

Instead of destroying the Constitution in theory by the doctrine of this veto, it looks more as if the President did something to rescue the "check and balance" system of government, provided in the Constitution, from the threatened domination of a single department over the others in it. The fact is, Congress had succeeded, during the régime of the old Republican party in American politics, in winning a power over the President which the Constitution did not authorize. The members of Congress had selected all of the Presidents, from Jefferson to Jackson, either by nomination or by actual election. The machinery constructed by the Constitution for the election of the President was wanting in its most necessary part. It contained no means of connection between the electoral colleges in the several Commonwealths in voting for the President and Vice-President, at the same time that it required a majority of all the electoral votes to elect. The members of Congress being the only national assembly of persons in the country, and being the chosen political leaders from the different Commonwealths, naturally glided into the habit of constituting themselves, in caucus, the connecting link between the electoral colleges in the several Commonwealths, and thus the Congressional caucus, or caucuses, as the case might be, became the nominating body or bodies to the electoral colleges. If the caucus nominated anybody, it left to the electors the alternative of ratifying the nomination, or of so scattering their votes as to give no person a majority, in which latter case the election of the President passed into the hands of the members of the House of Representatives. If, on the other hand, the caucus did not nominate anybody, the electors were nearly sure to fail to unite a majority of their votes upon the same person, in which case again the House of Representatives obtained possession of the election. With such an increasing control over the tenure of the President, it is not astonishing that the Congress, and even the individual members of Congress, exercised an ever increasing control over his acts and his policy. The encroaching legislature was fast developing the principle of parliamentary government as the principle of the American system, while the Constitution provides the principle of executive independence and presidential administration.

Again, the judicial department had appeared to assume the position that it possessed the supreme interpreting power of the Constitution upon every point. It had not then, as it has now, clearly confined itself to questions immediately involving questions of private rights. It appeared to be claiming jurisdiction in regard to questions primarily of political science, public law, and even public policy.

The President's Bank veto called a halt in these tendencies, and exerted an influence for the restoration of executive independence, and of the "check and balance" system, provided in the Constitution; and it called the people into a closer and more immediate relation to the President than they had before occupied, in that the President now appealed to them to decide the question between him and the Congress, in the election which was then about to take place.

These were the political principles contained in the Bank veto, and whether they, or the more democratic principle of anti-monopoly, or the more socialistic principle of government banking, moved the masses, certainly they were profoundly moved. Had the popular vote been taken, the day before the appearance of the veto, upon the question of the Bank's re-charter, it is altogether probable that an overwhelming majority would have been found in its favor. Against the veto, however, no sufficient majority could be united in Congress, and when the results of the presidential election became known, it was found that Jackson had carried the country with him in the unequal contest, and that the people had made the principles of the Jacksonian democracy the ruling spirit of the Constitution.

CHAPTER X.

NULLIFICATION

The Indian Question in Georgia—The Indian Springs Convention—The Repudiation of the Agreement—The Controversy between the Administration and Georgia—The Creek Convention of 1826—The Governor of Georgia Repudiates the Convention of 1826—The President Submits the Matter to Congress—Georgia and the Cherokees—Jackson and the Indian Question—Indian Policy before Jackson—The Case of the Cherokee Nation—The Case of Worcester against Georgia—The Failure of the President to Execute the Decision in the Worcester Case—Jackson and Calhoun—The Call of the Convention of 1832 in South Carolina—The Nullification Ordinance—The Addresses Issued by the Convention—The Acts of the Legislature of South Carolina for the Execution of the Ordinance—The Meaning of Nullification as Understood by the Nullifiers—Jackson's View of Nullification—The President's Proclamation of December 10th—The President's Military Preparations—The President's Instructions to the Customs Officers in South Carolina—The Popular Approval of the President's Course—The Verplanck Tariff Bill—Governor Hayne's Counter-Proclamation—The President's Message of January 16th, 1833—Calhoun's Explanations in the Senate—The "Force Bill"—The Postponement of the Execution of Nullification—The Compromise Tariff—Mr. Calhoun's Support of Mr. Clay's Bill—The Opposition to the Bill—Passage of the "Force Bill" by the Senate—Passage of the Compromise Tariff Bill and the "Force Bill" by Congress—The Nullification Ordinance Withdrawn.

The Indian
question
in Georgia.

Before nullification was resolved upon in South Carolina, something like it had been applied in Georgia. In the year 1802 Georgia formally ceded the lands claimed by the Commonwealth west of the Chattahoochee River to the United States for the sum of one million two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and upon the condition that the United States Government would, at its own expense, extinguish the Indian claims to any lands in Georgia so soon as this could be done peacefully and upon reasonable terms.

Between 1802 and 1820 the Government made some advance in the discharge of this obligation. By this latter date, however, designing white men had joined with the Indian tribes located within the Commonwealth, and were seeking to organize an Indian State for the purposes of their own political ambition, and many well disposed white persons were aiding them from humanitarian motives. The Georgians even accused the Government of doing things that would contribute to the same result. The Georgians were forced to face a very serious question, the question of an Indian State, controlled chiefly by white adventurers and sentimentalists, within the legal limits of the Commonwealth.

Under this pressure the Georgians reviewed the whole question of Indian organization, and rights to territory. They advanced the propositions, that the Indian tribal organizations were not States and could not, therefore, exercise dominion, and give title to real property; that the Indians living within the legal limits of the Commonwealth were subject to its jurisdiction in the same manner as other persons, and to the same extent; that the original title to all land within the limits of Georgia was in the Commonwealth, and every valid title must be derived from the Commonwealth; that the claim of the Indians to the lands on which the tribes lived was simply an incumbrance upon Georgia's title, an incumbrance which the general Government was obligated to remove; and that, after the Government should discharge this duty, Georgia's title would be perfect, without any formal transfer of these lands to Georgia by the Government.

The demand of Georgia
for the extinguishment
of the Indian claims.


The Indian Springs
Convention.

In 1819 the legislature of Georgia memorialized President Monroe to hasten the work of the Government in extinguishing the Indian claims. In the year 1824 the Creek chiefs in council resolved that not a foot of the lands claimed by the Creeks should be relinquished. Nevertheless, President Monroe's administration succeeded, in February of 1825, in negotiating an agreement with certain of the Creek chieftains according to which they relinquished to the United States the Creek claims to all lands lying within the limits of Georgia, and also to lands lying to the northwest and to the west of the Commonwealth. This agreement was ratified by the Senate of the United States in March of the same year.

The repudiation
of the agreement.

The Governor of Georgia, Mr. Troup, immediately despatched the public surveyors to lay out the relinquished territory. They were resisted by the Indians, who declared their repudiation of the agreement of February 12th with the general Government.

At the same moment a number of the chiefs were representing to the new President, Mr. Adams, that that agreement was a fraud upon the Indians, and that the chiefs who signed were not properly authorized to do so. The agent of the Government to the Creeks supported their protest, despite the fact that he was present at the execution of the agreement. Under these circumstances the Secretary of War, Mr. James Barbour, wrote to Governor Troup that the President expected him to abandon the survey until it could be made in accordance with the provisions of the agreement which allowed the Indians until September 1st, 1826, for their removal, and guaranteed them against all encroachments before that date.

The Controversy
between the
Administration
and Georgia.

The communication from Secretary Barbour gave rise to a spirited controversy between the Governor of Georgia and himself, in which the Governor assumed an extreme "States' rights" attitude in defence of his position. He claimed that Georgia's jurisdiction over, and title to, the lands formally relinquished by the Creeks to the United States were not originated by this act, but were only relieved by it of an incumbrance, and that, therefore, no additional act was necessary on the part of the Government to authorize Georgia to take possession and exercise jurisdiction. He declared that he would not postpone the survey, and advised the legislature of the Commonwealth to defend Georgia's rights by armed resistance, which recommendation the legislature seemed about to approve.

The President sent General Gaines to the scene of action, and authorized him to place the militia of the Commonwealths adjoining Georgia in readiness for service. The Governor was highly excited by the approach of the military power of the United States, and wrote to Secretary Barbour virtually accusing the Government of inciting the Indians to violence against Georgia and her people, and demanding to be informed of the purposes of the Administration. Mr. Barbour replied that the President had decided that the survey should not proceed, and had sent General Gaines with orders to prevent it, with military power if necessary. The Governor now turned to the President himself, with both protest and threat, but the President remained firm, and the Governor was obliged to yield for the moment.

The Creek
Convention
of 1826.

The Administration was apparently convinced that the agreement of 1825 was not fairly obtained, and, in January of 1826, entered into another agreement with the Creeks, which, while recognizing the nullity of the agreement of 1825, secured the extinguishment of their claims to all lands in Georgia lying east of the Chattahoochee, and to a considerable tract north and west of this river. The Administration asserted that all the Creek lands lying within the limits of Georgia were secured. Senator Berrien of Georgia, who represented the interests of his Commonwealth when the agreement came before the Senate for ratification, said, on the contrary, that it failed by a million of acres of having done so.

The Governor
of Georgia
repudiates
the Convention
of 1826.

Governor Troup declared that the general Government could not by an agreement with the Creeks rob Georgia of vested rights, which had been, once for all, perfected by the agreement of 1825. He ordered the public surveyors to include in their surveys the lands claimed by Georgia west of the line designated in the agreement of 1826. The Indians resisted them, and appealed to the President to protect their rights as recognized by the latter agreement. The President ordered the United States District Attorney and Marshal for Georgia to arrest any one caught in the act of surveying the lands west of the line fixed by the agreement of 1826. The Governor was informed of this order, and was given to understand that the President would uphold the agreement of 1826 by any and all power necessary. The Governor, however, defied the Administration, ordered the law officers of the Commonwealth to effect, by any means necessary, the release of the arrested surveyors, and to secure the arrest and trial of those persons who had taken or held them in custody, ordered the commanders of the militia of the Commonwealth to hold their forces in readiness to resist the threatened invasion by the military power of the United States, and sent a message to the legislature informing that body of what he had done in the premises. In this message he took the ground that questions of jurisdiction—he called them questions of sovereignty—between the general Government and the Commonwealths could not be determined by the judicial power of that Government, but must be settled by agreement between the two parties.

The President
submits the matter
to Congress.

President Adams was deeply impressed with the seriousness of the situation. He felt that he must uphold the dignity and authority of the Government at all hazards and by all the means intrusted to him by the Constitution and the laws; and yet he was unwilling to provoke civil war, if it could be avoided, or to enter upon the work of coercion without the practically unanimous support of the country. He resolved, therefore, to lay the matter before Congress, and await its action. Congress did practically nothing, and the President was convinced that the nation was not prepared to have the Indian problem fought out under the issue of "States' rights" versus the Union.

Georgia and
the Cherokees.

Encouraged by this success the Georgians now resolved to subject the Cherokees living within the limits of the Commonwealth to the laws thereof or force them to emigrate. In December of 1827, the legislature passed a law extending the criminal jurisdiction of the Commonwealth over a part of the lands occupied by the Cherokees. The Indians appealed to the President. The appeal came before the President during the last month of his official term, and he discreetly and courteously resolved not to embarrass the new Administration by committing the Government to any position in the question.

Jackson and
the Indian
question.

President Jackson was even less inclined than his predecessor to allow the Indian question to resolve itself into the question of the constitutional spheres of authority between the Union and the Commonwealths. Moreover, he believed that Georgia was in the right in the Indian question. He replied to the Cherokee memorial that he knew of no alternative to submission to the jurisdiction of Georgia except emigration beyond the limits of the Commonwealth. His view was that the general Government could not hinder a Commonwealth from exercising jurisdiction over every person within its limits, except in such cases as were reserved from that jurisdiction by the Constitution of the United States, and could not lend its countenance to the creation of a new political organization within these limits against the will of the Commonwealth. This was the latter part of April, 1829. The Cherokees, influenced largely by the whites among them, resented the President's advice, and the council of chiefs resolved that no lands claimed by the Cherokees should be relinquished, except by consent of the tribe or tribes, under penalty of death for violation of their resolve, and rejected the overtures of the Government for the relinquishment of their claims.

In his message of December 8th, 1829, President Jackson devoted much space to the Indian problem in general, and to it, as it affected Georgia and Alabama, in particular. He repeated to Congress the views which he had expressed to the Cherokees themselves, which were, as we have seen, that the general Government could not lend its countenance to the creation of an Indian State within the confines of any Commonwealth of the Union against the will of that Commonwealth, and that the only alternative to subjection to the laws of the Commonwealth on the part of the Indians was emigration beyond the limits of the same. He also suggested the setting apart of a district in the far West for the permanent home of such Indian tribes as should prefer to continue in tribal organization, independent of the jurisdiction of any Commonwealth of the Union, where they might work out their own customs unmolested.

This was the democratic, "States' rights" view of the subject. It denied all exemptions from the supremacy of the laws, and it also denied to the general Government any power to restrain a Commonwealth from the assertion of its jurisdiction over all persons within its legal limits, except in cases specially reserved by the Constitution.

Indian policy
before Jackson.

The Administration of Mr. Adams, and the Administrations of all of his predecessors, had apparently inclined to the view that the Indian tribes were already states, having dominion over, and property in, the territory of the continent when the Europeans arrived upon it; that the titles of the European states to it were only valid as against each other, and meant, in relation to the aborigines, only a right of pre-emption; and that after the Constitution was established no government except the general Government of the United States could have anything to do with them.

This was a crude and an impracticable view of the relation. It contained more of sentiment and humanitarianism than of common sense and inductive wisdom. The theory broke down completely in the Georgia case, and could not be re-enlivened for practical purposes even by judicial decisions. The necessities of civilization have forced the country to follow the course outlined by President Jackson, and that is certainly good evidence of its correctness.

The Georgians must have been encouraged by his message, for the legislature of Georgia immediately passed an act connecting the Cherokee lands with the counties which they adjoined, and imposing the full jurisdiction of the Commonwealth upon all persons living or being within the same.

The case of the
Cherokee Nation.

The Indians then caused an original bill to be filed in the Supreme Court of the United States against Georgia, together with a supplemental bill praying for a temporary injunction to restrain the Commonwealth from enforcing its jurisdiction, and for the issuing of a subpoena to Georgia to appear before the Court. The Court issued its summons, but the Commonwealth made no answer, and the Court decided, in its January term of 1831, that the Cherokee nation was not a "State" in the sense of that provision of the Constitution which designates the parties qualified to sue in the United States Courts. This decision was pronounced immediately after the execution of the Cherokee Tassells by the Georgia authorities, in defiance of a writ of error addressed to the Commonwealth by a United States court, requiring the Commonwealth to show cause why he should not be discharged from custody. It is probable that the Supreme Court was impressed by this demonstration of the impotence of the judiciary to interfere successfully with the political policy of a Commonwealth, even in behalf of personal liberty.

The case of
Worcester
against
Georgia.

A year later the Court took a more national view and stand. A Presbyterian missionary to the Cherokees, the Rev. Samuel A. Worcester, of Vermont, had violated the Georgia statute, which made it a criminal offence to reside among the Cherokees after March 1st, 1831, without a license from the Governor, and without having taken an oath to support and defend the laws of the Commonwealth. He was indicted and tried by a Georgia court, found guilty, and condemned to imprisonment in the penitentiary of the Commonwealth. A writ of error was issued by one of the Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, requiring the Commonwealth of Georgia to show cause why the prisoner should not be discharged. The writ was served on the Governor and the Attorney-General of the Commonwealth. The only answer which the Commonwealth gave to the summons was the sending up of the record of the case, signed by the clerk of the court which pronounced the judgment, and authenticated by the seal of the court. The judge of the Georgia court did not sign the record. Nevertheless the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the record of the Georgia court was properly before it, and the Chief Justice proceeded to make, in the Court's opinion of the case, an exhaustive review of the Indian relations of the United States, in accord with the principles of the Adams Administration, and to pronounce the statute of Georgia, asserting the jurisdiction of the Commonwealth over the Cherokee lands and over all persons residing or being on them, unconstitutional, null, and void, and the arrest, trial, and sentence of Mr. Worcester under the same to have been, therefore, without warrant of law.

But the Georgia authorities paid no attention to the decision. They did not liberate the prisoner or accord him a new trial. Later on, the Governor of the Commonwealth pardoned him as his own act of grace.

The failure of the
President to execute
the decision in the
Worcester case.

It was certainly the duty of the President of the United States to have executed this decision of the Court with all the power necessary for the purpose which the Constitution conferred upon him. He did not do it. It is said on very good authority that he intimated, at least, that he would not do it. The Commonwealth simply defied the Court successfully, and the President and Congress acquiesced in the result. The President agreed in opinion with the Georgians upon the subject, and the doctrine which here triumphed was one more plank in the platform of the Jacksonian democracy, a real "States' rights" principle.

Jackson
and
Calhoun.

There is no doubt that the South Carolinians were encouraged by the course of events in Georgia to believe that they would have something like the same experiences and results in their contest with the Government. In this they do not seem to have fully realized the fact that President Jackson did not agree with them in their view of the unconstitutionality of the tariff, as he agreed with the Georgians in their view of the Indian question. Moreover, there was a personal element in the controversy which they do not seem to have appreciated at all. Jackson had, down to 1830, supposed that Mr. Crawford was the member of the Cabinet of Mr. Monroe, in 1819, who wanted to have him arrested and tried by a court-martial for disobeying orders, or acting in excess of orders, during the Seminole War, and that Mr. Calhoun was his defender. Jackson's hatred of Crawford had been intense during these years for this reason. In 1830 Governor Forsyth, of Georgia, revealed to Jackson the truth in regard to this matter, which was that Calhoun was for arraigning him and Adams was his defender. Jackson immediately demanded an explanation of Calhoun, but the reply did not at all satisfy him, and the hostility which he had felt for Crawford was now turned with redoubled force against Calhoun. Calhoun was now regarded by Jackson as a traitor to Jackson, and that meant, in Jackson's mind, that he was a traitor to his country. Any movement against the Government or the laws of the United States headed by Calhoun would be considered by Jackson as rebellion, most surely so while Jackson was President.

The call of the
Convention of 1832
in South Carolina.

Following the principles developed in Mr. Calhoun's letter of August 28th, 1832, Governor Hamilton issued a call for a special session of the legislature of South Carolina, in the autumn of 1832, for the purpose of effecting through it the assembly of the convention of the Commonwealth. The party in favor of nullification had at last secured both branches of the legislature, and on October 24th, 1832, the assembled legislature voted to issue the call for the convention, and appointed November 19th as the day upon which it should meet.

The work of the
Nullification
Convention.

The convention assembled at the time designated, elected Governor Hamilton as its chairman, and appointed a committee of twenty-one members to consider the situation and report a proposition to meet it. In due time this committee made its report to the convention, in which was contained, first, a review of the development of the tariff from a revenue measure to a measure for the protection of manufactures, of the ten years of fruitless struggle in Congress by the South against the oppression inflicted by the protective system upon that section, and of the theories advanced by the fathers of the Republic for meeting, in last instance, such a condition of affairs; and, second, the famous Ordinance of Nullification as the remedy of last resort. The convention voted to receive the report and to adopt its recommendations. On November 24th the convention passed, in solemn form, the Ordinance of Nullification of the existing tariff laws of the United States.

The
Nullification
Ordinance.

The convention declared and ordained in this instrument, that "the several acts and parts of acts of the Congress of the United States, purporting to be laws for the imposing of duties and imposts on the importation of foreign commodities, and now having actual operation and effect within the United States, and, more especially," the Act of May 19th, 1828, and that of July 14th, 1832, "are unauthorized by the Constitution of the United States and violate the true meaning and intent thereof, and are null and void and no law, nor binding upon this State, its officers or citizens; and all promises, contracts, and obligations made or entered into, or to be made or entered into, with purpose to secure the duties imposed by the said acts, and all judicial proceedings which shall be hereafter had in affirmance thereof, are and shall be held utterly null and void."

It further ordained that no appeal should be allowed from the decisions of the courts of the Commonwealth to the Supreme Court of the United States in questions involving the validity of the aforesaid Acts of Congress, or of the Ordinance of the convention annulling them, or of the acts of the legislature giving effect to the Ordinance, and that no copy of the proceedings in the courts of the Commonwealth should be allowed for any such purpose, but that the courts of the Commonwealth should proceed to execute their decisions upon such issues without regard to any attempts to appeal therefrom, and should deal with any person making such attempt as being guilty of contempt of court. It then commanded that all the officers of the Commonwealth, civil and military, and the jurors empanelled in the courts should take the oath to obey, execute, and enforce the Ordinance, under penalty of dismissal and disqualification; and finally, it declared that South Carolina would regard her connection with the Union as absolved, in case Congress should pass any act authorizing the employment of military force to reduce her to obedience to the nullified acts, or any act abolishing or closing the ports, or obstructing the free ingress and egress of vessels, or in case the United States should undertake to coerce the Commonwealth, or enforce the nullified acts otherwise than through the civil tribunals of the country.

For the execution of the provisions of the Ordinance the convention commanded the legislature to pass such measures as would prevent the enforcement of the nullified acts, and give full effect to the nullifying Ordinance, from and after February 1st, 1833, and commanded the obedience of all persons within the limits of the Commonwealth to the Ordinance and the legislative acts passed for its execution.

The Addresses
issued by the
Convention.

With the Ordinance the convention issued two addresses, one to the people of South Carolina, and the other to the peoples of the other Commonwealths, naming each separately. The one to the people of South Carolina contained the theory of nullification, as elaborated by Calhoun, and the justification of its employment in the existing situation. It closed with an appeal to their love of liberty and a demand of obedience. The address to the peoples of the several Commonwealths contained an announcement of the passage of the nullifying Ordinance, the theory upon which it was based, an assertion of the unconstitutionality of the protective tariff, and its oppression upon the people of South Carolina, and a declaration of the spirit and feeling of the convention, and of the people it represented, toward the Union, the Constitution and the people of the manufacturing Commonwealths. The latter part of this address contained the only new point to be noticed. It was the offer of a plan for a compromise tariff which would satisfy the South Carolinians. The plan was the imposition of the same rate of duty upon all articles, those not coming into competition with the products of the country and those coming into such competition, and the raising of no more revenue than should be necessary to meet the demands of the Government for constitutional purposes.

The Ordinance communicated to
the Legislature of South Carolina.

In a message of November 27th, Governor Hamilton communicated to the legislature of the Commonwealth the Ordinance of Nullification and recommended the enactment of measures by that body for the execution of the Ordinance.

On December 13th, the new Governor, Colonel Hayne, who had resigned his seat in the Senate in order that Mr. Calhoun, who had himself resigned the vice-presidency, might be made South Carolina's representative in the Senate, or, as the South Carolinians now considered it, South Carolina's ambassador to the Government of the United States, pronounced his inaugural address before the legislature, dedicating himself to the service of the Commonwealth in the execution of her Ordinance of Nullification.

The Acts of the
Legislature for
the execution
of the Ordinance.

The legislature immediately passed the acts required by the convention and recommended by the Governor.

The first act, termed the Replevin Act, authorized any consignee of merchandise, or any person lawfully entitled to the possession of merchandise, held or detained for the payment of the duties imposed upon the same by the nullified Acts of Congress, to recover possession of the same, with damages for its detention, by a writ of replevin, that is, by a summary procedure executed by an officer of the Commonwealth; and the Act authorized this officer, on initiation of the plaintiff in replevin, to seize the private property of the person detaining the merchandise to double the value of the latter, in case this person should refuse to deliver the detained merchandise to the sheriff, or should put it out of the sheriff's way, and to hold the property so seized until the merchandise in question should be produced and delivered to the sheriff.

This Act also authorized any person paying the nullified duties to recover the money paid, with interest on the same, by an action, in a court of the Commonwealth, for money had and received; and it authorized any person suffering arrest or imprisonment by order of any United States court, in execution of the nullified Acts, to demand the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, and to maintain an action for unlawful arrest and imprisonment.

It declared the sale of any property seized by a United States court, in execution of the nullified Acts, to be illegal, and ordained that such sale should convey no title to the purchaser. It forbade any officer of a court of the Commonwealth to furnish the record, or a copy of the record, or allow a copy of the record to be taken, of any case in which the validity of the nullified Acts or the nullifying Acts should be drawn in question, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment, and it forbade any person to attempt to recapture the goods delivered by the sheriff to the plaintiff in replevin, under threat of the same punishment.

It further forbade the keepers of the jails to receive and detain any person arrested or committed by virtue of any proceeding for enforcing the nullified Acts, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment; and it imposed a similar penalty upon the offence of hiring, letting, or procuring any place to be used as a place of confinement for such person.

Finally, it forbade any person to disobey, obstruct, prevent, or resist any process allowed by this Act, under penalty of both fine and imprisonment; and it threatened every plaintiff, who should bring suit against any officer or person executing or aiding in the execution of the provisions of this Act, with adverse judgment and double costs.

The second Act of the legislature was a measure to provide for the event of the employment of military power by the general Government to enforce the nullified Acts in South Carolina. It authorized the Governor of the Commonwealth to resist the same; and for this purpose to order into service the whole military power of the Commonwealth at his discretion, to purchase arms, accoutrements, and ammunitions, and to appoint his military staff; and it authorized and obligated the Governor to use military power in suppressing opposition to the laws of the Commonwealth by combinations too powerful to be controlled by the civil officers.

The third Act was the test oath, the oath to obey, execute, and enforce the Ordinance of Nullification, and all the acts of the legislature for its enforcement, which every officer of the Commonwealth must take before dealing with any question touching the nullified Acts or the nullifying Acts, and which the Governor might require of any officer whatever.

These were the details and the forms of the issue which South Carolina now offered to the United States. Was it rebellion, or was it constitutional and legal opposition?

The meaning of
Nullification
as understood
by the Nullifiers.

As we have seen, Calhoun and the members of the nullifying convention held it to be the latter. They argued that the reserved powers of the Commonwealths are recognized by the Constitution; that every conceivable power is reserved to the Commonwealths, except such as are vested by the Constitution in the general Government exclusively, or are denied by the Constitution to the Commonwealths; that the power to pronounce an act of the general Government null and void had been neither so vested nor so denied; that this was, therefore, a reserved power of the Commonwealths, and was, like all other reserved powers, a constitutional power; that South Carolina proposed to use this power through judicial means only, which means were legally and constitutionally at her disposal through the principle of the governmental system of the United States that general criminal jurisdiction belongs exclusively to the Commonwealths; and that the employment of military power by the Commonwealth, indicated in the Ordinance and the legislative acts for its enforcement, was to be resorted to only in self-defence, only to repel the possible attack of the military power of the general Government upon South Carolina.

It is entirely evident that the South Carolina statesmen and lawyers thought they had so fashioned the laws of the Commonwealth as to force the general Government to the first violation of legal order in attempting to execute the nullified Acts of Congress—that is, they thought they had made it impossible for the general Government to execute these Acts by regular legal methods; and that they had done so without themselves violating any rule or principle of American jurisprudence. They repeated the assertion, again and again, that they did not rest their case on moral, or on revolutionary, principles, but on strict constitutional right; and it is impossible to prove that they were insincere.

The great question now was, what attitude the general Government would take toward the attempt of a Commonwealth to defeat the supremacy of its laws. Naturally the Executive Department must act first, since nullification was directed against the execution of existing laws.

Jackson's view
of Nullification.

In his message of December 4th (1832), President Jackson referred briefly to the events of the preceding month in South Carolina, but did not seem to have fully appreciated their purport. He said he hoped the United States courts would be able to cope successfully with the difficulties in South Carolina, and that, if they were not, he thought that the existing laws gave the President sufficient power to suppress any attempts which might be immediately made against the supremacy of the Government.

The Tariff in the Annual
Message of 1832.

He devoted a much larger portion of the message to a consideration of the tariff, and declared that the time had arrived for the United States to enter upon the realization of the policy of a tariff for revenue only, and of the ultimate limitation of protection to those articles of domestic manufacture indispensable to the country in time of war.

It is possible that the President did, after all, understand the serious nature of the situation from the outset, and hoped, by his pronounced recommendations in regard to the tariff, and his very mild utterances concerning nullification, to influence the South Carolinians to a reconsideration of their hasty acts, and give them a loophole of escape from their very dubious and embarrassing position.

The President's
Proclamation of
December 10th.

He waited for six days, and then issued the noted proclamation of December 10th, which presented the President's idea of the relation of the United States, as a nation, and of the general Government, to the Commonwealths, asserted the supremacy of United States law over Commonwealth law, demonstrated the true character of nullification as rebellion, and declared the President's intention to execute the laws of the United States against any and all opposition.

The President assumed as his cardinal principle that the Union preceded independence, and that by a joint act the people of the united colonies declared themselves a nation; that, as a nation, the people of the United States established the Constitution of 1787, and placed in that instrument the provision that the Constitution, and the laws and treaties made in accordance therewith, are "the supreme law" of the land, and that "the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the constitution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding." From these principles the President derived the conclusions that no legal processes, which South Carolina could contrive, could prevent the execution of the laws of the United States in South Carolina; that to accomplish this South Carolina would be obliged to have recourse to violence; and that this necessity stamped nullification as rebellion.

The President stopped the loophole of escape from this reasoning, made by the claim of the nullifiers that the nullified Acts were not laws made in accordance with the Constitution, by the declaration that the Judicial Department of the general Government was the body designated by the Constitution to determine that question, and not a Commonwealth convention.

After warning the nullifiers to desist from their unlawful enterprise, the President closed his message with an eloquent appeal to the people of South Carolina to withdraw from their unjustifiable and dangerous position, and an equally eloquent appeal to the people of the United States for aid and support in preserving the Union and maintaining the supremacy of the Government and the laws.

The President's
military preparations.

Already before the passage of the Ordinance of Nullification, the President had caused the United States military officers stationed in and about Charleston to be informed of their danger, had ordered two artillery companies from Fort Monroe to Fort Moultrie, had commanded General Scott to go to Charleston and do what might be necessary for a successful defence of the forts and places held by the Army of the United States, and had directed all the officers in command to defend their possession of these forts and places to the last extremity.

The President's
instructions to the
customs officers
in South Carolina.

The President had also caused the collectors of the customs at Charleston, Georgetown, and Beaufort to be reminded of their powers under the laws of the United States, and had authorized them to make use of all the revenue cutters in the harbors, and of such other vessels as they could secure, and to call to their assistance the officers of the cutters, and to appoint a number of inspectors sufficient to execute successfully the laws of the United States for the collection of the duties. The collector at Charleston was specially authorized to remove the custom-house to Castle Pinckney, at his discretion; and the United States District Attorney at Charleston was ordered to aid the collector with counsel and advice.

After the passage of the Ordinance, the President ordered five more companies of artillery from Fort Monroe to Fort Moultrie, commanded the removal of the custom-house from Charleston to Castle Pinckney, and sent General Scott to Charleston Harbor to take command, on the spot, of all the forts and garrisons there, instructing him to avoid collision with the forces of the Commonwealth so long as possible, but, in case the exigency should arise requiring the exercise of military power, to act with firmness and decision, and to hold possession of the forts by all means and at every hazard.

The popular approval of
the President's course.

The brave, loyal, and patriotic, yet wise and considerate, stand taken by the President was supported with great unanimity and enthusiasm throughout the North; and though the people of the Southern Commonwealths felt more sympathy with their South Carolina brethren, yet the dissent from the President's views and attitude in that section was rare and feeble. The nation was with the President, and the President had done his duty nobly and fearlessly.

The Verplanck
Tariff Bill.

The turn now came upon Congress. Would Congress sustain the President, and give him all the means necessary to conquer nullification and secession in fact, and destroy them in principle? Unfortunately, so far as finite reason can judge, the first movements made in Congress were in the opposite direction. That part of the President's message which dealt with the question of the tariff was referred by the House of Representatives to its committee on Ways and Means, and on December 27th, 1832, the chairman of that committee, Mr. Verplanck, of New York, reported a bill from the committee which proposed to reduce and equalize duties largely, and in the direction of the South Carolina principle. If this bill should pass, the nullifiers could well assume that their Ordinance had accomplished its purpose without being applied, and could with triumphant dignity desist from the application of it; and they could defer with almost equal dignity the application of the Ordinance, so long as there was any probability of the passage of this bill.

Governor Hayne's
Counter-proclamation.

Seven days before the introduction of this bill, Governor Hayne had issued a counter-proclamation to the President's proclamation of December 10th, in which he went over again the ground of nullification and secession, warned the citizens of South Carolina against the President's "pernicious" doctrines, and accused the President of indulging in unwarrantable imputations upon South Carolina. He gave notice, on the same day, that he would accept the service of volunteers. The legislature supported the Governor in defiant resolutions, which it sent to Congress, and caused to be read in that body.

The President's
Message of
January 16th, 1833.

The President was much ruffled by the arrogant language of the Governor and legislature, and when the Verplanck bill appeared, it must have looked to him too much like surrendering the entire field, which he was not now in any mood to do. He felt that something more must be done to vindicate the authority and the dignity of the Government. On January 16th, 1833, he sent another message to Congress, demonstrating and denouncing again the pernicious character of the nullification doctrine, informing Congress that he had removed the custom-house from Charleston to Castle Pinckney, and asking Congress for the power to change the customs districts and ports of entry, to exact the payment of duties in cash, and to use the land and naval forces when necessary for the execution of the revenue laws.

Calhoun's
explanations
in the Senate.

The message was referred by the Houses of Congress to their respective committees on the Judiciary; but immediately upon the reading of the message, and before the Senate had passed the motion to refer, Mr. Calhoun said, in that body, that there was no foundation whatever for the statement in the message that the movements made by South Carolina were intended as hostile to the Union, or were so. He called the attention of the Senate to the fact that before the Ordinance of Nullification was passed, before the convention had assembled, United States troops had been sent to Charleston Harbor; and he declared that, previous to this circumstance, South Carolina had looked to nothing beyond a civil process, and had intended to give effect to her opposition merely in the form of a suit at law, and that it was only when a military force had been displayed on her borders, and in her limits, and when a menace was thrown out against the lives of her citizens, that they found themselves driven to an attitude of resistance.

The "Force Bill."

On the 21st of the month (January), Mr. Wilkins, the chairman of the Judiciary committee of the Senate, reported from his committee the bill for the collection of the revenue. This bill provided for extending the jurisdiction of the Circuit Courts of the United States over all cases in law or equity arising under the revenue laws of the United States; for making all property taken or detained by any officer or person under authority of any law of the United States irrepleviable by any order or process of the tribunals of a Commonwealth; for effecting the removal of suits commenced in a Commonwealth court against any officer or person for any act done under the laws of the United States, or on account of any right, authority, or title claimed under those laws, to the Circuit Courts of the United States, by means of proof laid before the Circuit Court that the defendant had petitioned the Commonwealth court for the removal of the cause. The bill provided, further, for substituting for a copy of the record of the proceedings in the Commonwealth court, in case of the failure of that court to furnish a copy, an affidavit, or other evidence, as the circumstances of the case might require; for giving to the United States judges the power to grant writs of habeas corpus in all cases where persons were in confinement for acts done in pursuance of a law of the United States, or of an order, process, or decree of any United States court or judge; for empowering the United States marshals, under direction of the United States judges, to provide places of confinement for persons arrested or committed under the laws of the United States, where any Commonwealth should refuse the use of its jails for the confinement of such persons; for allowing the President to change the custom-house from one place in a collection district to another, and to require the duties to be paid in cash; and for empowering the President to use the land and naval forces for suppressing any resistance to the execution of the revenue laws too powerful to be overcome by the civil officers of the general Government.

It was a good, stiff measure, but it was constitutional at every point, and it was demanded by the exigencies of the situation. It was a complete answer to the Replevin Act of South Carolina, and it would inevitably throw the responsibility for committing the first act of violence upon the Commonwealth in any resistance to the collection of the duties. It pricked the bubble completely of South Carolina's proposed legal resistance to the execution of the laws of the United States.

Of course the bill was denounced at once by the South Carolinians as a "Force Bill." Calhoun attacked it as a measure for coercing a sovereign "State," and offered a series of "States' rights" propositions, which he declared to be indisputable, and which must, therefore, prevent the passage of the bill. The discussion upon these resolutions, and upon the bill which they were meant to destroy, dragged on from day to day in the Senate, while that upon the Verplanck bill in the House proceeded even more slowly.

The postponement of the
execution of nullification.

The chiefs of the nullifiers, professing to feel that the Government was yielding, reassembled in convention in the last days of January, and postponed the execution of their Ordinance until the end of the existing Congressional session.

On February 8th, Mr. Bell, the chairman of the Judiciary committee of the House of Representatives, reported to that body that his committee did not recommend vesting the President with any further powers for the execution of the revenue laws than those already possessed by him, and that they could not approve of the employment of military force for the purpose.

The
Compromise
Tariff.

Such was the situation when, on February 12th, Mr. Clay astonished the Senate with the noted proposition for compromise. This was his bill for the gradual reduction of the duties to a revenue basis. The revenue basis was fixed in the bill at twenty per centum ad valorem on all articles then paying a higher duty, and the excess was to be remitted in biennial instalments, and entirely abolished from and after June 30th, 1842. The free list was slightly extended, and cash payments, from and after June 30th, 1842, were provided.

Mr. Clay on
the situation.

Mr. Clay said, in introducing this bill, that he had two purposes in view: one to save what could be saved of the protective tariff, and the other to allow South Carolina to withdraw with dignity from the position which she had rashly assumed. He claimed that his feeling toward the action of South Carolina had changed since her Representatives and Senators in Congress had disavowed rebellion and had asserted that they were only trying to invent legal methods for protecting themselves against the oppression of the tariff Acts. He demonstrated very clearly the error of supposing that they could do any such thing, and then urged his brother Senators to join him in the proposed measure of conciliation.

Mr. Calhoun's support
of Mr. Clay's bill.

Mr. Calhoun immediately indicated that the bill would have his support, and would solve the difficulties between South Carolina and the general Government. He professed to see in it the concession of about all that South Carolina had asked.

The opposition
to the bill.

The opposition to the bill came from three quarters—from the protectionists, who clung to the existing law, from the strong nationalists, who were against any show of compromise with nullification, and from the strict parliamentarians, who held that any bill touching the tariff must originate in the House of Representatives.

The protectionists were answered, and many of them won over, by the argument that the Verplanck bill would pass if they did not accept Mr. Clay's bill. The strong nationalists were told that if Congress should pass the Wilkins bill before the Clay bill a sufficient vindication of their position would be attained. They were inclined to accept that view, but the South Carolinians set themselves against this order of procedure with all their strength. Mr. Calhoun came forward again with his "States' sovereignty" exposition of the Constitution, and denounced the Wilkins bill in the most vehement language as "utterly unconstitutional, as an attempt to enforce robbery by murder, an attempt to decree the massacre of the citizens of South Carolina," and declared that the citizens of South Carolina would, should it become law, resist its execution "at every hazard, even that of death itself."

Passage of the
"Force Bill"
by the Senate.

On the following day Mr. Webster answered Mr. Calhoun's argument, and demonstrated so clearly the nationality of the Constitution, the supremacy of the laws of the United States, and the rebellious character of nullification, that the Senate was convinced of the necessity of passing the Wilkins bill before voting upon Mr. Clay's bill. On the 20th of the month (February), the Senate passed the Wilkins bill by a vote of thirty-two to one. The objections of the strong nationalists to Mr. Clay's bill were now substantially satisfied; but the high protectionists still held out in considerable number for some modification of the bill in their favor, and on the day after the passage of the Wilkins bill by the Senate, Mr. Clay moved to amend his own bill by the proposition to base the duties on home valuation instead of on the foreign invoice. The protectionists were satisfied by this, but Mr. Calhoun immediately declared that South Carolina would not accept the bill with this change. The protectionists, in sufficient number to defeat the bill, declared that they would not accept it without the change. Mr. Calhoun had at last come to see the peril which lay in South Carolina's course, and to understand the feeling of the nation toward her. He wisely concluded to abandon his opposition to the amendment, and to vote for the bill.

Passage of the
Compromise
Tariff bill and
the "Force Bill"
by Congress.

The opposition of the strict parliamentarians, on the ground that the Senate could not originate a revenue bill, was overcome by the action of the House of Representatives in substituting the Clay bill for the Verplanck bill, and passing it on the 26th, and sending it to the Senate for concurrence. The Senate now passed the House bill on March 1st, and the House immediately passed the Wilkins bill, against the protest of the South Carolinians that it could now have no purpose since every member of Congress from South Carolina had voted for the new Tariff Act.

The nullification ordinance withdrawn.

The President signed both bills at the same time, March 2nd, and South Carolina rescinded the Nullification Ordinance.

Motives and
general results.

It is not easy to see what principles or what party finally triumphed in this contest, or to comprehend all the motives of the chief actors in it. It has been said, or hinted, that Mr. Calhoun, chagrined and disappointed at not gaining the presidency in 1832, was induced to take the course which he followed in reference to nullification by the hope of breaking up the Union and winning, thus, the presidency of a Southern confederacy; that President Jackson was largely influenced, in the decided attitude which he assumed, by the desire to take revenge on Mr. Calhoun and South Carolina for Mr. Calhoun's attempt to court-martial him more than a dozen years before, and for South Carolina's slight upon him in the election of 1832; and that Mr. Clay was moved far more by his jealousy of President Jackson, and his fear of trusting him with extraordinary powers, than by any dread of the destruction of the Union.

There is probably some truth in certain, if not in all, of these speculations, but such things are not the matters of chief value in the search for the line of development of the constitutional history of this country. They do indeed help us to appreciate the motives for the particular form of adjustment put upon that development at any stage of its course; but our chief concern must be with the advance or retrogression in principle of that development, our question must be whether the Union and the Constitution were strengthened or weakened by the events of 1832 and 1833, whether the political nationality of the country was cemented or suffered disintegration, and whether strength was gathered, or the seeds of weakness were sown, in the results attained.

From the point of view of the present, a point so much more national than any reached before 1860, the settlement of 1833 is usually regarded as a great misfortune, as a fateful error, which led the country finally into civil war. It is now usually said that the national cause lost everything in principle, and that nullification was virtually acknowledged by the Act of Congress in repealing the nullified laws, at the same moment that it enacted the measure for upholding the supremacy of the laws of the United States.

From a purely historical view of the development of the constitutional law of the country, this proposition does not seem to be true, at least not without great modification. From such a point of view it seems more correct to say, that the doctrine formulated by Mr. Calhoun and his colleagues in South Carolina was only the exact logical statement of the principles advanced by Mr. Jefferson in 1798, principles through the advocacy of which Mr. Jefferson and the Republicans turned the Federalists out of power and captured the Government; that under the pressure of foreign war and through its results, the Republican practice in administering the Government had been driven into lines almost, if not quite, contradictory to the Republican doctrine; that in the gradual relapse, after 1815, into the humdrum of peace and business, the conditions were being revived for the reassertion of the principles of 1800; and that, under such conditions and in such a period, the doctrines advanced by President Jackson, doctrines of a far more completely national system of sovereignty, government, and liberty than were ever expressed by any preceding President, certainly mark a great advance in the development of the national theory of the Constitution.

The South Carolinians said that John Quincy Adams invented these doctrines, and that Jackson first essayed their application. Even Clay declared that they were an advance upon his own views. And some of Jackson's friends undertook, it was said with authority from Jackson himself, to explain them away, so startled were they by their strong nationalism.

But the spoken word cannot be recalled. It had gone forth, and the nation had approved it. The politicians might split hairs in its interpretation, but the people had heard from the highest authority which they recognized that the United States was a sovereign nation, and that the attempt of any combination of persons, whether calling themselves a "State" or not, to resist by violence the execution of the laws of the United States, or to withdraw themselves from their operation, was rebellion, which the President was empowered and required by the Constitution to suppress with the whole physical power of the nation.

And besides the Proclamation there was the "Force Bill," which rested upon the same theory of the political system of the country as the Proclamation. The Congress as well as the President was now inculcating the national doctrine. Calhoun and his friends knew what an influence this would exert. He said that he and they would never rest content until this measure was expunged from among the Acts of Congress.

It is true that the passage of the new Tariff Act appeared to take the virtue out of the Proclamation and the "Force Bill;" but it is not at all probable that the nullifiers would have retreated from their ground so promptly, to say the least, except for the determined words of the President and the Congress, and the popular approval with which they were received; and it is almost certain that, when it came to the great crisis, twenty-eight years later, the people would not have understood and supported the great principle that the general Government has the right of self-preservation, in the exercise of all its powers, throughout the whole territory of the Union, against everything and everybody but the sovereign nation itself, except for the great education in national principles which they received from the Proclamation, and through the enactment of the law which gave the sanction of Congress to the enforcement of its principles.

CHAPTER XI.

ABOLITION

The Philosophy of Abolition—William Lloyd Garrison—The Civil Status under the Constitution of 1787—Points at which Slavery Could be Legally Attacked—Garrison's Methods—The Southampton Massacre—The Attempt to Suppress the Abolition Movement at the North—Growth of the Abolition Movement—The Methods of the Moderate Abolitionists—The Abolition Petitions—The Earlier Method of Dealing with the Petitions—Beginning of the Conflict over the Abolition Petitions—The New Method for Dealing with Petitions in the House of Representatives—True View of the Right of Petition—Mr. Polk's Fatal Error in Regard to the Right of Petition—The Pinckney Resolutions—The New Rule of the House of Representatives in Regard to the Abolition Petitions—The Increase of Petitions, and the Denunciation of the Pinckney Rule—The Final Denial of the Right of Petition on the Subject of Slavery by the House of Representatives—The Abolition Petitions in the Senate—Mr. Rives and Mr. Calhoun in Regard to the Morality of Slavery—Mr. Calhoun's Resolutions in Regard to the Political Relations of Slavery—The Anti-Slavery Petition from the Vermont Legislature—The Abolition Documents and the United States Mails—The Postmaster-General's Ruling in Regard to the Abolition Documents in the Mails—Jackson on the Use of the Mails by the Abolitionists—Mr. Calhoun's Report and Bill on the Subject—Clay's Criticism of Calhoun's Proposition—The Act of Congress Protecting the Abolition Documents in the Mails—General Results of the Struggle over the Right of Petition and the Freedom of the Mails.

The ends of
the state.

When a state has fairly accomplished the primal end of establishing its governmental system, its public policy will be found to be pursuing, in ultimate generalization, two great all-comprehending purposes, namely, national development and universal human progress. Rarely, if ever, will any state be found to have succeeded in so balancing these two principal objects of its public policy as to make the resultant of its two main lines of progress follow an unchanging angle. At one period, the principle of national development will prevail, even to the point of national exclusiveness; at another, an enthusiastic humanism will almost threaten the existence of national distinctions. But in all the convulsions of political history, described as advance and reaction, the scientific student of history is able to discover that the zigzags of progress are ever bearing in the general direction which the combined impulses toward nationalism and humanism compel.

The purposes of the
state, as seen in
the history of
the United States.

After the humanitarian outburst of the revolutionary period in the latter part of the eighteenth century had expended its force, the states of the world veered in their policies toward the line of national development. The United States, which had been excessively humanitarian during that period, both in its doctrine of rights and in its policy, became, in the succeeding period, the first three decades of the nineteenth century, more and more national in disposition and in practice, until industrial exclusiveness and race domination appeared, at the close of the period, to be the sole principles of the policy of the country.

Had the two elements of this policy been equally, or almost equally, sustained throughout the whole country, there is little question that the human purpose, the world-purpose, as Hegel calls it, of state existence, would have been ignored to a higher degree, and for a longer period, than it was. But curiously and fortunately, the race domination in the South produced economic conditions which demanded trade and commerce with the world, and which finally forced upon the North the conviction that the cause of those conditions—race domination, slavery—must be removed, in order to secure the industrial interests of the North against the competition of the world's markets. The destruction of that domination must proceed, however, upon a humanitarian principle, namely, the right of man to personal liberty. Thus it clearly appears that the two elements of the national exclusiveness of the United States in 1830 were, in the peculiar relation which finally obtained between them, preparing the nation for a new advance in the direction of world intercourse and human rights.

The Revolution
of 1830.

In the summer of 1830 the wave of revolution rolled again over Europe. The rights of man, the brotherhood of man, and the sovereignty of the people, were the principles which pressed again to the front. While no actual connection can be established between the Revolution of 1830 in Europe and the rise of Abolition in the United States, yet they belong to the same period of time, and harmonize in principle. The impulses which move the human race, or those parts of the human race which stand upon the same plane of civilization, are not broken by mountain heights or broad seas. Their manifestations appear spontaneously and coetaneously in widely separated places.

Before 1830, indeed, as we have so often seen, slavery in the United States had been regarded as a grievous evil by most of the great spirits of the age and country, and schemes for gradual emancipation had been invented, and, in some slight degree, had been put into operation. It was, however, the humanitarian outburst of 1830, and the succeeding years, which represented slavery as a sin and a crime against the universal principle of human liberty and the rights of man, a sin which called for immediate expiation by instantaneous, unqualified, and uncompensated abolition.

The philosophy
of Abolition.

There is nothing strange about the philosophy of Abolition. It is simply the idealistic view of the beginning and the progress of human history. It assumes liberty as the original state of man, condemns every species of modification of liberty suffered by any human being, or any class of human beings, as resulting from the unrighteous act of some other human being, or class or race of human beings, and demands the immediate discontinuance of the tyranny as the only approximately adequate satisfaction which can be made to those who have suffered that tyranny. It is the orthodox, paradisaical view of the origin, unity, and primal perfection of the human race. It is the literal interpretation of the Declaration of Independence. It is thorough-going, radical humanitarianism. Its political principle, in the language of its chief exponent, was: "The world our country, and all mankind our countrymen."

Over against it stands the pessimistic view of man and of civilization, which divides the human race into the few intelligent and good, and the great mass of the ignorant and vicious, and considers the permanent subjection of the latter to the former as the divinely constituted, and therefore the permanent, order of the world.

And between the two lies the true historical view, which regards liberty, equality, and brotherhood as the products of civilization, as the final, not the primal, status of the human race, and determines the character of every stage of development from barbarism to civilization, not by its distance from the perfect condition, but by the fact of its advance upon, or its retrogression from, the stage immediately antecedent.

The latter is, unquestionably, the true philosophy of history, but the former has its uses as well as its abuses. It contains those forces of mystical enthusiasm, self-sacrifice, and reckless disregard of consequences so necessary, at times, to drag the world out of the ruts of materialism and the love of peace. Such was its mission in the fourth decade of the nineteenth century in American history.

William Lloyd
Garrison.

If we must give a name, a date, and a place to the first open appearance of a movement which was a product of the age, that name is Garrison; the date, the beginning of the year 1831; and the place, Boston. The character of William Lloyd Garrison, whether noble or vulgar; his purposes, whether generous or selfish; and the motives which impelled him, whether narrow and personal or grandly humane, are not subjects for treatment in a work upon constitutional history. Constitutional history has to do only with the doctrines of political ethics and public jurisprudence which he formulated, and with the means proposed by him, and those who thought and acted with him, for their realization; and the historian does neither him nor them any injustice in saying that, while those doctrines are to be justified from the point of view of an extreme idealism, the means for their realization, at first only indicated, but later boldly and rudely expressed, were revolutionary, almost anarchic.

The civil status
under the
Constitution
of 1787.

There is now certainly little question that the determination of the civil status of all persons is, from an ethical point of view, a matter of national concern, and that that status must be fixed, in general principle, by a national act. There is just as little question that the denial of personal liberty to any human being of adult years does not comport with the civilization of the nineteenth century. In espousing these principles the Abolitionists were only prophets ahead of their time, and must be accorded the honor which belongs to such. On the other hand, it is entirely unquestionable that the Constitution of the United States recognized to the Commonwealths, respectively, the exclusive control of the civil status of persons belonging within their several jurisdictions, and it is entirely improbable that the Constitution of 1787 could ever have been established without the guarantees, expressed and implied in it, of such power to the Commonwealths. There is no question at all that the slavery or freedom of the negro race within the several Commonwealths was, under the Constitution of 1787, not only left, as it had been before, a matter for each Commonwealth to determine for itself, but that the exclusive power of determination in regard to it was guaranteed by the Constitution to the several Commonwealths. The Commonwealths in which slaveholding generally and extensively prevailed regarded the guarantee as the principal consideration for their assent to the "compact." The attempt to violate, or weaken, or even to cast doubt upon, these guarantees appeared to them to be an attack upon the fundamental covenants of the Union. The Constitution might, indeed, be so amended as to withdraw these powers and guarantees from the Commonwealths, by the regular procedure provided in the Constitution itself; and the general Government was vested by the Constitution with the general powers of exclusive government in the Territories, the District of Columbia, and the places owned by the United States within Commonwealths and used by the general Government for governmental purposes. But so long as the Constitution remained what it was, there was no constitutional power in the general Government to attack slavery in the Commonwealths; and the slaveholders could certainly claim that, in the exercise of its powers in the Territories, the District, and other places where those powers were exclusive, the general Government should act fairly toward all the members of the Union.

Points at which
slavery could be
legally attacked.


Garrison's
methods.

Nevertheless, here were legal points of attack for the Abolitionists. They might memorialize Congress for the abolition of slavery in the Territories and in the District, and for the initiation of an amendment which would abolish slavery in the Commonwealths or would give Congress the power to do so, and they might appeal to the legislatures of the Commonwealths to demand of Congress the calling of a constitutional convention of the United States to initiate such an amendment. But Garrison would have nothing to do with the Constitution, or with existing legal methods. He denounced the Constitution, "as a covenant with death and an agreement with hell," and declared that he wanted "no union with slaveholders." His violent language, his repudiation of vested rights and constitutional agreements, and his fanatical disregard of other men's opinions and feelings, led the people both of the North and the South to believe that his methods were incendiary and his morals loose; that he and his co-workers were planning and plotting slave insurrection, and thereby the wholesale massacre of slaveholders; and that he and they were endeavoring to attain, through violence and anarchy, a leadership which they could not otherwise reach.

The
Southampton
massacre.

In August of 1831, a slave insurrection broke out in Southampton County, Va., under the leadership of a negro named Nat Turner, and more than sixty white persons, most of them women and children, were massacred in cold blood. The Southerners said, no doubt believed, that the insurrection was incited by the Abolitionists in the North. Governor Floyd, of Virginia, declared, in his message to the legislature upon the subject, that there was ample proof of it in the documents accompanying the message. The great mass of the people at the North believed the same thing. The Abolitionist historians assert, on the contrary, that there was no connection between the work of the Abolitionists and this event. We shall probably never know whether there was or not. This much we can say, that the radical character of the Abolition doctrines and the violence of the language in which they were expressed—not so much before as after this event, indeed—produced the universal feeling, both in the North and in the South, that these doctrines and this event were in perfect harmony, and that the latter might very naturally be the outcome of the former. The moral sentiment of the North was not prepared for the destruction of slavery by any such means. It considered these methods as containing ten times more evil and barbarism than slavery itself. It is just to say that what appeared to be the methods of the Abolitionists were revolting to the moral feelings of all the decent people of the North, and to ninety-nine one-hundredths of all the people of the North, while the Southerners saw in them nothing but the destruction of all law and order, the plunder of their property, the burning of their firesides, and the massacre of their families. The pronounced and determined manner in which the people of the North went about the work of suppressing the agitation occasioned by the Abolitionists is ample evidence to any sane mind that the indignation of a righteous conscience was fully aroused, and not the fury of a guilty conscience.

The attempt to suppress
the Abolition movement
at the North.

The details of the breaking up of the Abolition meetings and of the destruction of the Abolition printing-presses by the citizens of the Northern Commonwealths, as well as those of the Southampton massacre, may be passed over, in a work like this, with a single remark that only one person, the Rev. Mr. Lovejoy, was murdered in these collisions; that this happened under circumstances of some aggravation; and that, if the excitement at the South over the massacre of sixty-one innocent persons was out of proportion with the event, then not too much should be made out of the killing of a single person, who was not entirely guiltless on his part of giving provocation.

The things of importance to the student of constitutional history in connection with these events are the increase of the Abolitionists in number, their organization into societies, the dissatisfaction of the Southerners with the unofficial, merely popular, way of dealing with the agitation at the North, and their demands upon the governments of the Northern Commonwealths to deal with the Abolitionists through the processes of their criminal law.

So long as men only talk and write, it is the impulse of our Anglo-Saxon character to place no further restraint upon them than the law of slander and libel of private character imposes, no matter what may be, or may be thought to be, the ultimate consequences of acting according to what they may say or write. To deny this privilege to anybody appears like a deprivation of the liberty of speech and of the press, appears like persecution. There is no country in the world in which the making of martyrs is an easier procedure than in the United States. Persecution is the soil in which new movements grow best, no matter what may be the character of the movement.

Growth of the
Abolition
movement.

In a single year from the date of the first number of Garrison's newspaper, The Liberator, that is, in January of 1832, the New England Anti-slavery Society was formed, and in December of 1833 the American Anti-slavery Society was organized, which soon established branches in many quarters. The exaggerated demands of the Southerners, that the Northern Commonwealths should forbid Abolition agitation by law, thus identifying the interests of slavery with the denial of the freedom of speaking and writing in the Northern Commonwealths, helped greatly to swell the ranks of the Abolitionists, and to mollify public opinion in the North against them.

The methods of
the moderate
Abolitionists.

The new Abolitionists were naturally of a more moderate type than Garrison, and most of them would listen only to regular legal methods for the accomplishment of their purposes. The quickening of the public opinion in the North, the conviction of the slaveholders themselves of the error, if not the sin, of slavery, and the appeal to the Government to do all within its constitutional powers against slavery, were the only means which many of them were willing to employ. Their petitions to Congress, and the transmission of their literature of Abolition to the Southerners through the United States mails, brought the whole question of their rights and purposes before the Government, and before the nation, for which that Government was bound to act with impartial justice to all its parts.

The Abolition
petitions.

Petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia had been sent to Congress, generally from Quaker sources, almost from the day that the capital of the country was established there, but they were not numerous and were not pushed by any anti-slavery organization. In the session of 1826-27, a petition from citizens of Baltimore, probably instigated by Benjamin Lundy, was presented, which contained the same prayer; and in the session of 1827-28, one of like tenor from citizens of the District itself was presented. Such petitions were usually read and referred to the committee on the District. They were irritating to the slaveholders from the first, but it was not until after the excitement of the Southampton massacre that they were angrily resented as an interference with the domestic institutions of the slaveholding Commonwealths.

It was in the session of 1831-32, that the first mutterings of the petition storm were heard. On December 12th, 1831, Mr. John Quincy Adams presented, in the House of Representatives, fifteen petitions from sundry inhabitants of Pennsylvania, the chief prayer of all of which was for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. Mr. Adams said that he would give no countenance to that prayer, but that there was a prayer in the petitions for the abolition of the slave-trade in the District, which, he thought, might properly be considered, and he moved the reference of the petitions, for this purpose, to the regular committee of the House for the District.

There was in this little to indicate the terrible earnestness which Mr. Adams later displayed in behalf of the Abolition petitions. He seemed at this time to be annoyed at being asked to present them, and to feel that there were superior moral reasons why a slavery agitation should not be excited within the halls of Congress. But all this was soon to change. Mr. Adams's advance toward radical Abolitionism is as marked a feature of the struggle over the right of petition as Mr. Calhoun's declaration of the righteousness of slavery.

The earlier method
of dealing with
the petitions.

The committee on the District reported, on December 19th, that as the District was composed of cessions of territory from Maryland and Virginia, it would, in the opinion of the members of the committee, be unwise, if not unjust, for Congress to interfere in the question of the relation of slave to master in the District, until Virginia and Maryland should take steps to eradicate the evil from their respective territories. This report seemed to settle the question for the session, and no more petitions appeared in either House.

In the middle of the next session, Mr. Hiester, of Pennsylvania, presented a petition to the House of Representatives from sundry citizens of Pennsylvania praying for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. This was again a Quaker petition, as were the petitions presented by Mr. Adams. Mr. Hiester moved to refer the petition to the committee on the District, and Mr. Mason, of Virginia, rashly called for the yeas and nays, which opened the question to debate. Mr. Adams immediately pointed out this fact to Mr. Mason, and advised him to withdraw his motion, which advice Mr. Mason wisely adopted. The petition went to the Committee, and nothing further was heard of it.

It was first in the session of 1833-34, that petitions for the abolition of slavery in the District from others than Quakers, presumably from the members of the new anti-slavery societies, appeared in both Houses of Congress. Those presented in the Senate were referred to the committee of the Senate for the District, and nothing more was heard of them. Those presented in the House of Representatives were dealt with in the same manner.

It was not until the session of 1834-35, that the first real note of the conflict was sounded. On January 26th, 1835, Mr. Dickson, of New York, presented several petitions praying for the abolition of the slave-trade and of slavery in the District. They were laid over until February 2nd, when Mr. Dickson called them up, made a rather irritating speech, in which he said that the committee on the District had smothered all such petitions referred to it, and moved the reference of those offered by him to a select committee.

Mr. Chinn, of Virginia, the chairman of the regular committee on the District, resented Mr. Dickson's rude assault, and moved to lay the petitions and Mr. Dickson's motion on the table. The House voted Mr. Chinn's motion by a large majority.

Beginning of the
conflict over the
Abolition petitions.

At length, in the session of 1835-36, the storm broke in all its fury, in both the Senate and the House. It began in the House, December 16th, 1835, upon the presentation of a petition, containing the usual prayer in regard to slavery in the District, by Mr. Fairfield, of Maine. Mr. Cramer, of New York, moved to lay the petition on the table, and the motion was voted. Mr. Fairfield immediately presented another petition of like purport, and himself moved that it be laid upon the table. Mr. Boon, of Indiana, asked that the petition be read, which was done. Thereupon Mr. Slade, of Vermont, moved that it be printed. This meant, of course, that Mr. Slade was determined to have the slavery question agitated in Congress, if he could. Upon him rather than upon Mr. Adams rests the honor, or the blame, whichever it may be, of provoking the excitement over the Abolition petitions, and of upholding the right of petition in the most extreme degree.

The House first voted to lay the petition on the table. The Speaker, Mr. James K. Polk, then put Mr. Slade's motion to print. Whereupon Mr. Slade attempted to debate the whole question of slavery in the District under the motion. The Speaker ruled that the contents of the petition could not be debated under the motion to print. Mr. Vanderpoel, of New York, then moved to lay Mr. Slade's motion on the table, and the House voted to do so by a large majority.

Mr. Hammond's motion
involving the denial of
the right of petition.

Two days later the play was on again. Mr. Jackson, of Massachusetts, presented a petition from sundry citizens of Massachusetts, containing the usual prayer, and moved its reference to a select committee. Whereupon Mr. Hammond, South Carolina, moved that the petition should not be received. This was the ultra-Southern position in regard to the anti-slavery petitions, and Mr. Hammond's enunciation of it in the House antedates Mr. Calhoun's in the Senate by more than a fortnight.

The Constitution guarantees the right of the people to assemble peaceably and petition the Government for redress of grievances. The right to petition certainly includes the right to have the petitions heard by the body petitioned. If the body refuses to receive the petition, it prevents its being heard, and by preventing its being heard it makes the right itself a mockery. On the other hand, the Constitution vests in each House of Congress the power to make its own rules of procedure. This power must, of course, be so used as not to violate any other clause of the Constitution. Under this power, however, each House may and should protect itself against all obstacles thrown by outsiders in the way of the discharge of its duties in legislating for the country. If any number of people undertake, by an abuse of the right of petition, to obstruct the legitimate work of the Congress for the whole people, each House certainly has the right to meet this attempt in any way which will not deny the right of petition, the right of any one or any number of the people to be heard in asking for a redress of grievances.

The new method for
dealing with petitions
in the House
of Representatives.

Down to 1834, the custom of procedure in Congress had been to receive, hear, and refer all petitions. That was going one step farther than was required by the constitutional right of petition; still it was the regular course, and such men as Mr. Adams thought it unwise to depart from the custom in the case of the Abolition petitions. At any rate, Mr. Hammond's motion was a new proposition. The Speaker said that he was "not aware that such a motion had ever been sustained by the former practice of the House," and appeared to rule Mr. Hammond's motion out of order. A confused wrangle ensued over the attitude assumed by the Speaker, during which Mr. Hammond made a motion to reject the petition, and the Speaker, becoming confused by the two motions, the one not to receive, and the other to reject, and knowing that the House could of course reject the prayer of a petition, yielded to the representations of Mr. Hammond, and put Mr. Hammond's motion not to receive the petition to the House. The House voted not to refuse to receive the petition, but the ruling of the Speaker in putting the motion implied that the House possessed the power to refuse to receive, that is, to refuse to hear, a petition. Another confused wrangle ensued over the question whether the House had voted merely not to refuse to receive the petition, or had voted to consider its contents at once. After a day of heated debate and three days of adjournment, during which excited feelings were somewhat calmed, the House reversed all former action, and voted to lay the petition and all the motions relating to it on the table.

True view
of the right
of petition.

Another petition, which, during this wrangle had been inadvertently referred to the committee on the District, was now recalled by a motion to reconsider the vote of reference. It was upon this motion that Mr. Adams made his first great appeal for the right of petition. As we have seen, his view before this was that petitions must be received, heard, and referred. In this speech, however, he indicated that there should be a report from the committee, and a vote upon the report. Mr. Jones, of Virginia, met Mr. Adams' assertions quite successfully, and showed conclusively that, if the right of petition should be interpreted to reach any farther than the right to have the petition received and heard, it would so modify the constitutional right of the House to establish its own rules of procedure as to put it in the power of a few determined obstructionists outside the House, acting with a single member of the House, to prevent the House from doing anything but consider petitions upon a single subject, sacrificing thus the interests of the whole people to the obstinacy of a small number of the people.

The power of Congress
over slavery in the
District of Columbia.

Mr. Jones' argument was so sound and rational that it would probably have settled the minds of almost all of the members in regard to the complicated questions of the right of petition, and the powers of the House over its rules of procedure, had not Mr. Granger, of New York, and Mr. Ingersoll, of Pennsylvania, thrown another firebrand into the House during this debate, in the form of an intimation that Congress had the constitutional power to abolish slavery in the District of Columbia. The Southerners now advanced to the position of denying that power to Congress, and Mr. Wise, of Virginia, in a long and violent speech, demanded that Congress should pass a resolution disclaiming the possession of any such power. Mr. Slade immediately accepted the challenge of Mr. Wise, and delivered an anti-slavery speech in reply, such as had never before been heard upon the floors of Congress. He not only vindicated the power of Congress over the question of slavery in the District, but he discussed the whole question of slavery upon its merits. His words were simply a declaration of relentless war upon slavery in the halls of Congress. They created indescribable consternation in all parts of the House, and roused the resentment and anger of the slaveholders to a veritable fury. In the midst of the confusion, Mr. Garland, of Virginia, gained the Speaker's recognition, and made a good argument against some of Mr. Slade's more radical statements. So soon as he had finished, Mr. Mann, of New York, moved to stop the debate with the previous question. This was voted, and the Speaker then put the motion for the reconsideration of the reference of the petition, under which motion this debate had proceeded. This was voted, and immediately the motion was made to lay the recalled petition, with the reconsidered motion to refer it, on the table. This was voted by a majority of more than two to one.

Evidently the House thought that, in receiving and hearing the petitions and then laying them on the table, it had found the solution of the question, which neither violated the right of petition in the people, nor encroached upon the power of the House over its rules of procedure, nor opened the way for anti-slavery agitation in Congress.