Produced by Don Kostuch
[Transcriber's Notes]
Text has been moved to avoid fragmentation of sentences and paragraphs.
The other five texts in this series were obtained from the 1912 edition
of original books. Volume 3 was missing from the set.
This text, Volume 3, is derived from a PDF image file of the 1896 edition
on the Internet Archive at
http://www.archive.org/details/histusearliest03andrrich
[End Transcriber's Notes]
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
[Illustration: Ten soldiers servicing and aiming a cannon.]
The First Gun Fired from Fort Sumter
HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES
FROM THE EARLIEST DISCOVERY
OF AMERICA TO THE PRESENT DAY
BY
E. BENJAMIN ANDREWS
PRESIDENT OF BROWN UNIVERSITY
WITH 400 ILLUSTRATION AND MAPS
VOLUME III
NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1896
COPYRIGHT, 1894, BY
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
Press of J. J. Little & Co.
Astor Place. New York
CONTENTS
PERIOD II
WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE
DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY
1814--1840
CHAPTER I. THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION.
The Word "Whig."
Republican Prestige.
Schism.
Adams's Election.
Five Doctrines of Whiggism.
I. Broad Construction of the Constitution.
II. The Bank.
Death of Old and Birth of New.
Opposition by Jackson.
III. The Tariff of 1816.
Its Object.
IV. Land.
Whig versus Democratic Policy.
V. Internal Improvements
Rivers and Harbors.
Need of Better Inland Communication.
Contention between the Parties.
Whig Characteristics.
Adams.
Webster.
His Political Attitude.
Clay.
His Power, as an Orator.
His Duel with Randolph.
His Wit.
His Influence.
CHAPTER II. FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE.
Florida's Disputed Boundary.
West Florida Occupied.
Jackson Seizes East Florida.
Puts to Death Ambrister and Arbuthnot.
His Excuse.
Defended by Adams.
Sale of Florida.
Revolt of Spanish America.
Monroe's Declaration.
Its Origin.
CHAPTER III. THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
Missouri Wishes Statehood.
Early History of Slavery.
Hostility to it.
First Abolitionist Societies.
Ordinance of 1787.
Slavery in the North.
In the South.
Pleas for its Existence.
Missouri Compromise.
Pro-slavery Arguments.
The Policy Men.
Anti-slavery Opinions.
Difficulties of the Case.
The Anti-slavery Side Ignores these.
CHAPTER IV. THE GREAT NULLIFICATION.
Rise of Tariff Rates after 1816.
Relations of Parties and Sections to the Tariff.
Minimum Principle.
Tariff of Abominations Adopted.
Harmful to the South.
Nullification Project.
Calhoun's Life and Pet Political Theory.
South Carolina Recedes.
Compromise Tariff.
State Rights and Central Government.
Webster's Plea.
CHAPTER V. MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN."
Jackson's Life.
Mistaken Ideas.
Civil Service Reform.
Perfecting of Party
Organization in the Country.
Jackson and the United States Bank.
His Popularity.
Revival of West Indian Trade.
French Spoliation Claims.
Paid.
Our Gold and Silver Coinage.
Gold Bill.
Increased Circulation of Gold.
Specie Circular.
CHAPTER VI. THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH.
Election of Harrison in 1840.
Causes.
Jackson's Violence.
Sub-treasury Policy.
Panic of 1837.
Decrease of Revenue.
Whig Opposition to Slavery.
Seminole War.
Amistad Case.
Texan Question.
"Tippecanoe and Tyler too."
CHAPTER VII. LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE.
Population and Area.
The West.
The East.
An American Literature.
Newspaper
Enterprise, Mails, Eleemosynary Institutions.
American Character.
Temperance Reform.
The Land of the Free.
Religion.
Anti-masonic Movement.
Banking Craze.
Moon Hoax.
Party Spirit.
Jackson as a Knight Errant.
His Self-will.
Enmity between Adams and Jackson.
Costumes.
CHAPTER VIII. INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840.
F. C. Lowell and his Waltham Power-loom.
Growth of Factory System.
New Corporation Laws.
Gas, Coal, and Other Industries.
The Same Continued.
The National Road.
Stages and Canals.
Ocean Lines.
Beginning of Railroads.
Opposition.
First Locomotive.
Multiplication of Railroads.
PERIOD III
THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY
1840-1860
CHAPTER I. SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE.
Cotton and Slavery.
Evils of Slavery: Social, Economic.
Slave Insurrections.
Turner's Rebellion.
Abolition in Virginia.
Black Laws.
Lull in Anti-slavery
Agitation.
Colonization Society.
Fugitive Slave Laws.
Prigg's Case.
Personal Liberty
Laws in the North.
Kidnapping Expeditions.
Domestic Slave-trade.
Non-emancipation Laws.
Business Relations between North and South.
CHAPTER II. "IMMEDIATE ABOLITION."
Renewed Hostility to Slavery.
Lundy.
Garrison.
Affiliations of this Movement.
The New England Anti-slave Society.
Significance, Purpose, Work.
Methods of Abolitionists.
Southern Opposition.
Northern.
Anti-abolitionist Riots at the North.
Murder of Lovejoy.
Outrages against Northern Blacks.
Colored Schools Closed.
Schism among the Abolitionists.
The Liberty Party.
Ultra-abolitionists' Unreason.
Why Abolitionism Spread.
Ambiguity of the Constitution.
Seizure of Black Seamen.
Grievances on both Sides.
CHAPTER III. THE MEXICAN WAR.
Texas Declares her Independence.
Battle of San Jacinto.
The Democracy Favors
Annexation.
Calhoun's Purpose.
Opposition of Clay and the Whigs.
Texas Admitted to the Union.
Causes of the War.
The Nueces vs. the Rio Grande.
Preliminary Operations.
Battle of Palo Alto.
Declaration of War.
Monterey Captured.
Santa Anna again President.
Buena Vista.
Taylor's Victory.
Scott Appointed to Chief Command.
Capture of Vera Cruz.
Cerro Gordo.
Jalapa.
Re-enforced by Pierce.
On to the City of Mexico.
Contreras.
Churubusco.
Molino del Rey.
Storming of Chapultepec.
Capture of the Capital.
Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo.
Its Conditions.
The Oregon Question.
CHAPTER IV. CALIFORNIA AND THE COMPROMISE OF 1850.
Invasion of New Mexico.
Exploration and Seizure of California.
Discovery of Gold.
Resulting Excitement.
Increase of Population.
Gold Yield.
Early Law and Government.
Slavery's Victory.
The Wilmot Proviso.
Taylor President.
Application by California for Admission to the Union.
Clay's Omnibus Bill.
Webster Superseded by Sumner.
Passage of the Omnibus Compromise.
California a State.
Enlargement of Texas.
New Fugitive Slave Law.
Revival of Abolitionism.
Underground Railroad.
Rendition of Anthony Burns.
Other Cases.
CHAPTER V. THE FIGHT FOR KANSAS.
Plot against the Missouri Compromise.
Pierce's Election.
The Kansas-Nebraska Bill.
Abrogation of the Missouri Compromise.
Squatter Sovereignty.
Anti-slavery Emigration to Kansas.
Political Jobbery by the Slavocracy.
Topeka Convention.
Kansas Riots.
Lecompton Constitution.
Opposed by Free-State Men.
Kansas Admitted to the Union.
Assault upon Sumner.
Southern Repudiation of the Douglas Theory.
Dred Scott Decision.
Startling Assumption of the Supreme Court.
Effect.
Counter-theory.
CHAPTER VI. SLAVERY AND THE OLD PARTIES.
Democracy and Whiggism.
Ambiguous Attitude of the Latter toward Slavery.
The Creole Case.
Giddings's Resolutions.
Quincy Adams as an Abolitionist.
The First Gag Law.
Adams's Opposition.
The Second and Third.
Their Repeal.
Pro-slavery Whigs.
Submission to Slavocracy.
Its Insolent Demands.
Death of Whiggism.
Americanism.
The Know-Nothings.
Revolt from the Democracy at the North.
CHAPTER VII. THE CRISIS.
Consolidation of Anti-slavery Men.
Worse Black Laws.
Schemes for Foreign Conquest.
Lopez's and Walker's Expedition.
Ostend Manifesto.
Supremacy of Slavery.
Rise of Free-soilers.
Incipient Republicanism.
Republican Doctrine.
John Brown's Raid.
Schism between the Northern and the Southern Democrats.
Nomination of Douglas.
Breckenridge and Lane.
Bell and Everett.
Lincoln and Hamlin.
Lincoln's Popularity.
His Election to the Presidency.
CHAPTER VIII. MATERIAL PROGRESS
Population and Economic Prosperity.
Growth of the West.
Indian Outbreaks.
Improvements farther East.
Canals and Railroads.
The Steam Horse in the West.
Morse's Telegraph.
Ocean Cables.
Minor Inventions.
Petroleum.
Financial Crisis of 1857.
PERIOD IV
CIVIL WAR AND RECONSTRUCTION
1860-1868
CHAPTER I. CAUSES OF THE WAR.
An "Irrepressible Conflict."
Growth of North.
Influence of Missouri Compromise Repeal.
Slavery as Viewed by the South.
Stephens.
Anti-Democratic Habits of Thought.
Compact Theory of the Union.
State Consciousness, South.
Argument for the Calhoun Theory.
Secession not Justifiable by this.
Moderates and Fire-eaters.
Northern Grievances.
Do not Excuse Secession.
Lincoln's Election.
Patriotic and Philanthropic Considerations Ignored.
Prudence also.
Resources of South and of North.
CHAPTER II. SECESSION
Threats of Secession before 1860.
By New England.
By the South in 1856.
Governor Wise.
The 1860 Campaign.
Attitude of South Carolina.
Of the Gulf States.
Georgia, North Carolina, Louisiana.
Election of Lincoln.
South Carolina will Secede.
Judge Magrath.
The Palmetto State Goes.
Enthusiasm.
The State Plays Nation.
Effect upon Other States.
Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana.
and Texas Follow.
Strong Union Spirit Still.
Vain.
Georgia and Secession.
The Question in Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee,
Virginia, Missouri, Arkansas, North Carolina.
Seizure of United States Property.
Floyd's Theft.
Fort Moultrie Evacuated for Sumter.
Fort Pickens.
New Orleans Mint.
Twiggs's Surrender.
Theory of Seceding States as to Property Seized.
Southern Confederacy.
Davis President.
His History.
Inaugural Address.
Powers.
Confederate Government and Constitution.
Slavery.
State Sovereignty.
Tariff.
Good Features.
Bright Prospects of the New Power.
CHAPTER III. THE NORTH IN THE WINTER OF 1860-61.
Apathy.
Disbelief in South's Seriousness.
Divided Opinion.
Suggestions toward Compromise.
Anti-coercion.
Convention at Albany.
Mayor Wood of New York.
Buchanan's Vacillation.
Treason all about Him.
Star of the West Fired on.
Inaction of Congress.
Crittenden's Compromise Lost.
Washington Peace Congress.
Vain.
Earnestness of South.
Lincoln Inaugurated.
His Address.
How Received.
His Difficult Task.
Plight of Army, Navy, Treasury.
Sumter Fired on.
Defended.
Evacuated.
Effect at North.
War Spirit.
75,000 Volunteers.
The Sixth Massachusetts in Baltimore.
Washington in Danger.
General Scott's Measures.
March of the Massachusetts Eighth and the New York Seventh.
Their Arrival in Washington.
CHAPTER IV. WAR BEGUN
Both Sides Expect a Brief Struggle.
South's Advantages.
Call for Three Years' Men.
Butler in Baltimore.
Maryland Saved to the Union.
Alexandria and Arlington
Heights Occupied.
Ellsworth's Death.
Each Side Concentrates Armies in Virginia.
Fight at Big Bethel.
At Vienna.
The Struggle in Missouri.
Lyon and Price.
Battle of Wilson's Creek.
Lyon's Death.
Fremont, Hunter, and Halleck in Missouri.
The Contest in Kentucky.
The State becomes Unionist.
In West Virginia.
Lee and McClellan.
Brilliant Campaign of the Latter.
West Virginia Made a State.
Beauregard at Manassas.
Patterson's Advance.
Harper's Ferry Taken.
"On to Richmond."
Battle of Bull Run.
Union Defeat and Retreat.
Losses.
Comments.
Depression at the North, followed by New Resolution.
McClellan.
Army of Potomac Organized.
The Capital Safe.
Affair of Ball's Bluff.
The South Hopeful.
And with Reason.
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE FIRST GUN FIRED FROM FORT SUMTER.
WEBSTER'S HOME AT MARSHFIELD, MASS.
DANIEL WEBSTER.
(From a picture by Healy at the State Department, Washington).
THE HOUSE IN WHICH HENRY CLAY WAS BORN.
THE SCHOOL-HOUSE OF THE SLASHES.
HENRY CLAY. (From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype).
JOHN RANDOLPH.
(From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society).
JAMES MONROE.
(From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T. Jefferson
Coolidge).
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. (From a picture by Gilbert Stuart).
JOHN C. CALHOUN. (From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery).
CALHOUN'S LIBRARY AND OFFICE.
ANDREW JACKSON (From a photograph by Brady).
ROGER B. TANEY.
MARTIN VAN BUREN. (From a photograph by Brady).
GENERAL WILLIAM J. WORTH.
WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON.
(From a copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840).
JOHN TYLER. (From a photograph by Brady).
A PONY EXPRESS.
THURLOW WEED. (From an unpublished photograph by Disderi,
Paris, in 1861. In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes).
FROM AN OLD TIME-TABLE.
(Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide).
TRIAL BETWEEN PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE "TOM THUMB" AND ONE OF
STOCKTON'S AND STOKES' HORSE CARS. (From "History of the First
Locomotives in America").
PETER COOPER'S LOCOMOTIVE.
OBVERSE AND REVERSE OF A TICKET USED IN 1838 ON THE
NEW YORK & HARLEM RAILROAD.
BALTIMORE & OHIO RAILROAD, 1830.
OLD BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILWAY TICKET (ABOUT 1837).
THE "SOUTH CAROLINA," 1831, AND PLAN OF ITS RUNNING GEAR.
BOSTON & WORCESTER RAILROAD, 1835.
THE DISCOVERY OF NAT TURNER.
JOHN G. WHITTIER.
WM. LLOYD GARRISON.
WENDELL PHILLIPS.
FACSIMILE OF HEADING OF THE "LIBERATOR."
GENERAL SAM. HOUSTON.
GENERAL SANTA ANNA.
JAMES K. POLK. (After a photograph by Brady).
GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT.
THE PLAZA OF THE CITY OF MEXICO.
ZACHARY TAYLOR. (After a photograph by Brady).
THE SITE OF SAN FRANCISCO IN 1848.
SUTTER'S MILL, CALIFORNIA, WHERE GOLD WAS FIRST DISCOVERED.
MILLARD FILLMORE.
(From a painting by Carpenter in 1853. at the City Hall, New York).
THE RENDITION OF ANTHONY BURNS IN BOSTON.
FRANKLIN PIERCE.
(From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery).
STEPHEN A. DOUGLAS.
CHARLES SUMNER.
THOMAS H. BENTON.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN. (After a rare photograph in the possession of Noah
Brooks. Only five copies of this photograph were printed).
JOHN BROWN.
WILLIAM H. SEWARD. (From a photograph by Brady).
ELIAS HOWE.
THE VANDALIA. THE PIONEER PROPELLER ON THE LAKES.
OLD STONE TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE.
THE NEW IRON TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA BRIDGE.
BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE, AT CHARLESTOWN, MASS. BUILT 1775.
S. F. B. MORSE.
THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY MORSE.
CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA RUBBER INTO
SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE MACHINE."
THE GREAT EASTERN LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE.
SOUNDING MACHINE USED BY A CABLE EXPEDITION.
CYRUS W. FIELD.
PAYING OUT CABLE GEAR. FROM CHART HOUSE.
SHORE END OF CABLE--EXACT SIZE.
BARNACLES ON CABLE.
JAMES BUCHANAN. (From a photograph by Brady).
STREET BANNER IN CHARLESTON.
MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.
MAJOR ANDERSON REMOVING HIS FORCES FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER,
DECEMBER 26, 1861.
JEFFERSON DAVIS.
ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.
SCENE OF THE FIRST BLOODSHED, AT BALTIMORE.
CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON.
GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT.
GENERAL IRVIN McDOWELL.
GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN.
GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.
GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN.
LIST OF MAPS
THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS, 1836.
PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA, MORNING 23D FEBRUARY, 1847.
ROUTE OF THE SIXTH MASSACHUSETTS TROOPS THROUGH BALTIMORE.
THE ROUTES OF APPROACH TO WASHINGTON.
THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.
BULL RUN--THE FIELD OF STRATEGY.
BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE FORENOON.
BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE AFTERNOON.
PERIOD II.
WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY.
1814-1840
CHAPTER I.
THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION
[1820]
The term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the bloody conflict of the
Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland
sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to
market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in
talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and
has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the
opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our
Revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it
reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic
Party.
The republican predominance after 1800, so complete, bidding so fair to
be permanent, drew all the more fickle Federalists speedily to that
side. Since it was evident that the new party was quite as national in
spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those
most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives,
including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at
the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if
not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced
every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era
of good feeling."
But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began
swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly
homogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced
and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United
States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal
improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist
survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay,
Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more
obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old
Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate
against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported
him.
[1825]
But to drive home fatally the wedge between "democratic" and "national"
Republicans, required Jackson's quarrel with Adams and Clay in 1825,
when, the election being thrown into the House, although Jackson had
ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four, Crawford's
forty-one, and Clay's thirty-seven, Clay's supporters, by a "corrupt
bargain," as Old Hickory alleged, voted for Adams and made him
President. Hickory's idea--an untenable one--was that the House was
bound to elect according to the tenor of the popular and the electoral
vote. After all this, however, so potent the charm of the old party, the
avowal of a purpose to build up a new one did not work well, Clay
polling in 1832 hardly half the electoral vote of Adams in 1828. This
democratic gain was partly owing, it is true, to Jackson's popularity,
to the belief that he had been wronged in 1825, and to the widening of
the franchise which had long been going on in the nation. Calhoun's
election as Vice-President in 1828, by a large majority, shows that
party crystallization was then far from complete. From about 1834, the
new political body thus gradually evolved was regularly called the
Whigs, though the name had been heard ever since 1825.
[1830-1833]
The doctrines characteristic of Whiggism were chiefly five:
I. Broad Construction of the Constitution.
This has been sufficiently explained in the chapter on Federalism and
Anti-Federalism, and need not be dwelt upon. The whig attitude upon it
appears in all that follows.
II. The Bank.
The First United States Bank had perished by the expiration of its
charter in 1811. It had been very useful, indeed almost indispensable,
in managing the national finances, and its decease, with the consequent
financial disorder, was a most terrible drawback in the war. Recharter
was, however, by a very small majority, refused. The evils flowing from
this perverse step manifesting themselves day by day, a new Bank of the
United States, modelled closely after the first, was chartered on April
10, 1816, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster being its chief champions.
Republican opponents, Madison among them, were brought around by the
plea that war had proved a national bank a necessary and hence a
constitutional helper of the Government in its appointed work.
In the management of this second bank there were disorder and
dishonesty, which greatly limited its usefulness. This, notwithstanding,
was considerable. The credit of the nation was restored and its treasury
resumed specie payments. But confidence in the institution was shaken.
We shall see how it met with President Jackson's opposition on every
possible occasion. In 1832 he vetoed a bill for the renewal of its
charter, to expire in 1836, and in 1833 caused all the Government's
deposits in it, amounting to ten million dollars, to be removed. These
blows were fatal to the bank, though it secured a charter from
Pennsylvania and existed, languishing, till 1839.
III. The Tariff.
Until the War of 1812 the main purpose of our tariff policy had been
revenue, with protection only as an incident. During the war
manufacturing became largely developed, partly through our own embargo,
partly through the armed hostilities. Manufacture had grown to be an
extensive interest, comparing in importance with agriculture and
commerce. Therefore, in the new tariff of 1816, the old relation was
reversed, protection being made the main aim and revenue the incident.
It is curious to note that this first protective tariff was championed
and passed by the Republicans and bitterly opposed by the Federalists
and incipient Whigs. Webster argued and inveighed vehemently against it,
appealing to the curse of commercial restriction and of governmental
interference with trade, and to the low character of manufacturing
populations.
But very soon the tables were turned: the Whigs became the high-tariff
party, the Democrats more and more opposing this policy in favor of a
low or a revenue tariff. It should be marked that even now the idea of
protection in its modern form was not the only one which went to make a
high tariff popular. There were, besides, the wish to be prepared for
war by the home production of war material, and also the spirit of
commercial retortion, paying back in her own coin England's burdensome
tax upon our exports to her shores.
IV. Land.
What may not improperly be styled the whig land policy sprung from the
whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering
each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the
effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people
needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant
living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a
rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so
crisply as the others, the Whigs opposed the free sale of government
land, while the Democrats favored that policy. In spite of this,
however, eastern people who moved westward--and they constituted the
West's main population--quite commonly retained their whig politics even
upon the tariff question itself.
V. Internal Improvements.
It has always been admitted that Congress may lay taxes to build and
improve light-houses, public docks, and all such properties whereof the
United States is to hold the title. The general improvement of harbors,
on the other hand, the Constitution meant to leave to the States,
allowing each to cover the expense by levying tonnage duties. The
practice for years corresponded with this. The inland commonwealths,
however, as they were admitted, justly regarded this unfair unless
offset by Government's aid to them in the construction of roads, canals,
and river ways.
[Illustration: Large sprawling residence.]
Webster's Home at Marshfield. Mass.
The War of 1812 revealed the need of better means for direct
communication with the remote sections of the Union. Transportation to
Detroit had cost fifty cents per pound of ammunition, sixty dollars per
barrel of flour. All admitted that improved internal routes were
necessary. The question was whether the general Government had a right
to construct them without amendment to the Constitution.
The Whigs, like the old Federalists, affirmed such right, appealing to
Congress's power to establish post-roads, wage war, supervise
inter-state trade, and conserve the common defence and general welfare.
As a rule, the Democrats, being strict constructionists, denied such
right. Some of them justified outlay upon national rivers and commercial
harbors under the congressional power of raising revenue and regulating
commerce. Others conceded the rightfulness of subsidies to States even
for bettering inland routes. Treasury surplus at times, and the many
appropriations which, by common consent, had been made under Monroe and
later for the old National Road, encouraged the whig contention; but the
whig policy had never met general approval down to the time when the
whole question was taken out of politics by the rise of the railroad
system after 1832. The National Road, meantime, extending across Ohio
and Indiana on its way to St. Louis, was made over in 1830 to the States
through which it passed.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Daniel Webster. From a picture by Healy at the State Department,
Washington.
The Whig Party deserves great praise as the especial repository, through
several decades, of the spirit of nationality in our country. It
cherished this, and with the utmost boldness proclaimed doctrines
springing from it, at a time when the Democracy, for no other reason
than that it had begun as a state rights party, foolishly combated
these. Yet Whiggism was mightier in theories than in deeds, in political
cunning than in statesmanship. It was far too fearful, on the whole,
lest the country should not be sufficiently governed. To secure power it
allied itself now with the Anti-Masons, strong after 1826 in New
England, New York, and Pennsylvania; and again with the Nullifiers of
South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, led by Calhoun, Troup, and
White. It did the latter by making Tyler, an out-and-out Nullifier, its
Vice-President in 1840.
A leading Whig during nearly all his political career was John Quincy
Adams, one of the ablest, most patriotic, and most successful presidents
this country has ever had. He possessed a thorough education, mainly
acquired abroad, where, sojourning with his distinguished father, he had
enjoyed while still a youth better opportunities for diplomatic training
than many of our diplomatists have known in a lifetime. He went to the
United States Senate in 1803 as a Federalist. Disgusted with that party,
he turned Republican, losing his place. From 1806 to 1809 he was
professor in Harvard College. In the latter year Madison sent him
Minister to St. Petersburg. He was commissioner at Ghent, then Minister
to England, then Monroe's Secretary of State, then President.
[Illustration: Small house.]
The House in which Henry Clay was Born.
But Mr. Adams's best work was done in the House of Representatives after
he was elected to that body in 1830. He sat in the House until his
death, in 1848--its acknowledged leader in ability, in activity, and in
debate. Friend and foe hailed him as the "Old Man Eloquent," nor were
any there anxious to be pitted against him. He spoke upon almost every
great national question, each time displaying general knowledge; legal
lore, and keenness of analysis surpassed by no American of his or any
age.
Webster was, however, the great orator of the party. Reared upon a farm
and educated at Dartmouth College, he went to Congress from New
Hampshire as a Federalist in 1813. Removing to Boston, he soon entered
Congress from Massachusetts, first as representative, then as senator,
and from 1827 was in the Senate almost continuously till 1850. He was
Secretary of State under Harrison and Tyler, and again in the
Taylor-Fillmore cabinet from 1850.
[Illustration: One room log building.]
The School-house of the Slashes.
As an orator Webster had no peer in his time, nor have the years since
evoked his peer. He was an influential party leader, and repeatedly
thought of for President, though too prominent ever to be nominated. On
two momentous questions, the tariff and slavery, he vacillated, his
dubious action concerning the latter costing him his popularity in New
England.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Henry Clay. From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype.
Yet in many respects the most interesting figure in the party was Henry
Clay. He was born amid the swamps of Hanover County, Va., and had grown
up in most adverse surroundings. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died
while he was an infant, leaving him destitute. In "The Slashes," as the
neighborhood where Clay passed his childhood was called, he might often
have been seen astride a sorry horse with a rope bridle and no saddle,
carrying his bag of grain to the mill. He had attended only district
schools. After obtaining the rudiments of a legal education in Richmond
by service as a lawyer's clerk, he removed to Kentucky. He was soon
famous as a criminal lawyer, and a little later as a politician. The
rest of his life was spent in Congress or cabinet.
Clay's speeches read ill, but were powerful in their delivery. He spoke
directly to the heart. As he proceeded, his tall and awkward form swayed
with passion. His voice was sweet and winsome. Once Tom Marshall was to
face him in joint debate over a salary grab for which Clay had voted.
Clay had the first word, and as he warmed to his work Marshall slunk
away through the crowd in despair. "Come back," said Clay's haters to
him; "you can answer every point." "Of course," replied Marshall, "but I
can't get up there and do it now." The common people shouted for Clay as
they shouted for neither Webster nor Adams. He had infinite fund of
anecdote, remembered everyone he had ever seen, and was kindly to all.
John Tyler is said to have wept when Clay failed of the Presidential
nomination in the Whig Convention of 1839.
[1840]
Clay's vices and inconsistencies were readily forgiven. He had denounced
duelling as barbarous, yet when sharp-tongued John Randolph referred to
him and Adams as having, in 1825, formed "the coalition of Blifil and
Black George, the combination of the Puritan and the blackleg"--for Clay
gambled--Clay challenged him. They met, the diminutive Randolph being in
his dressing-gown. Neither was hurt, as Randolph fired in air and Clay
was no shot. Being asked why he did not kill Randolph, Clay said: "I
aimed at the part of his gown where I thought he was, but when the
bullet got there he had moved." In 1842, when Lord Ashburton was in
Washington, there was a famous whist game, my lord, with Mr. Crittenden,
playing against Clay and the Russian Minister, Count Bodisco, while
Webster looked on. "What shall the stake be?" asked his lordship. "Out
of deference to Her Majesty," said Clay, "we will make it a sovereign."
[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Randolph.
From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society.
Emphatically patriotic, super-eminent in debate, ambitious, adventurous
in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his
party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every
measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man
may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its
origin till his death.
CHAPTER II.
FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE
[1816]
It was a delicate question after the Louisiana purchase how much
territory it embraced east of the Mississippi. Louisiana had under
France, till 1762, reached the Perdido, Florida's western boundary at
present, and was "retroceded" by Spain to France in 1800 "with the same
extent that it had when France possessed it." The United States of
course succeeded to whatever France thus recovered. Spain claimed still
to own West Florida, the name given by Great Britain on receiving it
from France in 1763 to the part of Louisiana between the Perdido and the
Mississippi. Spain had never acquired the district from France, but
obtained it by conquest from Great Britain during our Revolution.
This claim by Spain, based only on the "retro" in the treaty of 1800,
our Government viewed as fanciful, regarding West Florida undoubtedly
ours through the Louisiana purchase. Spain was intractable, first of
herself, later still more so through Napoleon's dictation. Hence our
offer, in Jefferson's time, to avoid war, of a lump sum for the two
Floridas was spurned by her. In 1810 and 1811, to save it from
anarchy--also to save it from Great Britain or France, now in the
whitest heat of their contest for Spain--we occupied West Florida, as
certainly entitled to it against those powers, yet with no view of
precluding further negotiations with Spain. When in 1812 Louisiana
became a State, its eastern boundary ran as now, including a goodly
portion of the region in debate.
[1817]
The necessity of acquiring East Florida, too, was more and more
apparent. That country was without rule, full of filibusterers,
privateers, hostile refugee Creeks and runaway negroes, of whose
services the English had availed themselves freely during the war of
1812, when Spaniards and English made Florida a perpetual base for
hostile raids into our territory. A fort then built by the English on
the Appalachicola and left intact at the peace with some arms and
ammunition, had been occupied by the negroes, who, from this retreat,
menaced the peace beyond the line. Spain could not preserve law and
order here. This was perhaps a sufficient excuse for the act of General
Gaines in crossing into Florida and bombarding the negro fort, July 27,
1816. Amelia Island, on the Florida coast, a nest of lawless men from
every nation, was in 1817 also seized by the United States with the same
propriety. Knowledge that Spain resented these acts encouraged the
Floridians. Collisions continually occurred all along the line, finally
growing into general hostility. Such was the origin of the First
Seminole War.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
James Monroe. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T.
Jefferson Coolidge.
[1818]
December, 1817, Jackson was placed in command in Georgia. To clear out
the filibusterers, the chief source of the Indians' discontent ever
since before the Creek War, the hero of New Orleans, mistakenly
supposing himself to be fortified by his Government's concurrence,
boldly took forcible possession of all East Florida. Ambrister and
Arbuthnot, two officious English subjects found there, he put to death.
This procedure was quite characteristic of Old Hickory. He acted upon
the theory that by the law of nations any citizen of one land making war
upon another land, the two being at peace, becomes an outlaw.
International law has no such doctrine, and most likely the maxim
occurred to Jackson rather as an excuse after the act than in the way of
forethought. Nor was it ever proved that the two victims were guilty as
Jackson alleged. With him this probably made little difference. Having
undertaken to quiet the Floridian outbreaks he was determined to
accomplish his end, whatever the consequences of some of his means.
With the country the New Orleans victor, who had now dared to hang a
British subject, was ten times a hero, but the deed confused and
troubled Monroe's cabinet not a little. Calhoun wished General Jackson
censured, while all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed
acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion
Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz.,
Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings,
managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American
but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own
Government and the Governments of England and Spain.
The posts seized had of course to be given up, yet our bold invasion had
rendered Spain willing at last to sell Florida, while Great Britain,
wishing our countenance in her opposition to the anti-progressive,
misnamed Holy Alliance of continental monarchs, concurred. Spain after
all got the better of the bargain, as we surrendered all claim to Texas,
which the Louisiana purchase had really made ours.
[1823]
The Florida imbroglio nursed to its first public utterance a sentiment
which has ever since been spontaneously taken as a principle of American
public policy, almost as if it were a part of our law itself. Spain's
American dependencies had been sensible enough to avail themselves of
that land's distraction in Napoleon's time, to set up as states on their
own account. She naturally wanted them back. Ferdinand VII. withheld
till 1820 his signature of the treaty ceding Florida, in order to
prevent--which, after all, it did not--our recognition of these
revolted provinces as independent nations. Backed by the powerful
Austrian minister, Metternich, and by the Holy Alliance, France, having
aided Ferdinand to suppress at home the liberal rebellion of 1820-23,
began to moot plans for subduing the new Spanish-American States. Great
Britain opposed this, out of motives partly commercial, partly
philanthropic, partly relating to international law, yet was unwilling
so early to recognize the independence of those nations as the United
States had done.
Assured at least of England's moral support, President Monroe in his
message of December, 1823, declared that we should consider any attempt
on the part of the allied monarchs "to extend their system to any
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and
any interposition by them to oppress the young republics or to control
their destiny, "as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward
the United States." This, in kernel, is the first part of Monroe's
doctrine.
The second part added: "The American continents, by the free and
independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by
any European powers." The meaning of this was that the mere hap of first
occupancy on the continent by the citizens of any country would not any
longer be recognized by us as giving that country a title to the spot
occupied.
These important doctrines--for though akin in principle they are really
two--were no sudden creation of individual thought, but the result
rather of slow processes in the public mind. Germs of the first are
traceable to Washington; express statements of both, yet not essentially
detracting from Monroe's originality, to Jefferson. Both were put in
form by Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State. Especially Monroe's,
we believe, is the second, a resolution to which Russia's advance down
the Pacific coast, and more still the recent vexations from the
proximity of Spain in Florida, had pushed him.
CHAPTER III.
THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
Louisiana having become a State in 1812, that portion of the purchase
north of the thirty-third degree took the name of the Missouri
Territory. St. Louis was its centre of population and of influence.
[1818]
Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never
been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was
popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri
Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called
attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi,
and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous
debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the
most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest
hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those
which I feel from this source."
To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need
of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been
nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human
development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery
originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America,
to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The
first notice we have of it in English America is that in
1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch
West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There
were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great
harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the
introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700,
Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern
colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of
morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an
early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though
ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to
be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government,
moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with
the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was
formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries
furthered to the utmost of their power.
Thus the Revolution found slavery in all the colonies, north as well as
south. But it was then, so far south as Virginia, thought to be an evil.
That commonwealth had passed many laws to restrain it, but the King had
commanded the Governor not to assent to any of them. The Legislature,
replying, stigmatized the traffic as inhuman and a threat to the very
existence of the colony. Hostility extended from the trade to slavery
itself. Jefferson was for emancipation with deportation, and trembled
for his country as he reflected upon the wrong of slavery and the
justice of God. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph,
Washington, Madison, in a word all the great Virginians of the time held
similar views.
The Quakers of Pennsylvania were, however, the most aggressive of
slavery's foes. So early as 1775 a society, the first in America if not
in the world for promoting its abolition, was formed in Pennsylvania. In
1789 it was incorporated, with Franklin for president. Similar
organizations soon rose in several northern States, numbering among
their members many of the most eminent men in the land. The British
Abolition Society, formed in 1787, and the labors of Wilberforce,
Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay against the slave trade in the West
Indies, had influence here, as had still more the French Assembly's bold
proclamation of the Rights of Man.
The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive
point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language,
there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the
said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the
everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental
Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose assent
as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights
over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the
strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana
purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the
presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory.
Vermont had never recognized slavery save to prohibit it in its first
constitution. In New Hampshire it existed but nominally. The
Massachusetts constitution of 1780 virtually ended it in that State.
Gradual abolition statutes passed in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Rhode
Island and Connecticut in 1784. The constitution made it possible to
forbid the importation of slaves in 1808. A national law to that effect
was passed in 1807, making the trade illegal and affixing to it heavy
penalties. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 for the
purpose of negro deportation. It did little of this, but rendered some
service toward carrying out the act against slave importation. A new law
in 1820, which made this traffic piracy, punishable with death, was
partly due to its influence. Also many, like Birney, Gerrit Smith and
the Tappans, who began as colonizationists, subsequently became
abolitionists.
Notwithstanding all these influences slavery increased in strength every
year. South Carolina and Georgia were finding it exceedingly profitable
for cotton and rice culture, and the income from slave traffic into the
vast opening lands of Tennessee and Kentucky constituted an irresistible
temptation. In spite of the law of 1807 and of the indescribable horrors
of the business, even the foreign slave trade went on. The institution
found many defenders in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in the first
and subsequent Congresses. The pleas began to be raised, so current
later, that the negro was an inferior being, slavery God's ordinance, a
blessing to slaves and masters alike, and emancipation a folly. Now
began also that policy of bravado by which, for sixty years, the friends
of slavery bullied their opponents into shameful inaction upon that
accursed thing politically as well as morally, which was so nearly to
cost the nation its life. Thus stood matters when the Missouri
Compromise was mooted in the national Legislature.
We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was
created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the
same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of
the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern
line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land
between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the
"Territory of Arkansaw."
In the memorable discussion over this issue, involving the country as
well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the
suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of
property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves
as tacitly guaranteed by the Constitution. They also made much of the
third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows:
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the
Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according
to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all
the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States;
and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free
enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they
profess."
There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best
to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger
to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the
sacred compromises in the Constitution, meaning the permission at first
to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in
Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the
necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of
Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto,
and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery,
as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was
the most earnest pleader for the compromise.
To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that
property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress
had full power over territorial institutions and should never have
permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed
error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms
of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they
had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign
power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been
admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly
said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed
its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way.
The chief strength of slavery in this crisis lay in the distressing
practical difficulty, if the prayer of Missouri were refused, of dealing
with slaves and slave proprietorship there, and of quieting a numerous
and spirited population bent upon statehood and slavery together. The
more decided foes of slavery did not sufficiently consider these
complications. Nor did they duly reflect upon the sweeping triumph which
freedom had withal secured in the pledge that the vast bulk of the
Louisiana purchase should be forever free. The pledge was indeed broken
in 1854, but not until such a sense of its sacredness had been impressed
upon the country that the breach availed slavery nothing.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT NULLIFICATION
[1816-1828]
The tariff rates of 1816 on cottons and woollens were to be twenty-five
per cent. for three years, after that twenty. Instead of this the cotton
tariff was in 1824 replaced at twenty-five per cent., the same as that
upon woollens costing thirty-three and a third cents or less per square
yard; woollens over this price bearing thirty per cent. Wool, which by
the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty,
some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824,
from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred
per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The
duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four
and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a
half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made
the cry for protection louder than ever.
[1828]
From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one
hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had
never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the
Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except
Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and
saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong
was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic,
that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only
by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make
prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron,
hemp, and cordage for ship-building; also on molasses, the raw material
for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was
exported.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Quincy Adams. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart.
The Whigs had arranged, to be now passed, a series of minimum rates on
woollens, by which all costing over fifty cents a square yard were to
pay as if costing $2.50, and all over this as if costing $4.00. The rate
was to be forty per cent. the first year, forty-five the second, and
fifty thereafter.
This illustrates the famous "minimum principle," which has played such a
figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to
make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us,
most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on
this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on
$2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent.
To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the
Whigs, the Democrats introduced a dollar "minimum," so that the tariff
on the bulk of our imported woollens, costing, as just stated, about
ninety cents, would come in at forty-four and four-tenths per cent.
But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had
before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one
hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members,
led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff
of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a
few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on
dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent.
No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South.
It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as
extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil
she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in
her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due
simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political
ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and
there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now
favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the
tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the
constitutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts.
[1830]
Nearly all the southern Legislatures consequently denounced the tariff
as unjust and as hostile to our fundamental law. Most of them were,
however, prudent enough to suggest no illegal remedies. Not so with
fiery South Carolina, where a large party, inspired by Calhoun, proposed
a bold nullification of the tariff act, virtually amounting to
secession. At a dinner in this interest at Washington, April 13, 1830,
Calhoun offered the toast: "The Union; next to our liberty the most
dear; only to be preserved by respecting the rights of the States."
[1832]
John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most
influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782,
of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated
like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and
through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the
only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of
Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for
seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and
reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and
seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had
built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history
of the formation of our Constitution. He had worked out to his own
satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in
the way of revolution but under the Constitution itself--as a contract
between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon
its own judgment of their unconstitutionality.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
John C. Calhoun
From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
On this doctrine South Carolina presently proceeded to act. November 24,
1832, the convention of that State passed its nullification ordinance,
declaring the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 "null, void, and no law,"
defying Congress to execute them there, and agreeing, upon the first use
of force for this purpose, to form a separate government.
This was the quintessence of folly even had good theory been behind it.
The tone of the proceeding was too hasty and peremptory. The decided
turn of public opinion and of congressional action in favor of large
reduction in duties was ignored. But the theory appealed to was clearly
wrong, and along with its advocates was sure to be reprobated by the
nation. A precious opportunity effectively to redress the evil
complained of was wantonly thrown away. Worst of all, from a tactical
point of view, South Carolina had miscalculated the spirit of President
Jackson. At the dinner referred to, his toast had been the memorable
words: "Our Federal Union; it must be preserved." Men now saw that Old
Hickory was in earnest. General Scott, with troops and warships, was
ordered to Charleston.
The nullifiers receded, a course made easier by Clay's "compromise
tariff" of 1833, gradually reducing duties for the next ten years, and
enlarging the free list. From all duties of over twenty per cent. by the
act of 1832, one-tenth of the excess was to be stricken off on September
30, 1835, and another tenth every other year till 1841. Then one-half
the excess remaining was to fall, and in 1842 the rest, so that the end
of the last named year should find no duty over twenty per cent.
This episode, threatening as it was for a time, drew in its train
results the most happy, revealing with unprecedented vividness to most,
both the original nature of the Constitution as not a compact, and also
the might which national sentiment had attained since the War of 1812.
The doctrine of state rights was seen to have gradually lost, over the
greater part of the country, all its old vitality. Nearly every State
Legislature condemned the South Carolina pretensions, Democrats as
hearty in this as Whigs. Jackson's proclamation against them--impressive
and unanswerable--ran thus: "The Constitution of the United States
forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact
between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same
. . . . I consider the power to annul a law of the United States
incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by
the letter of the Constitution, and destructive of the great object for
which it was formed. . . . Our Constitution does not contain the
absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist
them. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to
say that the United States are not a nation."
[Illustration: Small room with a desk, fireplace, and bookshelf.]
Calhoun's Library and Office.
The congressional debates which the nullification question evoked, among
the ablest in our parliamentary history, held the like high national
tenor. Calhoun's idea, though advocated by him with consummate skill,
was shown to be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from
this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne
almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's
masterful handling of constitutional history and law. Not questioning
the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of
"strictly limited," even of "enumerated, specified, and particularized
powers," the Massachusetts orator made it convincingly apparent that the
Calhoun programme could lead to nothing but anarchy. It was seen that
general and state governments emanate from the people with equal
immediacy, and that the language of the clause, "the Constitution and
the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof" are "the
supreme law of the land, anything in the constitution or laws of any
State to the contrary notwithstanding," means precisely what it says. To
this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time.
CHAPTER V.
MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S "REIGN"
[1828]
Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from
Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education
worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and
was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina,
moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the
framers of the Tennessee constitution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator
from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench.
His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are
already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably
before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral,
was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself
and multitudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the
election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his
popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of
647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected
against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any
extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many
violent and indiscreet acts as President.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Andrew Jackson. From a photograph by Brady.
Much of Jackson's arbitrariness sprung from a foolish whim of his,
taking his election as equivalent to the enactment of all his peculiar
ideas into law. Ours is a government of the people, he said; the people
had spoken in his election, and had willed so and so. Woe to any senator
or representative who opposed! This was, of course, to mistake entirely
the nature of constitutional government.
After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and passionate old man,
controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in
New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly
was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him "a barbarian who could not
write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name." He was
never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his
mistakes and self-will, often inexcusable, he was one of the most
patriotic and clear-headed men who ever administered a government. If he
resorted to unheard-of methods within the law, very careful was he never
to transgress the law.
The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the
civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, "turn the
rascals out," first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the
policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he
made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at
his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with
the policy of preceding presidents. Washington removed but two men from
office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a
defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them
defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of
them for cause.
[1830]
Yet of Jackson's procedure in this matter it can be said, in partial
excuse, so bitter had been the opposition to him by officeholders as
well as others, that many removals were undoubtedly indispensable in
order to the efficiency of the public service. It is not at all
necessary for the rank and file of the civil service to be of the same
party with the Chief Magistrate, but it is necessary that they should
not be so utterly opposed to him as to feel bound in conscience to be
working for his defeat.
The fine art of party organization, semi-military in form, has come to
us from Jackson and his workers. Before his time, candidates for high
state offices had usually been nominated by legislative caucuses, and
those for national posts by congressional caucuses. State party
conventions had been held in Pennsylvania and New York. Soon after 1830
such a device for national nominations began to be thought of, and the
history of national party conventions may be said to begin with the
campaign of 1832.
[1832]
Jackson's dearest foe while in office was the United States Bank.
Magnifying the dishonesty which had, as everyone knew, disgraced its
management, he attacked it as a monster, an engine of the moneyed
classes for grinding the face of the poor. Like Jefferson, like Madison
at first, he disbelieved in its constitutionality. In his first message
and continually in his official utterances he inveighed against it as a
public danger, using its funds and patronage for party ends. This made
him unpopular with many who had been his friends, so that in the
campaign of 1832 Clay forced the bank question to the front as one on
which Jackson's attitude would greatly advantage the whig cause. He
accepted Clay's challenge with pleasure, and from this moment gave the
bank no quarter. We may call the contest of this year a pitched battle
between Jackson and the bank.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Roger B. Taney.
[1833]
In 1832 he vetoed a bill for a renewal of its charter, which was to
expire in 1836, and in 1833 he proceeded to break it by removing the
United States deposits which it held. Such removal was by law within the
power of the Secretary of the Treasury. Secretary McLane refused to
execute Jackson's will. He was removed and Duane appointed. Then Duane
was removed and Roger B. Taney appointed, who obeyed the President's
behest. The bank was emptied by checking out the public money as wanted,
at the same time depositing no more, the funds being instead placed in
"pet" state banks, as they were called because of the government favor
thus shown them.
The financial distress rightly or wrongly ascribed to this measure
throughout the country, instead of injuring Jackson, probably, on the
whole, made him still more popular, as showing the power of the bank.
When Congress met in 1833, the Senate passed a vote of censure upon him
for what he had done. Rancorous wranglings and debates pervaded Congress
and the whole land. After persistent effort by Jackson's bosom friend,
Senator Benton, of Missouri, this censure-vote was expunged by the
XXIVth Congress, second session, January 16, 1837. This was before
Jackson left office, and he accounted it the greatest triumph of his
public life.
[1830]
Jackson was somehow fortunate in dealing with foreign nations. It was he
who recovered for American ships that British West Indian trade which
had been so long denied. Negotiations were opened with Great Britain,
which, in 1830, had the result of placing American vessels in the
British West Indian ports at an equal advantage with British vessels
sailing thither from the United States--terms which, through the
contiguity of those islands to us, gave us a trade there better than
that of any other nation. This diplomacy brought the administration much
applause.
When Jackson became President, France was still in our debt on account
of her spoliations upon American commerce after the settlement of 1803.
The matter had been in negotiation ever since 1815, but hitherto in
vain. Jackson took it up with zeal, but with his usual apparent
recklessness. A treaty had been concluded in 1831, as a final settlement
between the two countries, binding France to pay twenty-five million
francs and the United States to pay one and one-half million. The first
instalment from France became due February 2, 1833, but was not paid.
Jackson's message to Congress in 1834, not an instalment having yet been
received, contained a distinct threat of war should not payment begin
forthwith. He also bade Edward Livingston, minister at Paris, in the
same contingency to demand his passports and leave Paris for London.
[1835]
Most public men, even those in his cabinet, thought this action
foolhardy and useless; but Quincy Adams, neither expecting nor receiving
any thanks for it, just as in the Seminole War difficulty, nobly stood
up for the President. A telling speech by him in the House led to its
unanimous resolution, March 2, 1835, that the execution of the treaty
should be insisted on. The French ministry blustered, and for a time
diplomatic relations between the two countries were entirely ruptured.
But France, affecting to see in the message of 1835, though voiced in
precisely the same tone as its predecessor, some apology for the menace
contained in that, began its payments. This money, as also all due from
the other states included in Napoleon's continental system, was paid
during Jackson's administration, a result which brought him and his
party great praise, not more for the money than for the respect and
consideration secured to the United States by insistence upon its
rights. The President's message to Congress in 1835 announced the entire
extinguishment of the public debt--the first and the last time this has
occurred in all our national history.
An important measure touching the hard-money system of our country was
passed in large part through the influence of President Jackson. By the
Mint Law of 1792 our silver dollar was made to contain three hundred and
seventy-one and a quarter grains of fine silver, or four hundred and
sixteen of standard silver. The amount of pure silver in this venerable
coin has remained unchanged ever since; only, in 1837, by a reduction of
the alloy fraction to exactly one-tenth, the total weight of the coin
became what it now is, four hundred and twelve and a half grains,
nine-tenths fine. The same law of 1792 had given the gold dollar just
one-fifteenth the weight of the silver dollar. This proportion, which
Hamilton had arrived at after careful investigation characteristic of
the man, was exactly correct at the time, but within a year, as is now
known, on account of increase in the relative value of gold, the gold
dollar at fifteen to one became more valuable than its silver mate. The
consequence was that the gold brought to the United States mint for
coinage fell off year by year, until some of the years between 1820 and
1830 it had been almost zero. Gold money had nearly ceased to circulate.
[1834-1836]
Jackson resolved to restore the yellow metal to daily use. In this he
was opposed by many Whigs, who, so zealous were they for the United
States Bank, had become paper money men. The so-called Gold Bill was
carried through Congress in 1834, changing the proportion of silver to
gold in our currency from fifteen to one to sixteen to one. It should
have been fifteen and a half to one. Now gold in its turn was
over-valued, so that silver gradually ceased to circulate, as gold had
almost ceased before. This result was made worse after 1848, when there
was a still further appreciation of silver through the discovery of gold
in California and Australia. Silver dollars did not again circulate
freely in the country until 1878, though they were full legal tender
till 1873. Gold, on the other hand, was everywhere seen after 1834,
though not abundant in circulation, owing to the large amounts of paper
money then in use.
In 1836 the President ordered his Secretary of the Treasury to put forth
the famous Specie Circular, declaring that only gold, silver, or land
scrip should be received in payment for public lands. The occasion of
this was that while land sales were very rapidly increasing, the
receipts hitherto had consisted largely in the notes of insolvent banks.
Land speculators would organize a bank, procure for it, if they could,
the favor of being a "pet" bank, issue notes, borrow these as
individuals and buy land with them. The notes were deposited, when they
would borrow them again to buy land with, and so on. As there was little
specie in the West, the circular broke up many a fine plan, and evoked
much ill-feeling. Gold was drawn from the East, where, as many of the
banks had none too much, the drain caused not a few of them to collapse.
The condition of business at this time was generally unsound, and this
westward movement of gold was all that was needed to precipitate a
crisis. A crisis accordingly came on soon after, painfully severe. It is
unfair, however, to arraign Jackson's order as wholly responsible for
the evils which accompanied this monetary cataclysm. It was rather an
occasion than the cause.
CHAPTER VI.
THE FIRST WHIG TRIUMPH
[1837]
Partly Jackson's personal influence, partly his able aides, partly
favoring circumstances had, during his administrations, brought the
Democracy into excellent condition, patriotic, national in general
spirit, with a creed that, however imperfect--close construction being
its integrating idea--was, after all, definite, consistent, and
thoughtful. Yet in 1840 the Democrats, who four years before had chosen
Van Buren by an electoral vote of 170 to 73, had to surrender, with the
same Van Buren for candidate, to the Whigs by a majority of 234
electoral votes to 60; only five States, and but two of them northern,
going for the democratic candidate.
There were several causes for this defeat. Jackson had made many enemies
as well as many friends, some of these within his own party, while the
entire opposition to him was indescribably bitter on account of the
personal element entering into the struggle. The commendably national
spirit of the Whig Party told well in its favor. Upon this point its
attitude proved far more in accord with the best sentiment of the nation
than that of the Democracy, sound as the latter was at the core and
nobly as its chief had behaved in the nullification crisis.
More influential still was the financial predicament into which on
Jackson's retirement his successor and the country were plunged. The
commercial distress which seemed to spring from Jackson's measures was
now first fully realized. Anger and pain from the death of the bank had
not abated. Ardent hatred prevailed toward the "pet" banks, extending to
the party whose darlings they were, while the Specie Circular was held
to have ruined most of the others. The subsequent legislation for
distributing the treasury surplus among the States, by removing the
deposits from the pet banks, destroyed many of these as well. They had
been using this government money for the discount of loans to business
men, and were not in condition instantly to pay it back. Hence the panic
of 1837. First the New York City banks suspended, soon followed by the
others throughout that State, all sustained in their course by an act of
the Legislature. Suspension presently occurred everywhere else. The
financial pressure continued through the entire summer of 1837, banks,
corporations, and business men going to the wall, and all values greatly
sinking. Boston suffered one hundred and sixty-eight business failures
in six months.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Martin Van Buren.
From a photograph by Brady.
One of Van Buren's earliest acts after assuming office was to call an
extra session of Congress for September 4, 1837, to consider the
financial condition of the country. When it convened, an increase of the
whig vote was apparent, though the Democrats were still in the majority.
On the President's recommendation, agitation now began in favor of the
sub-treasury or independent treasury plan, still in use to-day, of
keeping the government moneys. This had been first broached in 1834-35
by Whigs. The Democrats then opposed it; but now they took it up as a
means of counteracting the whig purpose to revive a national bank.
There was soon less need of any such special arrangement, as the
treasury was swiftly running dry. In June of the preceding year, 1836,
both parties concurring, an act had passed providing that after January
1, 1837, all surplus revenue should be distributed to the States in
proportion to their electoral votes. It was meant to be a loan, to be
recalled, however, only by vote of Congress, but it proved a donation.
Twenty-eight millions were thus paid in all, never to return. Such a
disposition of the revenue had now to be stopped and reverse action
instituted. Importers called for time on their revenue bonds, which had
to be allowed, and this checked income. This special session was needed
to authorize an issue of ten millions in treasury notes to tide the
Government over the crisis.
[1840]
Another influence which now worked powerfully against the Democracy was
hostility to slavery. This campaign--it was the first--saw a "Liberty
Party" in the field, with its own candidates, Birney and Earle. The
abolition sentiment, of which more will be said in a subsequent chapter,
was growing day by day, and little as the Whigs could be called an
antislavery party on the whole, their rank and file were very much more
of that mind than those of the opposition. Jackson had ranted wildly
against the despatch of abolition literature through the mails. The
second Seminole War, 1835-42, was waged mainly in deference to
slave-holders, to recover for them their Florida runaways, and, by
removal of the Seminoles beyond the Mississippi, to break up a popular
resort for escaped negroes. The Indians, under Osceola, whose wife, as
daughter to a slave-mother, had been treacherously carried back into
bondage, fought like tigers. After their massacre of Major Dade and his
detachment, Generals Gaines, Jesup, Taylor, Armistead, and Worth
successively marched against them, none but the last-named successful in
subduing them. Over 500 persons had been restored to slavery, each one
costing the Government, as was estimated, at least $80,000 and the lives
of three white soldiers.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
General William J. Worth.
[1839]
Van Buren was to the slavocrats even more obsequious than Jackson. His
spirit was shown, among other things, by the Amistad case, in 1839. The
schooner Amistad was sailing between Havana and Puerto Principe with a
cargo of negroes kidnapped in Africa. Under the lead of a bright negro
named Cinque the captives revolted and killed or confined all the crew
but two, whom they commanded to steer the ship for Africa. Instead,
these directed her to the United States coast, where she was seized off
Long Island by a war vessel and brought into New London. The negroes
were, even by Spanish law, not slaves but free men, as Spain had
prohibited the slave trade. Yet when their case was tried before the
district court, Mr. Van Buren spared no effort to procure their release
to the Spanish claimants. He even had a government vessel all ready to
convey the poor victims back to Cuba. The district court having decided
for the blacks, the government attorney appealed to the circuit court,
thence also to the supreme court. Final judgment happily re-affirmed
that the men were free. The supreme court trial was the occasion of one
of John Quincy Adams's most splendid forensic victories, he being the
counsel for the negroes.
The attitude of the administration in this affair greatly injured the
party in the North, the more as it but illustrated a spirit and policy
which had grown characteristic of the party's head. In several instances
previous to this time, when ships conveying slaves from one of the
United States to another, entered the ports of the Bahama Islands
through stress of weather, England had, while freeing them, allowed some
compensation. Now, having emancipated the slaves in her own West Indian
possessions, she declined longer to continue that practice. Her first
refusal touched the slaves on the ship Enterprise, which had put in at
Port Hamilton in 1835. Jackson's administration in vain sought
indemnity, Van Buren, then Secretary of State, designating this business
as "the most immediately pressing" before the English embassy.
[1840]
In the same pro-slavery interest an increasing proportion of the
Democracy, though not Van Buren himself, had come to favor the
annexation of Texas. The southwestern boundary of the United States had
ever since the purchase in Florida in 1819 been recognized as the Sabine
River, west of this lying the then foreign country of Texas. France had
claimed the Rio Grande as Louisiana's western bound, but Mr. Monroe, to
placate the North in the Florida annexation, had receded from this
claim. Texas and Coahuila became a state in the new Mexican republic,
which Spain recognized in 1821; but in 1836 Texas declared itself
independent. It was ill-governed and weighed down with debt, and hence
almost immediately, in 1837, asked membership in the American Union. Its
annexation was bitterly opposed all over the North, so bitterly in fact
that the northern Democrats would not have dared, even had they wished,
to favor the scheme. Yet so strong was the southern influence in the
party by 1840 that the democratic platform that year urged the
"re-annexation" of Texas, the term assuming that as a part of Louisiana
it had always been ours since 1803. This was a fact, but it was now
asseverated by the Democracy for a selfish sectional purpose, and the
cry brought thousands of votes to the Whigs.
It proved good politics for the Whigs in 1840 to pass over Clay and
adopt as their candidate William Henry Harrison. He had indeed been
unsuccessful in 1836, owing to the great popularity of Jackson, all
whose influence went for Van Buren; but now that "Little Van," or
"Matty," as Jackson used to call him, stood alone, Harrison had a better
chance. His political record had been inconspicuous but honorable.
Nothing could be alleged against his character. He was a gentleman of
some ability, while his brilliant military record in 1812, now revived
to the minutest detail, gave him immense popularity. Every surviving
Tippecanoe or Thames veteran stumped his vicinity for the old war-horse.
Many wavering Democrats in the South, especially those of the
nullification stripe, were toled to the whig ticket by the nomination of
John Tyler for Vice-President. "Tippecanoe and Tyler too" rang through
the land as the whig watchword for the campaign. During the
electioneering every hamlet was regaled with portrayals of Harrison's
simple farm life at North Bend, where, a log cabin his dwelling, and
hard cider--so one would have supposed--his sole beverage, he had been a
genuine Cincinnatus. "Tippecanoe and Tyler" were therefore elected;
their popular vote numbering 1,275,017, against 1,128,702 polled for Van
Buren.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
William Henry Harrison
From a Copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840.
However, this whig success, for a moment so imposing, proved superficial
and brief. Harrison died at the end of his first month in office, and
Tyler, coming in, showed that though training under the whig banner, he
had not renounced a single one of his democratic principles. The Whigs
scorned and soon officially repudiated him During the entire four years
that he held office there was constant deadlock between him and the
slight whig majority in Congress, which gave the Democrats main control
in legislation. The panic of 1837 was forgotten, while the hold of the
Democracy upon the country was so firm that its gains in Congress and
its triumphs in the States once more went steadily on.
CHAPTER VII.
LIFE AND MANNERS IN THE FOURTH DECADE
[1835]
By the census of 1830 the United States had a population of 12,866,020,
the increase having been for the preceding ten years about sufficient to
double the inhabitants in thirty years. There were twenty-four States,
Indiana having been taken into the Union in 1816, Mississippi in 1817,
Illinois in 1818, Alabama in 1819, Maine in 1820, and Missouri, the
last, in 1821. Florida, Michigan, and Arkansas were the Territories. The
area, now that Florida had been annexed, was 725,406 square miles.
Comparatively little of the soil of Michigan, Iowa, Minnesota, and
Wisconsin had as yet been occupied, though settlements were making on
most of the larger streams. The southwest had at this time filled up
more rapidly than the northwest. In 1830 the centre of population for
the Union was farther south than it has ever been at any other time.
Except in Louisiana and Missouri, not over thirty thousand inhabitants
were to be found west of the Mississippi. The vast outer ranges of the
Louisiana purchase remained a mysterious wilderness. Indianapolis in
1827 contained twenty-five brick houses, sixty frame, and about eighty
log houses; also a court-house, a jail, and three churches. Chicago was
laid out in 1830. Thither in, 1834 went one mail per week, from Niles,
Mich., on horseback. In 1833 it was incorporated as a town, having 175
houses and 550 inhabitants. That year it began publishing a newspaper
and organized two churches. In 1837 it was a city, with 4,170
inhabitants. The Territory of Iowa had in 1836, 10,500 inhabitants; in
1840, 43,000. At this time Wisconsin had 31,000. So early as 1835 Ohio
had nearly or quite 1,000,000 inhabitants. Sixty-five of its towns had
together 125 newspapers. Between 1830 and 1840 Ohio's population rose
from 900,000 to 1,500,000; Michigan's, from 30,000 to 212,000; and the
whole country's, from 13,000,000 to 17,000,000. Before 1840, eight
steamers connected Chicago with Buffalo.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
John Tyler
From a photograph by Brady.
By 1840 nearly all the land of the United States this side the
Mississippi had been taken up by settlers. The last districts to be
occupied were Northern Maine, the Adirondack region of New York, a strip
in Western Virginia from the Potomac southward through Kentucky nearly
to the Tennessee line, the Pine Barrens of Georgia, and the extremities
of Michigan and Wisconsin. Beyond the Father of Waters his shores were
mostly occupied, as well as those of his main tributaries, a good way
from their mouths. The Missouri Valley had population as far as Kansas
City. Arkansas, Missouri, and Iowa Territory had many settlements at
some distance from the streams. The aggregate population of the country
was 17,069,453, the average density twenty-one and a tenth to the square
mile. The mass of westward immigration was as yet native, since the
great rush from Europe only began about 1847. This was fortunate, as
fixing forever the American stamp upon the institutions of western
States. To compensate each new commonwealth for the non-taxation of the
United States land it contained, it received one township in each
thirty-six as its own for educational purposes, a provision to which is
due the magnificent school system of Michigan, Wisconsin, Iowa,
Minnesota, and their younger sisters.
Farther east, too, there had, of course, been growth, but it was slower.
In 1827 Hartford had but 6,900 inhabitants; New Haven, 7,100; Newark, N.
J., 6,500, and New Brunswick about the same. The State of New York paid
out, between 1815 and 1825, nearly $90,000 for the destruction of
wolves, showing that its rural population had attained little density.
The entire country had vastly improved in all the elements of
civilization. A national literature had sprung up, crowding out the
reprints of foreign works which had previously ruled the market. Bryant,
Cooper, Dana, Drake, Halleck, and Irving were now re-enforced by writers
like Bancroft, Emerson, Hawthorne, Holmes, Longfellow, Poe, Prescott,
and Whittier. Educational institutions were multiplied and their methods
bettered, The number of newspapers had become enormous. Several
religious journals were established previous to 1830, among them the New
York Observer, which dates from 1820, and the Christian Register, from
1821. Steam printing had been introduced in 1823. The year 1825 saw the
first Sunday paper; it was the New York Sunday Courier. Greeley began
his New York Tribune only in 1841.
Fresh news had begun to be prized, as shown by the competition between
the two great New York sheets, the Journal of Commerce and the Morning
Enquirer, each of which, in 1827, established for this purpose swift
schooner lines and pony expresses. The Journal of Commerce in 1833 put
on a horse express between Philadelphia and New York, with relays of
horses, enabling it to publish congressional news a day earlier than any
of its New York contemporaries. Other papers soon imitated this example,
whereupon the Journal extended its relays to Washington. Mails came to
be more numerous and prompt. More letters were written, and, from 1839,
letters were sent in envelopes. Postage-stamps were not used till 1847.
Most of the principal cities in the country, including Rochester and
Cincinnati, published dailies before 1830. Baltimore and Louisville had
each a public school in 1829. This year witnessed in Boston the
beginning work of the first blind asylum in the country. In Hartford
instruction had already been given to the deaf and dumb since 1817.
[Illustration: Express rider changing horses.]
A Pony Express.
By the fourth decade of the century the American character had assumed a
good deal of definiteness and greatly interested foreign travellers.
There was, by those who knew what foreign manners were, much foolish
aping of the same. English visitors noted Brother Jonathan's drawl in
talking, his phlegmatic temperament, keen eye, and blistering
inquisitiveness. Jonathan was a rover and a trader, everywhere at home,
everywhere bent upon the main chance. He ate too rapidly, chewed and
smoked tobacco, and spat indecently. He drank too much. During the first
quarter of the century nearly everyone used liquor, and drunkenness was
shamefully common. Every public entertainment, even if religious, set
out provision of free punch. At hotels, brandy was placed upon the
table, free as water to all. The smaller sects often held preaching
services in bar-rooms for lack of better accommodations. On such
occasions the preacher was not infrequently observed, without affront to
anyone, to refresh himself from behind the bar just before announcing
his text.
In 1824 commenced in Boston a temperance movement which accomplished in
this matter the most happy reform. It swept New England, passing thence
to all the other parts of the Union. By the end of 1829 over a thousand
temperance societies were in existence. The distilling and importation
of spirits fell off immensely. It became fashionable not to drink, and
little by little drinking came to be stigmatized as immoral.
By the time of which we now speak, the old habit of expressing
solicitude for the fate of the Union had passed away. Whig like
Democrat--so different from old Federalist-swore by "the people." Every
American believed in America. Travelling abroad, the man from this
country was wont to assume, and if opposed to contend, ill-manneredly
sometimes, that its institutions were far the best in the world. No one
wished a change. The unparalleled prosperity of all contributed to this
satisfaction. Cities and towns came up in a day. Public improvements
were to be seen making in every direction. There was no idle aristocracy
on the one hand, no beggars on the other. Self-respect was universal.
The people held the power. If men attained great wealth, as not a few
did, they usually did not waste it but invested it. Business enterprise
was intense and common. Character entered into credit as an element
along with financial resources. People did not crowd into cities, but
loved and built up the country rather. Laws and penalties were become
more mild. In 1837 a man was flogged at the whipping-post in Providence,
R. I., for horse-stealing, perhaps the last case of the kind in the
country. Prisons were now made clean and healthy, and the idea of
reforming the criminal instead of taking vengeance upon him was
spreading. Reformatories for children had been opened in New York,
Boston, and Philadelphia. There were institutions for homeless children,
for the sick poor, for the insane, and for other unfortunate classes.
By this time the Methodists and Baptists had become extremely strong in
numbers. In 1833 the Massachusetts constitution was altered, abolishing
obligatory contributions for the support of the ministry of the standing
order. Connecticut had made the same change fifteen years before, in its
constitution of 1818. In many localities the newer denominations,
hitherto sects, were more influential than the old one, and in this
abolition of ecclesiastical taxes they had with them Jews, atheists,
deists, agnostics, and heathen.
About 1825 began a period of peculiar religious enthusiasm. Missions to
the heathen were instituted. Revivals were numerous and often shook
whole neighborhoods for weeks and months. About this date Millerism
began to make converts. William Miller, from whom it took its name,
preached far and wide that the world would be destroyed in 1843,
securing multitudes of disciples, who clung to his general belief even
after his prophecy as to the specific date for the final catastrophe was
seen to have failed. Mormonism was also founded, in 1830, and the Book
of Mormon published by Joseph Smith. A church of this order, organized
this year at Manchester, N. Y., removed the next to Kirtland, O., and
thence to Independence, Mo. Driven from here by mob violence, they built
the town of Nauvoo, Ill. Meeting in this place too with what they
regarded persecution, several of their members being prosecuted for
polygamy, they were obliged to migrate to Salt Lake City, where,
however, they were not fully settled until 1848.
As part of the same general stir we may perhaps register the
anti-masonic movement. One William Morgan, a Mason residing in Western
New York, was reported about to expose in a publication the secrets of
that order. The Masons were desirous of preventing this and made several
forcible efforts to that end. Morgan was soon missing, and the exciting
assumption was almost universally made that the Masons had taken him
off. There was much evidence of this; but conviction was found
impossible because, as was alleged, judges, juries, and witnesses were
nearly all Masons. An intense and widespread feeling was developed that
Masonry held itself superior to the laws, was therefore a foe to the
Government and must be destroyed. The Anti-Masons became a mighty
political party. Masons were driven from office. In 1832 anti-masonic
nominations were made for President and Vice-President, which had much
to do with the small vote of Clay in that year. It was this party that
brought to the front politically William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore,
and Thurlow Weed.
[Illustration: Portrait.]
Thurlow Weed. From an unpublished Photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861.
In the possession of Thurlow Weed Barnes.
In 1833 Massachusetts, New York, and Pennsylvania passed laws
suppressing lotteries, but the gambling mania seemed to transform itself
into a craze for banks. In many parts this was such that actual riots
took place when subscriptions to the stock of banks were opened, the
earliest comers subscribing the whole with the purpose of selling to
others at an advance. To make a bank was thought the great panacea for
every ill that could befall. In this we see that the American people,
bright as they were, could be duped.
Less wonder, then, at the success of the Moon Hoax, perpetrated in 1835.
It was generally known that Sir John Herschel had gone to the Cape of
Good Hope to erect an observatory. One day the New York Sun came out
with what purported to be part of a supplement to the Edinburgh Journal
of Science, giving an account of Herschel's remarkable discoveries. The
moon, so the bogus relation ran, had been found to be inhabited by human
beings with wings. Herschel had seen flocks of them flying about. Their
houses were triangular in form. The telescope had also revealed beavers
in the moon, exhibiting most remarkable intelligence. Pictures of some
of these and of moon scenery accompanied the article. The fraud was so
clever as to deceive learned and unlearned alike. The sham story was
continued through several issues of the Sun, and gave the paper an
enormous sale. As it arrived in the different places, crowds scrambled
for it, nor would those who failed to secure copies disperse until some
one more fortunate had read to them all that the paper said upon the
subject. Several colleges sent professorial deputations to the Sun
office to see the article, and particularly the appendices, which, it
was alleged, had been kept back. Richard Adams Locke was the author of
this ingenious deception, which was not exploded until the arrival of
authentic intelligence from Edinburgh.
Party spirit sometimes ran terribly high. A New York City election in
1834 was the occasion of a riot between men of the two parties,
disturbances continuing several days. Political meetings were broken up,
and the militia had to be called out to enforce order. Citizens armed
themselves, fearing attacks upon banks and business houses. When it was
found that the Whigs were triumphant in the city, deafening salutes were
fired. Philadelphia Whigs celebrated this victory with a grand barbecue,
attended, it was estimated, by fifty thousand people. The death of
Harrison was malignantly ascribed to overeating in Washington, after his
long experience with insufficient diet in the West. Whigs exulted over
Jackson's cabinet difficulties. Jackson's "Kitchen Cabinet," the power
behind the throne, gave umbrage to his official advisers. Duff Green,
editor of the United States Telegraph, the President's "organ," was one
member; Isaac Hill, of New Hampshire, and Amos Kendall, first of
Massachusetts, then of Kentucky, were others, these three the most
influential. All had long worked, written, and cheered for Old Hickory.
In return he gave them good places at Washington, and now they enjoyed
dropping in at the White House to take a smoke with the grizzly hero and
help him curse the opposition as foes of "the people."
Major Eaton, Old Hickory's first Secretary of War, had married a
beautiful widow, maiden name Peggy O'Neil, of common birth, and much
gossipped about. The female members of other cabinet families refused to
associate with her, the Vice-President's wife leading. Jackson took up
Mrs. Eaton's cause with all knightly zeal. He berated her traducers and
persecutors in long and fierce personal letters. His niece and
housekeeper, Mrs. Donelson, one of the anti-Eatonites, he turned out of
the White House, with her husband, his private secretary. The breach was
serious anyway, and might have been far more so but for the healing
offices of Van Buren, who used all his courtliness and power of place to
help the President bring about the social recognition of Mrs. Eaton. He
called upon her, made parties in her honor, and secured her entree to
the families of the greatest foreign ministers. Mrs. Eaton triumphed,
but the scandal would not down.
When Jackson wrote his foreign message upon the French spoliation
claims, his cabinet were aghast and begged him to soften its tone. Upon
his refusal, it is said, they stole to the printing-office and did it
themselves. But the proofs came back for Jackson's perusal. The lad who
brought them was the late Mr. J. S. Ham, of Providence, R. I. He used to
say that he had never known what profane swearing was till he listened
to General Jackson's comments as those proofs were read.
Jackson and Quincy Adams were personal as well as political foes. When
the President visited Boston, Harvard College bestowed on him the degree
of Doctor of Laws. Adams, one of the overseers, opposed this with all
his might. As "an affectionate child of our Alma Mater, he would not be
present to witness her disgrace in conferring her highest literary
honors upon a barbarian." Subsequently he would refer, with a sneer, to
"Dr. Andrew Jackson." The President's illness at Boston Adams declared
"four-fifths trickery" and the rest mere fatigue. He was like John
Randolph, said Adams, who for forty years was always dying. "He is now
alternately giving out his chronic diarrhoea and making Warren bleed him
for a pleurisy, and posting to Cambridge for a doctorate of laws,
mounting the monument of Bunker's Hill to hear a fulsome address and
receive two cannon-balls from Edward Everett."
To be sure, manifestations of a contrary spirit between the political
parties were not wanting. The entire nation mourned for Madison after
his death in 1836, as it had on the decease of Jefferson and John Adams
both on the same day, July 4, 1826.
A note or two upon costume may not uninterestingly close this chapter.
Enormous bonnets were fashionable about 1830. Ladies also wore Leghorn
hats, with very broad brims rolled up behind, tricked out profusely with
ribbons and artificial flowers. Dress-waists were short and high. Skirts
were short, too, hardly reaching the ankles. Sleeves were of the
leg-of-mutton fashion, very full above the elbows but tightening toward
the wrist. Gentlemen still dressed for the street not so differently
from the revolutionary style. Walking-coats were of broadcloth, blue,
brown, or green, to suit the taste, with gilt buttons. Bottle-green was
a very stylish color for evening coats. Blue and the gilt buttons for
street wear were, however, beginning to be discarded, Daniel Webster
being one of the last to walk abroad in them. The buff waistcoat, white
cambric cravat, and ruffled shirt still held their own. Collars for full
dress were worn high, covering half the cheek, a fashion which persisted
in parts of the country till 1850 or later.
CHAPTER VIII.
INDUSTRIAL ADVANCE BY 1840
[1840]
During the War of 1812 we had in England an industrial spy, whose
campaign there has perhaps accomplished more for the country than all
our armies did. It was Francis C. Lowell, of Boston. Great Britain was
just introducing the power loom. The secret of structure was guarded
with all vigilance, yet Lowell, passing from cotton factory to cotton
factory with Yankee eyes, ears, and wit, came home in 1814, believing,
with good reason, as it proved, that he could set up one of the machines
on American soil. Broad Street in Boston was the scene of his initial
experiments, but the factory to the building of which they led was at
Waltham. It was owned by a company, one of whose members was Nathan
Appleton. Water furnished the motive power. By the autumn of 1814 Lowell
had perfected his looms and placed them in the factory. Spinning
machinery was also built, mounting seventeen hundred spindles. English
cotton-workers did not as yet spin and weave under the same roof, so
that the Lowell Mill at Waltham may, with great probability, be
pronounced the first in the world to carry cloth manufacture
harmoniously through all its several successive steps from the raw stuff
to the finished ware.
From this earliest establishment of the power-loom here, the
cotton-cloth business strode rapidly forward. Fall River, Holyoke,
Lawrence, Lowell, and scores of other thriving towns sprung into being.
Every year new mills were built. In 1831 there were 801; in 1840, 1,240;
in 1850, 1,074. Henceforth, through consolidation, the number of
factories decreased, but the number of spindles grew steadily larger.
This rise of great manufacturing concerns was facilitated by a new order
of corporation laws. There had been corporations in the country before
1830, as the Waltham case shows; but the system had had little
evolution, as incorporation had in each case to proceed from a special
legislative act. In 1837 Connecticut passed a statute making this
unnecessary and enabling a group of persons to become a corporation on
complying with certain simple requirements. New York placed a similar
provision in its constitution of 1846. The Dartmouth College decision of
the United States Supreme Court in 1819, interpreting an act of
incorporation as a contract, which, by the Constitution, no State can
violate, still further humored and aided the corporation system.
[Illustration: Train schedule.]
From an Old Time-table. (Furnished by the ABC Pathfinder Railway Guide.)
In 1816 the streets of Baltimore were lighted with gas. A gas-light
company was incorporated in New York in 1823. Not till 1836, however,
did the Philadelphia streets have gas lights. The first savings-banks
were established in Philadelphia and Boston in 1816. Baltimore had one
two years later. Portable fire-proof safes were used in 1820. The Lehigh
coal trade flourished this year, and also the manufacture of iron with
coal. The whale fishery, too, was now beginning. The first factory in
Lowell started in 1821. In 1822 there was a copper rolling mill in
Baltimore, the only one then in America, and Paterson, N. J., began the
manufacture of cotton duck. Patent leather was made in the United States
by 1819. In 1824 Amesbury, Mass., had a water-power manufactory of
flannel. The next year the practice of homoeopathy began in America, and
matches of a rude sort were displacing the old tinder-box. The next
year after this Hartford produced axes and other edged tools.
Lithography, of which there had been specimens so early as 1818, was a
Boston business in 1827. Pittsburgh manufactured damask table linen in
1828. The same year saw paper made from straw, and planing machinery in
operation. The insuring of lives began in this country in 1812.
[Illustration: Two rail cars that look like ordinary wagons with iron
wheels. One is pulled by a horse, the other by a primitive steam engine.]
Trial between Peter Cooper's Locomotive "Tom Thumb" and one of Stockton's
and Stokes' Horse Cars. From "History of the First Locomotive in
America."
The first figured muslin woven by the power-loom in America, and perhaps
in the world, was produced at Central Falls, R. I., in 1829. Calico
printing began at Lowell the same year, also the manufacture of cutlery
at Worcester, of sewing-silk at Mansfield, Conn., of galvanized iron in
New York City. With the new decade chloroform was invented, in 1831,
being first used as a medicine, not as an anaesthetic. Reaping machines
were on trial the same year, and three years later machine-made wood
screws were turned out at Providence. About the same time, 1832, pins
were made by machinery, hosiery was woven by a power-loom process, and
Colt perfected his revolver. In 1837 brass clocks were put upon the
American market, and by 1840 extensively exported. Also in 1837 Nashua
was making machinists' tools. By 1839 the manufacture of iron with hard
coal was a pronounced success. In 1840 daguerreotypes began to appear.
Steam fire-engines were seen the next year.
[Illustration: Peter Cooper's Locomotive, 1829.]
So early as 1816 the New York and Philadelphia stages made the distance
from city to city between sun and sun. The National Road from Cumberland
was finished to Wheeling in 1820, having been fourteen years in
construction and costing $17,000,000. It was subsequently extended
westward across Ohio and Indiana. It was thirty-five feet wide,
thoroughly macadamized, and had no grade of above five degrees. Over
parts of this road no less than 150 six-horse teams passed daily,
besides four or five four-horse mail and passenger coaches. In Jackson's
time, when for some months there was talk of war with France and extra
measures were thought proper for assuring the loyalty of Louisiana,
swift mail connections were made with the Mississippi by the National
Road. Its entire length was laid out into sections of sixty-three miles
apiece, each with three boys and nine horses, only six hours and
eighteen minutes being allowed for traversing a section, viz., a rate of
about ten miles an hour. Great men and even presidents travelled by the
public coaches of this road, though many of them used their own
carriages. James K. Polk often made the journey from Nashville to
Washington in his private carriage. Keeping down the Cumberland River to
the Ohio, and up this to Wheeling, he would strike into the National
Road eastward to Cumberland, Md. He came thus so late as 1845, to be
inaugurated as President; only at this time he used the new railway from
Cumberland to the Relay House, where he changed to the other new railway
which had already joined Baltimore with Washington.
[Illustration: One side is an image of a rail car, the other a signature.]
Obverse and Reverse of a Ticket used in 1838 on the New York & Harlem
Railroad.
The first omnibus made its appearance in New York in 1830, the name
itself originating from the word painted upon this vehicle. The first
street railway was laid two years later. The era of the stage coach was
at this time beginning to end, that of canals and railroads opening. Yet
in the remoter sections of the country the old coach was destined to
hold its place for decades still. Where roads were fair it would not
uncommonly make one hundred miles between early morning and late
evening, as between Boston and Springfield, Springfield and Albany. So
soon as available the canal packet was a much more easy and elegant
means of travel. The Erie Canal was begun in 1817, finished to Rochester
in 1823, the first boat arriving October 8th. The year 1825 carried it
to Buffalo. The Blackstone Canal, between Worcester and Providence, was
opened its whole length in 1828; the next year many others, as the
Chesapeake and Delaware, the Cumberland and Oxford in Maine, the
Farmington in Connecticut, the Oswego, connecting the Erie Canal with
Lake Ontario, also the Delaware and Hudson, one hundred and eight miles
long, from Honesdale, Pa., to Hudson River. The Welland Canal was
completed in 1830.
[Illustration: Two horses pulling a rail car.]
Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, 1830.
Salt-water transportation had meantime been much facilitated by the use
of steam. It had been thought a great achievement when, in 1817, the
Black Ball line of packet ships between New York and Liverpool was
regularly established, consisting of four vessels of from four hundred
to five hundred tons apiece. But two years later a steamship crossed the
Atlantic to Liverpool from Savannah. It took her twenty-five
days--longer than the time in which the distance often used to be
accomplished under sail. In 1822 there was a regular steamboat between
Norfolk and New York, though no steamboat was owned in Boston till 1828.
The Atlantic was first crossed exclusively by steam-power in 1838, and
the first successful propeller used in 1839. The last-named year also
witnessed the beginning of a permanent express line between Boston and
New York, by the Stonington route. The next year, the Adams Express
Company was founded, doing its first business between these two cities
over the Springfield route, in competition with that by the Stonington.
[Illustration: Old Boston & Worcester Railway Ticket (about 1837).]
But all these improvements were soon to be overshadowed by the work of
the railway and locomotive. The first road of rails in America was in
the Lehigh coal district of Pennsylvania. Its date is uncertain, but not
later than 1825. In 1826, October 7th, the second began operation, at
Quincy, Mass., transporting granite from the quarries to tide-water,
about three miles. This experiment attracted great attention, showing
how much heavier loads could be transported over rails than upon common
roads, and with how much greater ease and less expense ordinary weights
could be carried. The same had been demonstrated in England before.
Locomotives were not yet used in either country, but only horse-power.
The conviction spread rapidly that not only highway transportation but
even that by canals would soon be, for all large burdens, either quite
superseded or of secondary importance. In 1827 the Maryland Legislature
chartered a railroad from Baltimore to Wheeling. The projectors, though
regarding it a bold act, promised an average rate between the two cities
of at least four miles per hour. Subscriptions were offered for more
than twice the amount of the stock. The Massachusetts Legislature the
same year appointed commissioners to look out a railway route between
Boston and Hudson River. Also in this year a railway was completed at
Mauch Chunk, Pa., for transporting coal to the landing on the Lehigh.
The descent was by gravity, mules being used to haul back the cars.
In most country parts, the new railway projects encountered great
hostility. Engineers were not infrequently clubbed from the fields as
they sought to survey. Learned articles appeared in the papers arguing
against the need of railways and exhibiting the perils attending them.
When steam came to be used, these scruples were re-enforced by the
alleged danger that the new system of travel would do away with the
market for oats and for horses, and that stage-drivers would seek wages
in vain.
The first trip by a locomotive was in 1828, over the Carbondale and
Honesdale route in Pennsylvania. The engine was of English make, and run
by Mr. Horatio Allen, who had had it built. This was a year before the
first steam railroad was opened in England. July 4, 1828, construction
upon the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad was begun. It, like the other early
roads, was built of stone cross-ties, with wooden rails topped with
heavy straps of iron. Such ties were soon replaced by wooden ones, as
less likely to be split by frost, but the wooden rail with its iron
strap might be seen on branch lines, for instance, between Monocacy
Bridge and Frederick City, Md., so late as the Civil War.
[Illustration: Horizontal and verical view of a articulated locaomotive.]
The "South Carolina," 1831, and plan of its running gear.
The first railroad for passengers in this country went into operation
between Charleston and Hamburg, S. C., in 1830. The locomotive had been
gotten up in New York, the first of American make. It had four wheels
and an upright boiler. This year the railroad between Albany and
Schenectady was begun, and fourteen miles of the Baltimore & Ohio opened
for use. In 1831 Philadelphia was joined to Pittsburgh by a line of
communication consisting of a railway to Columbia, a canal thence to
Hollidaysburg, another railway thence over the Alleghanies to Johnstown,
and then on by canal. The railway over the mountains consisted of
inclined planes mounted by the use of stationary engines. It is
interesting to notice the view which universally prevailed at first,
that the locomotive could not climb grades, and that where this was
necessary stationary engines would have to be used. Not till 1836 was it
demonstrated that locomotives could climb. Up to the same date, also,
locomotives had burned wood, but this was now found inferior to coal,
and began to be given up except where it was much the cheaper fuel.
[Illustration: Locomotive, tender and two cars.]
Boston & Worcester Railroad, 1835.
From 1832 the railway system grew marvellously. The year 1833 saw
completed the South Carolina Railroad between Charleston and the
Savannah River, one hundred and thirty-six miles. This was the first
railway line in this country to carry the mails, and the longest
continuous one then in the world. Two years later Boston was connected
by railway with Providence, with Lowell, and with Worcester, Baltimore
with Washington, and the New York & Erie commenced. In 1839 Worcester
was joined to Springfield in the same manner, and in 1841 a passenger
could travel by rail from Boston to Rochester, changing cars, however,
at least ten times.
PERIOD III.
THE YEARS OF SLAVERY CONTROVERSY 1840-1860
CHAPTER I.
SLAVERY AFTER THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
[1820]
Slavery would most likely never have imperilled the life of this nation
had it not been for the colossal industrial revolution sketched above.
Cotton had been grown here since, 1621, and some exportation of it is
said to have occurred in 1747. Till nearly 1800 very little had gone
from the United States to England, for by the old process a slave could
clean but five or six pounds a day. In 1784, an American ship which
brought eight bags to Liverpool was seized, on the ground that so much
could not have been the produce of the United States. Jay's treaty, as
first drawn, consented that no cotton should be exported from America.
It changed the very history of the country when, in 1793, Eli Whitney
invented the saw-gin, by which a slave could clean 1,000 pounds of
cotton per day. Slavery at once ceased to be a passive, innocuous
institution, promising soon to die out, and became a means of gain, to
be upheld and extended in all possible ways. The cotton export, but
189,316 pounds in 1791, and a third less in 1792, rose to 487,600 pounds
in 1793, to 1,610,760 pounds in 1794, to 6,276,300 pounds in 1795, and
to 38,118,041 pounds in 1804. Within five years after Whitney's
invention, cotton displaced indigo as the great southern staple, and the
slave States had become the cotton-field of the world. In 1869 the
export was nearly 1,400,000,000 pounds, worth about $161,500,000.
[Footnote: Johnson, in Lalor's Cyclopaedia, Art. "Slavery."]
So profitable was slavery to vast numbers of individuals because of this
its new status, that men would not notice how, after all, it militated
against the nation's supreme interests. It polluted social relations in
obvious ways, setting at naught among slaves family ties and the behests
of virtue, influences that reacted terribly upon the whites. The entire
government of slaves had a brutalizing tendency, more pronounced as time
passed. "Plantation manners" were cultivated, which, displaying
themselves in Congress and elsewhere, in all discussions and measures
relating to the execrable institution, made the North believe that the
South was drifting toward barbarism. This was an exaggeration, yet
everyone knew that schools in the South were rare and poor, and thought
and speech little free as compared with the same in the North. Political
power, like the slaves, was in the hands of a few great barons, totally
merciless toward even southerners who differed from them. It is of course
not meant that virtue, kindliness, intelligence, and fair-mindedness
were ever wanting in that section, but they flourished in spite of the
slave-system.
Economically slavery was an equal evil, taking as was the superficial
evidence to the contrary. No cruelty could make the slave work like a
free man, while his power to consume was enormous. Infants, aged, and
weak had to be supported by the owner. Even the best slaves were
improvident. Everywhere slave labor tended to banish free. Upon slave
soil scarcely an immigrant could be led to set foot. Poor whites grew
steadily poorer, their lot often more wretched than that of slaves.
Invention, care, forethought were as good as unknown among them. Slave
labor proved incompetent even for agriculture, impoverishing the richest
soil in comparatively few years, whence the perpetual impulse of the
slave-owners to acquire new territory. The dishonesty of blacks and the
danger of slave insurrections made property insecure, at the same time
that the system diminished in every community the number of its natural
defenders. The result was that the South, the superior of the North in
natural resources, was, by 1800, rapidly becoming the inferior in every
single element of prosperity.
[1831]
One of these insurrections was the event of 1831 in Virginia,
originating near the southern border. Four slaves in alliance with three
whites commenced it by killing several families and pressing all the
slaves they could find into their service, until the force was nearly
two hundred. They spread desolation everywhere. Fifty-five white persons
were murdered before the insurrection was in hand. Virginia and North
Carolina called out troops, and at last all the insurgents were captured
or killed. The leader was a black named Nat Turner, who believed himself
called of God to give his people freedom. He had heard voices in the air
and seen signs on the sky, which, with many other portents, he
interpreted as proofs of his divine commission. When all was over Turner
escaped to the woods, dug a hole under some fence-rails and lived there
for six weeks, coming out only at midnight for food. Driven thence by
discovery, he still managed to hide here and there about the plantations
in spite of a whole country of armed men in search of him, until at last
he was accidentally confronted in the bush by a white man with levelled
rifle. He was hanged, November 11th, and sixteen others later. His wife
was tortured for evidence, but in vain. Twelve negroes were transported.
Very many were, without trial, punished in inhuman ways, the heads of
some impaled along the highway as a warning. Partly in consequence of
this horrible affair, originated a stout movement for the abolition of
slavery in Virginia. This was favored by many of the ablest men in the
Old Dominion, but they were overruled.
[Illustration: Turner, holding a short sword and another man pointing a
rifle at him.]
The Discovery of Nat Turner.
Danger from the blacks necessitated the most rigid laws concerning them.
Time had been when it was thought not dangerous to teach slaves to read.
In 1742 Commissary Garden, of the English Society for Propagating the
Gospel, founded a negro school in Charleston, where slaves were taught
by slave teachers, these last being the society's property. Honest Elias
Neale, the society's catechist in New York, engaged in the same work
there, and afterward catechists were so employed in Philadelphia. That
organization did much to stir up the planters to teach their slaves the
rudiments of Christianity. [Footnote: Eggleston in Century, May, 1888.]
Now, all this was changed. The strictest laws were made to keep every
slave in the most abject ignorance, to prevent their congregating, and
to make it impossible for abolitionists or abolitionist literature or
influence to get at them.
[1816]
Inconvenient and perilous as slavery was, southern devotion to it for
many reasons strengthened rather than weakened. The masses did not
perceive the ruin the system was working, which, moreover, consisted
with great profits to vast numbers of influential men and to many
localities. Border States little by little gave up the hope of becoming
free, the old anti-slavery convictions of their best men faltering, and
the practical problem of emancipation, really difficult, being too
easily decided insoluble. More significant, owing to a variety of
circumstances, the abolition spirit itself greatly subsided early in the
present century. Completion of the emancipation process in the North was
assured by the action of New York in 1817, proclaiming a total end to
slavery there from July 4, 1827. The view that each State was absolute
sovereign over slavery within its own borders, responsibility for it and
its abuses there ending with the State's own citizens, was now
universally accepted. Success in securing the act of 1807, making the
slave trade illegal from January 1, 1808, and affixing to it heavy
penalties, lulled multitudes to sleep. This act, however, had effect
only gradually, and its beneficence was greatly lessened in that it left
confiscated negroes to the operation of the local law.
Such quietude was furthered through the formation of the American
Colonization Society in 1816, by easy philanthropists and statesmen,
North as well as South, who swore by the Constitution as admitting no
fundamental amendment, admired its three great compromises, loved all
brethren of the Union except agitators, and deprecated slavery and the
black race about equally; its mission negro deportation, but its actual
efforts confined to the dumping of free blacks, reprobates, and
castaways in some remote corner of the universe, for the convenience of
slave-holders themselves. [Footnote: 3 Schouler's United States, 198.]
[1839]
Meantime much was occurring to harden northern hostility to slavery into
resolute hatred, a fire which might smoulder long but could not die out.
The fugitive slave law for the rendition of runaways found in free
States operated cruelly at best, and was continually abused to kidnap
free blacks. The owner or his attorney or agent could seize a slave
anywhere on the soil of freedom, bring him before the magistrate of the
county, city, or town corporate in which the arrest was made, and prove
his ownership by testimony or by affidavit; and the certificate of such
magistrate that this had been done was a sufficient warrant for the
return of the poor wretch into bondage. Obstruction, rescue, or aid
toward escape was fined in the sum of five hundred dollars. This is the
pith of the fugitive slave act of 1793. It might have been far more
mischievous but for the interpretation put upon it in the celebrated
case of Prigg versus Pennsylvania.
Mr. Prigg was the agent of a Maryland slave-owner. He had in 1839
pursued a slave woman into Pennsylvania, and when refused her surrender
by the local magistrate carried her away by force. He was indicted in
Pennsylvania for kidnapping, an amicable lawsuit made up, and an appeal
taken to the United States Supreme Court. Here, in an opinion prepared
by Justice Story, the Pennsylvania statute under which the magistrate
had acted, providing a mode for the return of fugitives by state
authorities, was declared unconstitutional on the ground that only
Congress could legislate on the subject; but it was added that while a
free State had no right in any way to block the capture of a runaway, as
for example by ordering a jury trial to determine whether a seized
person had really been a slave, so as to protect free persons of dark
complexion, yet States might forbid their officers to aid in the
recovery of slaves. As the act of 1793 did not name any United States
officials for this service it became nearly inoperative. Spite of this
terrible construction of the Constitution, which Chief Justice Taney
thought should have included an assertion of a State's duty by
legislation to aid rendition, many northern States passed personal
liberty laws, besetting the capture of slaves with all possible
difficulties thought compatible with the Constitution. The South
denounced all such laws whatever as unconstitutional, and perhaps some
of them were.
[1835]
Constitutional or not, they were needed. There were regular expeditions
to carry off free colored persons from the coasts of New York and New
Jersey, many of them successful. The foreign slave-trade, with its
ineffable atrocities, proved defiant of law and preternaturally
tenacious of life. A lucrative but barbarous domestic trade had sprung
up between the Atlantic States, Virginia and North Carolina especially,
and those on the Gulf, for the supply of the southern market. Families
were torn apart, gangs of the poor creatures driven thousands of miles
in shackles or carried coastwise in the over-filled holds of vessels, to
live or die--little matter which--under unknown skies and strange,
heartless masters.
The slave codes of the southern States grew severer every year, as did
legislation against free colored people. Laws were passed rendering
emancipation more difficult and less a blessing when obtained. The
Mississippi and Alabama constitutions, 1817 and 1819 respectively, and
all those in the South arising later, were shaped so as to place general
emancipation beyond the power even of Legislatures. Congress was even
thus early--so it seemed at the North--all too subservient to the
slave-holders, partly through the operation of the three-fifths rule,
partly from fear that opposition would bring disunion, partly in that
ambitious legislators were eager for southern votes. As to the Senate,
the South had taken care, Vermont, Kentucky and Tennessee having evened
the score, all before 1800, to allow no new northern State to be
admitted unless matched by a southern. In addition to all this, the
North had a vast trade with the South, and northern capitalists held to
an enormous amount mortgages on southern property of all sorts, so that
large and influential classes North had a pecuniary interest in
maintaining at the South both good nature and business prosperity.