TRANSFER OF PARTY POLICIES
In predicting defeat as a result of the war measures, Randolph
overlooked the facts of history. No party has ever failed to retain
the affection of the people when making preparations for war; and the
corollary is that no party has ever opposed war successfully. Reasons
for this fact were advanced in describing the war scare of 1798. The
Federalists, losing State after State during Jefferson's administration,
had been temporarily revived in the New England opposition to his
embargo. But the accusation of being unpatriotic, of placing commerce
above love of country, and the suspicion of holding intercourse with
the commercial enemy had driven many from their ranks. John Quincy
Adams, the hope of his father's age, was not the only apostate of the
day. A member from Kentucky taunted the remnant of Federalists in the
House during the war debates with remembrance of New England patriotism.
Said he,
"During embargo days, when our domestic enemies were encouraged by a
proclamation under authority of the King of England, these minions of
royalty, concentrating in the east, talked of the violations of the laws
as virtue; they demoralized the community by raising the floodgates of
civil disorder; they gave absolution to felons and invited the
commission of crime by the omission of duty."
From time to time instances were not wanting to prove that the remnant
of the Federalists was being forced by opposing the Administration
into the former attitude of the Republicans. The most frequently cited
case is that of Josiah Quincy, a Massachusetts member of the House of
Representatives, who became so alarmed over the effect which the
admission of the State of Louisiana would have on the political balance
of the sections that he declared such action virtually dissolved the
Union and freed the States from their moral obligations. Regardless
of the past theories of his party, he declared the Union a partnership
of States into which no new member could be admitted from territory
outside the original domain. He declared the whole question was "whether
the proprietors of the good old United States should manage their own
affairs in their own way, or whether they and their constitution and
their political rights should be trampled under foot by foreigners,
introduced through a breach in the Constitution." The Federal opposition
to the proposed War of 1812 has been described. It was a result of the
"low, grovelling parsimony of the counting-room," as Clay denounced it.
The reversal of party position on both sides was due not to choice,
but to interchange of situation. The very act of conducting the
government on the one hand and of opposing it on the other brought
this exchange. Jefferson, the former advocate of peace, from his
retirement now urged a vigorous policy which involved retaliation on
England, if she burned American cities, by hiring discontented workmen
in London to burn British buildings, by conquering Canada, and, after
dictating terms of peace with Britain, by making war upon Napoleon.
The reversal of party brought consequent exchange of policy. Instead
of Federal encroachment on individual rights, the Republicans must now
become aggressors, and the Federalists protestants. Instead of the
protests coming from Virginia and Kentucky they now emanated from the
New England States. Instead of regarding the State Legislatures as the
ultimate protectors of the States, the resistants now went beyond that
agency and adopted the very expedient so frequently urged by Jefferson,
and the one which Madison testified that he had contemplated in 1799--a
convention of delegates from the States.
Some parts of the resolutions adopted by this convention of twenty-seven
delegates from the five New England States which met at Hartford,
Connecticut, in December, 1814, might easily be supposed to have been
voiced by Virginia and Kentucky fifteen years before, so completely
had parties and sections exchanged.
"It is as much a duty of the state authorities to watch over the rights
_reserved_, as of the United States to exercise the powers which
are _delegated_" was the voice of southern individualism speaking
through a New England convention. "In cases of deliberate, dangerous,
and palpable infractions of the Constitution, affecting the sovereignty
of a state and the liberties of the people, it is not only the right,
but the duty of such a state to interpose its authority for their
protection."
Thus was the doctrine of "interposition" transferred from South to
North, equalising sections, and conducing to the ultimate making of
the nation.
But the means to be employed were not the same in each case. Resistance
in the Union to unconstitutional acts had been the Republican plan of
1798; withdrawal from a Union, whose government had been grossly and
corruptly administered ever since the first twelve years of prosperity
and happiness, was the Federalist thought of 1814. "Even at this late
hour," said the Hartford Convention report, "let government leave to
New England the remnant of her resources and she is ready and able to
defend her territory." The peaceful dissolution of the Union and the
substitution of "a new form of confederacy among those states which
shall intend to maintain a federal relation to each other" was declared
to be a possibility. A severance of the Union by one or more States
withdrawing against the will of the rest was justified only in case
of absolute necessity. The immediate remedy was to perfect "an
arrangement which may at once be consistent with the honor and interest
of the national government and the security of the states." By the
readjustment which they proposed to make between the States and the
Union, the latter would practically withdraw from the Eastern States
so far as revenue and defence, the two highest attributes of
sovereignty, were concerned.
Ultimately the convention hoped for certain amendments to the
Constitution, Jefferson's remedy again, "to strengthen and if possible
to perpetuate the union of the states," and, incidentally, to curb the
national strength of their opponents. To this end, the two-fifths negro
representation which the slave States had been given in the Constitution
was to be abolished; the extension of Southern power by creating more
States from the Louisiana Purchase was to be curbed by requiring a
two-thirds vote in each House for the admission of a new State into
the Union; Northern commerce was to be protected from future
annihilation by limiting embargoes to sixty days; a two-thirds vote
of both Houses was to be required to declare war or non-intercourse
with a nation; the pro-French element in national politics was to be
curbed by forbidding naturalised persons to hold national office;
future eight-year Jeffersons and Madisons were to be prevented, and
the Virginia presidential trust broken by making a President ineligible
for a second term, and by prohibiting two consecutive Presidents to
be elected from the same State. A complete transition of the fear of
presidential usurpation had been wrought by the burden of war falling
more heavily on one section than the other.
[Illustration: DISLOYALTY OF NEW ENGLAND DURING THE WAR OF 1812. This
cartoon represents Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island
contemplating jumping into the arms of John Bull, while Maine prays
below for guidance. The King says "Oh 'tis my Yankee boys, jump in,
my fine fellows, plenty molasses and codfish, plenty of goods to
smuggle, honours, titles, and nobility into the bargain." Massachusetts,
nearest the King, says "What a dangerous leap! but we must jump, Brother
Conn." Connecticut, in the middle, says "I cannot, Brother Mass. Let
me pray and fast some little longer Little Rhode Island will jump the
first." Rhode Island says "Poor little I! What will become of me? This
leap is of a frightful size. I sink into despondency."]
National finances were seriously impaired by the war. The lending
section refused to support the Administration. Of the loan authorised
in 1814, less than one-half was taken and that at a discount of twenty
per cent. During the same year, the Government defaulted on the interest
due on the national debt. Moneyed men claimed that business had been
so impaired by the embargo and war as to prevent their coming to the
relief of the nation. Unfortunately, strict-construction theory had
cut off the bank which might otherwise have been a source of supply.
A glance at a table of statistics of the commerce and financial standing
of the United States during the embargo and war period will show the
effects of a maritime war and explain the causes of the complaints of
commercial New England. The following sums are in round numbers of
millions of dollars.
Exports Imports National Debt
1807........... 108........... 138........... 69
1808........... 22........... 56........... 65
1811........... 61........... 53........... 48
1812........... 38........... 77........... 77
1813........... 27........... 22........... 55
1814........... 16........... 12........... 81
1815........... 52........... 113........... 99
1816........... 81........... 147........... 127
Almost annihilated by the embargo of 1808 and the War of 1812-15, the
exports and imports, when relieved from such incumbrances, leaped to
figures which caused anger and rebellion when contemplated. The prospect
of wiping out the national debt was indefinitely postponed. Increased
burdens of national taxation brought as loud a protest from the
Federalists in 1814 as came from the Republicans in 1798.
Yet the chief grievance voiced by the Hartford Convention was neither
the loss of commerce nor increased national debt. A question had arisen
in the course of the war which brought out the old contention between
the right of the State and the nation, although with parties and
sections exactly reversed. Fear of the abuse of the military power in
the hands of the central authority, which prompted the framers of the
Constitution to limit all appropriation for the army to two years'
duration, had also persuaded them to restrict the national use of the
State militia to three emergencies, viz., to execute the national laws,
to suppress insurrection, and to repel invasion. Test had been made
of the first two uses in suppressing the excise rebellion. The War of
1812 brought out the third. The contemplated invasion of Canada was
the result of no one of these conditions. Objection to using the militia
in carrying on a foreign war had been raised frequently in Congress
during the debates on the war measures. A kindred dispute had arisen
over the right of the national authorities to appoint officers of the
State militia when called into national use. The old Revolutionary
State jealousies over this question seemed to have come to life again.
Among the Federalists, now grown to be sticklers for State rights, was
a representative in Congress from New York, who cried out in debate:
"If it shall come to that, that militia officers are appointed by the
President, I am a militia officer--I will never surrender the state's
rights--I would not be commanded by them--and I say, so help me God, if I
do. Militia were never intended for the United States, but for individual
states, to defend their states' rights."
In the twenty years of peace administration, this question of employing
the militia in a foreign war had never arisen. If the National Government
in 1812 had been ready for war, either in force or finance; if the war had
been favoured in the commercial States where the available wealth of the
country was accumulated; or if the administration had not been embarrassed
constantly by lack of soldiers and revenue, the resistance of New England
to the Federal attempts to control her militia, to recruit her young men,
and even to contemplate drafting her able-bodied citizens might never have
arisen. But if the test had not come, the governors of Massachusetts and
Connecticut would not have put themselves on record as resisting the call
of the President for their quota of militia to serve both inside and
outside the State, and the section would have missed committing itself to
the former ground of its opponent. The creation of a "Federal army" out of
the State militia was now criticised as violently in New England as it had
been in the Southern States during the suppression of the whiskey
insurrection a score of years before.
This refusal of the thickly populated Eastern States, which had been
largely the source of supply in the Revolutionary War, to furnish their
share of soldiery, threw the brunt of the Canadian expeditions upon
the south-western sections, and thus contributed to the Union in another
and less evident manner. The volunteers from those trans-Allegheny
regions would never forget the hardships of their journeys through the
roadless North-west. Frontier militiamen, who hewed their way through
pathless woods and subsisted on roots and berries because there were
no roads on which to bring supplies; officers, who guided their commands
to streams and found them too small in midsummer, when most needed,
to transport their troops; artificers, who built boats on the Great
Lakes and could not get armaments to them,--these men were unlikely
to allow constitutional objections to lie in the way of future
improvements in the Western Territories. They placed the blame for the
failure of the campaigns in those parts to lack of means of
communication. The freshly cut military roads were strewn with the
ruins of flour-barrels, cordage, and various equipment, abandoned in
transit. Fully two-thirds of the flour put down at Fort Meigs could
not be used. The flour on the Harrison campaign cost the Government
not less than eight dollars a barrel. Government commissaries claimed
to have been ruined in their contracts by lack of roadways. Only eight
hundred pack-horses survived of four thousand employed in the Detroit
campaign. The extra expense of one of the northern campaigns would have
built a good road to the inaccessible portion if the need could have been
foreseen. The experience in the war demanded immediate action for the
future public defence, regardless of party interpretation of powers.
Provision for necessary means of communication in the older portions might
safely be left to the States; but for the more recently settled regions,
especially the Territories, only the States united could provide highways
and waterways. The fact that the Union had charge of the Indians in the
Territories made the permission easier to grant. Also, during the war,
many military roads had been constructed, whose constitutionality no one
had time to question. During the intermissions of warfare, soldiers had
been employed in constructing military roads between various posts on the
frontier. John Randolph had several times aroused the wrath of the war-
hawks in Congress by suggesting that the volunteer troops be employed,
when not on campaigns, in building highways and digging canals. He thought
the land forces would make some return in this way for the vast sum to be
expended on them. After the close of hostilities, the regular troops
continued to be employed in such work, receiving extra pay. In various
parts of the United States one may still trace the old "military roads,"
many of them having been made into modern highways. As may be imagined,
they were of great aid in extending another function of national activity
--the postal system.
Waterways were as abundant in the western region during the War of
1812 as they were at any later time. That they were not more frequently
employed as means of transportation was due to the fact that nature,
in the process of time, had placed so many obstacles in them that they
were practically useless. Sand-bars, sunken logs, accumulated driftwood,
and hidden snags made water travel impossible except for light canoes.
During the summer season, when the campaigns were waged most vigorously,
many of the streams were dried up and valueless for transportation
purposes. But small imagination was required to see how man with proper
resources could dredge channels, remove obstacles, and construct dams
which would render these waterways useful during the larger part of
the year. Boats propelled by poles might be guided up the tedious
channels, but the use of steam was impossible until improvements had
been made.
Fulton and Livingston made a success of steam navigation on the majestic
Hudson in 1807. Only five years later, hardy spirits were not wanting
at Pittsburg to equip a vessel with steam and venture down the tortuous
Ohio to New Orleans. But impediments to navigation made such attempts
simply experiments. Three years after the close of the war, the _Walk
in the Water_ was launched on Lake Erie near Buffalo and eventually
reached distant Mackinaw. The ship-building industry had been established
on Lake Erie during the war and needed only the construction of harbours
and placing of lights to open a vast inland commerce.
The strict constructionists were destined to spend many unpleasant
hours over this question of inland commerce. That the Union had control
of ocean or foreign commerce, no one denied. The ocean is common to
all. But fresh water lies inland, among the States. Strict construction
would not allow the central authority to undertake a public work in
an individual State. Clearing waterways and constructing harbours might
have been left to the respective States, if each stream and each lake
had been located entirely within the confines of some State. Interstate
commerce thus began early to play a part in making the Union. In former
days, Congress had granted requests of Rhode Island, Maryland, and
Georgia to be allowed to retain part of their imposts for completing
their public works on rivers and harbours. The privilege was extended
to other State at various times, the expenditures being withheld from
the national revenues. The system was bad and produced frequent delay
and abuse. It was really the Federal Government making the improvements
indirectly. Evidently the work could be carried on more uniformly and
systematically under central management.
Precedent had been established under the compulsion of war. The
Carondelet canal was a private enterprise connecting Lake Pontchartrain
with the city of New Orleans. Congress appropriated a sum of money,
as the war came on, for making the canal navigable for the gunboats
in order to protect New Orleans. Several similar instances might be
cited during the progress of the war. Under such conditions, it was
an easy matter to include in the Army Appropriation bill of 1819 a sum
for making a complete survey of all watercourses tributary to the
Mississippi on its western side, and on its eastern side north of the
Ohio. There was in the same bill an appropriation for making surveys
with maps and charts of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, from the Falls
of the Ohio to New Orleans, "for facilitating and ascertaining the
most practical mode of improving the navigation of those rivers." No
promise was made, but the ultimate purpose was to have the individual
States or the Union improve the navigation of all these waterways. So
insidiously was necessity making the Republicans commit themselves to
the policies of their predecessors, that no one realised they were
preparing by these actions to inaugurate the vast work of public
improvement in the interior of the continent which characterised the
middle period of American history.
Advocates of these national enterprises were encouraged by a clause
in the Bank bill of 1816. In order to compel the State banks to resume
specie payment and to rearrange the national finances after the war,
the Republicans had been compelled to resort to the infamous Hamiltonian
remedy of chartering a United States bank. Only financial desperation
could warrant the adoption of a suggestion which the party had rejected
five years before. Unconstitutionally scarcely had a mention in the
debates on the bill. Republican speakers and writers advocated a bank
as eagerly as they had opposed one in 1791 and 1811. Calhoun was in
favour of a new bank and Webster was opposed to it.
This second bank was chartered, like the first, for twenty years. It
had a similar plan of organisation, although with a larger capital.
It differed most in offering to the National Government, not only a
share of stock, but a "bonus," or gift, of a million and a half dollars
for the privilege of the charter. Visions of internal improvements
made possible by such a handsome gift immediately arose in the minds
of some, although suspicion was the strongest feeling in the minds of
others. The proposition was precisely along the Federalist idea of
invested interests purchasing a monopoly from the Government, and was
viewed in that light by old Republicans. It was denounced as a bribe
similar to that given Parliament by the East India Company. Such
scruples were overcome by comparing the "bonus" to the fee paid the
National Government for a patent, which gave to the holder a monopoly,
or to the free passage granted troops over toll bridges in payment for
a State charter. Undoubtedly the desire to use this money for public
improvements aided in securing the passage of the Bank bill.
These hopes assumed shape in the next session in "An act to set apart
and pledge certain funds for internal improvements," which pledged the
proceeds of the "bonus" for constructing roads and canals, and improving
the navigation of watercourses. It was passed by a close vote in each
branch of Congress, after a long debate in the House upon the powers
of the General Government. This debate showed Calhoun, the future
spokesman of State rights, in favour of extended expenditures in the
various States without constitutional restriction, and Timothy
Pickering, former member of John Adams's Cabinet, in the attitude of
denying the right of the National Government under the implied powers
to expend a dollar without the consent of the State in which the
improvement lay. Neither would he admit that the regulation of commerce
included more than waterways. It was an additional evidence of the
reversal of parties.
The Representatives from the Eastern States generally wished to use
the money to relieve the ordinary burdens of taxation, realising that
the larger part of these improvements would lie beyond the Alleghenies
and, presumably, of no benefit to them. Individual members may have
held great expectations of the gratitude to be gained from their
constituents by securing a share of the bank money. Madison rudely
shattered these in the closing hours of his administration by vetoing
the bill. It was a heroic duty. To such a distance had the party gone
from the confines of strict construction, so resistless had been the
hand of compulsion in the sixteen years of Republican administration,
so powerfully had this internal improvement system affected the cupidity
of the people, so careless had Congress grown of the difference between
the reserved and expressed powers, that Madison felt it necessary to
recall his party to its first principles. In his veto message, he spoke
the almost forgotten language of the old days when he said that the
power to regulate commerce did not extend to enterprises conducted
within the several States; that the efforts of the Union should be
confined to foreign commerce; that any expenditure of the bonus proceeds
under the plea of the common defence would be to give Congress a general
power of legislation. It was the first reaction after the compelling
days of the war. It was not an agreeable or popular task, but it was
done heroically. It was love's labour lost, because it was impossible
for Madison or his successor long to hold in check the demands of the
people for means of communication as they spread toward the West over
the inviting public lands.
Partisan newspapers denied that Madison's action was inconsistent with
prior recommendations of Presidents, with the report of Gallatin, and
with the appropriations for the Cumberland Road. Gallatin's report,
they said, was only a recommendation. The Cumberland National Road was
the result of a bargain between the Federal Government and the State
of Ohio and involved no violence to the Constitution. As for prior
messages, Jefferson, in 1806, had suggested an amendment to cover
internal improvements, and Madison had been careful in 1816 to locate
his proposed national university inside the District of Columbia, which
was entirely under national control. Internal improvements, he had
said in two different messages, should be authorised by an amendment.
At the same time, many of these papers lamented the fact that the hands
of the Union were thus bound, while a few suggested that the obligation
to "provide for the general welfare" would have been fulfilled better
by building roads and canals than by creating a bank and placing upon
the people the burdens of a protective tariff. Having engaged in the
war, they must abide by the compulsion which the war produced.
The few conservative Republicans who clung to the old doctrines of the
party realised with dismay that the financial adjustments following
the war were bound to drag them still farther into the former field
of the enemy. The Jeffersonian commercial war, which had begun with
the embargo of eight years before, had practically cut off the United
States from the European sources of supply. In a crude way her people
began to set up manufactories to supply needed goods. The waterfalls
distributed so abundantly over the Northern States were harnessed for
this purpose. Unconsciously the United States was coming into a
commercial independence even more valuable than the political or
navigation right for which she had contended in two wars. The world's
peace of 1815 released the carrying trade; European goods poured into
America; and the infant manufactures were undersold and threatened
with ruin. As many as twenty vessels arrived in New York during one
day in 1815, hurrying British goods to the reopened American market.
[Illustration: THE PRESIDENT'S TEMPORARY RESIDENCE, 1815. This "octagon"
house in Washington was occupied by President Madison while the White
House was being rebuilt after being burned by the British in the War
of 1812. It is now used as a club house.]
Instantly the public thought turned to a protective tariff, not only
to save the manufactures, but as a retributive measure against England.
"It is now a little more than a year," wrote a correspondent to Niles's
_Register_, "since we closed a contest in arms with Great Britain in
glory. A new struggle has already commenced with the same nation in
the arts as connected with agriculture, commerce, and manufacture."
Another contributor urged the necessity of protecting and cherishing
the manufacture of everything--from a toothpick to a ship, from a
needle to a cannon, a thread of yarn to a bale of cloth--unless we
could exchange some commodity for them. "You spread too much canvas,"
was the reason reported to have been given an American by an Englishman
for certain restrictive measures on American commerce.
"Americanism" showed itself in the press as well as in congressional
debates. Writers contrasted the probable happiness of an imaginary
"Anglo-American province," located on the Atlantic coast-plain,
dependent upon the Old World for its straw hats, boot, shoes, cotton,
linen, and cloth, with an "Economic Republic," located as far inland
as the banks of the Ohio, and depending entirely on home industries.
A rumour that the rebuilt Executive Mansion was to be furnished with
articles from Europe brought an indignant denial from the
Administration. Only porcelain, mirror plate, carpets, and a few minor
articles, such as were not produced in the United States, had been
imported. It was announced that President Monroe had given orders to
use home manufactures as far as possible in furnishing all public
buildings in Washington. The American Society for the Advancement of
Domestic Manufactures was favoured by ex-Presidents Adams, Jefferson,
and Madison, as well as by President Monroe. The Philadelphia Society
for the Promotion of Domestic Industry issued addresses to the people.
Under the influence of the embargo the census of 1810 had been made
to include a survey of American manufactures. It showed that nearly
two hundred million dollars' worth of goods were manufactured annually
in the United States. Undoubtedly this sum had been greatly increased
during the two years of war. Newspapers printed accounts of the large
output of woollen mills in New England, of the starting of glass and
iron factories, of new methods for weaving, of looms to be operated
by steam power, of the discovery of lead, copper, asbestos, and other
mines. The frontier city of Cincinnati reported the establishment of
manufactories of tools, implements, ground mustard, and castor oil.
It was said in 1816 that not less than nineteen million dollars' worth
of woollen goods alone were being produced in the United States, which
must suffer from European competition unless protected. A steam vessel,
so it was reported, built at New York, was about to attempt to cross
the Atlantic to Russia, where Fulton had been given a monopoly of steam
navigation for twenty-five years.
So completely had the New England States alienated themselves from the
Administration by their conduct during the war that an appeal from
them for protecting manufactures in which they were most largely
interested would have had small influence, unless the general condition
of the country had demanded action, as shown above. The Southern States,
which dominated Government, could afford to be magnanimous. They had
permanent protection in their cotton, tobacco, and sugar exports as
the means of their commercial salvation. "Let us be charitable toward
the Hartford conventionists; let us make them feel that they have a
country," said a member of Congress, in discussing the impost bill of
1816, which partook somewhat of the nature of a tariff bill along
Hamiltonian lines, although framed by Jeffersonians. Few speakers
showed a tendency to discuss the proposition from a party standpoint.
"The duty of a paternal government" was referred to as freely as if
the Hamilton days had come again.
As usual in a tariff debate, expediency and self-interest ruled. The
difficulty of reconciling the varied interests in a common measure
seemed at times insurmountable. The South wanted a high duty upon
sugars and a low duty upon coarse cloth. The New England delegates
insisted upon the contrary.
"The order of the day seems to be to catch and keep and huckster
sectional interests without regarding the nation as a whole," wrote a
disgusted member to one of his constituents. "We can unite, as you have
seen, from Maine to Louisiana in favor of voting money into our own
pockets; but I despair of seeing a united vote in favor of our
constituents."
This tariff measure of 1816, the first after the war, was a protective
action in form rather than by intention. The Republicans looked on it
as corrective of the many acts which during the war had almost doubled
the duties to secure revenue. It was a kind of transition from the
tariff policy of the Hamiltonians, nearly twenty years before, to that
of Clay, ten years later. That tariff issues were not yet developed
and sectional interests appreciated is evidenced by the fact that
Calhoun was an earnest advocate of this measure and that Webster voted
against it. A comparison of the votes in House and Senate indicated
slightly the sectional tendency which was to characterise the tariff
question when fully developed.
VOTES OF APRIL 8 AND APRIL 19, 1816, ON REGULATING DUTIES
House Senate
North of Mason and Dixon line /For.......63.......16
\Against...14........2
South of Mason and Dixon line /For.......25........9
\Against...40........5
The measure was passed by the vote of the Eastern or manufacturing
States, aided by the South-western States, who were expecting some
kind of paternalistic benefit to their hemp or other products. In the
Senate, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana voted solidly for the tariff,
and in the House these three States furnished nine affirmative to four
negative votes. The five New England States, already strong advocates
for increasing protection, gave in the House seventeen votes in favour
to two against the experiment. Virginia and South Carolina furnished
twenty-seven of the negative votes in the House. Strange to say, South
Carolina, the opposition leader of a later day, gave a majority for
the bill in both branches of Congress.
It is scarcely just to call this tariff of 1816 a protective measure,
since it was entitled "An act to regulate the duties on imports and
tonnage." It was a natural result of the attitude of the "war-hawks,"
isolated from European influence and developing self-reliance and
self-dependence. It was looked upon as reducing the tariff to a peace
basis. The war duties on woollen and cotton goods, rating as high as
thirty per cent., were to be gradually scaled down to half that amount.
But the discrimination in favour of certain goods made easier the
demand for a greater discrimination a few years later, and divided the
party upon the old Hamiltonian policy of protection.