The Nullification episode has been generally treated as a struggle
between Jackson and Calhoun. In its outward manifestations it was a
contest between the President and the State of South Carolina; but in
the settlement it really was a struggle between Calhoun and Clay.
The position of Henry Clay, in 1833, was one to test to the utmost
the powers of that great politician. In the preceding year he had
sternly refused Hayne’s amendment to his tariff bill, enacting his own
view coupled with a threat of enforcement. He had, however, seen his
Act nullified by the State of South Carolina, under the governorship
of Hayne, and himself beaten overwhelmingly for the presidency by
Jackson, who, while threatening coercion in South Carolina, had
nevertheless, made Hayne’s amendment to the tariff the basis of his own
recommendation on that subject to Congress. A bill had been introduced
in the House, to restore the duties to the scale of 1816. What could
Clay do to redeem himself and his cause? Back to the Senate, in Hayne’s
vacant seat, was Clay’s “old companion at arms with a practical power
of attorney from the recalcitrant State.”[82]
Clay at once entered into negotiations with Calhoun himself,
introducing a bill in the Senate, to the two principles of which, viz.,
“that time should be given the manufacturers and that an _ad valorem_
duty should be provided for”, Calhoun assented and the bill was
referred to a select committee consisting of: Clay, Clayton, Calhoun,
Grundy, Webster, Rives, and Dallas.
Then up came the Revenue Collection Bill, supported by thirty-two
Senators, and passed with only seven besides Calhoun opposing, and the
great politician from Kentucky had Calhoun safely tangled in his net.
Against the protest of the latter, he amended his tariff bill with a
provision that in the valuation of imported articles, “the valuation
should be at the port in which the goods were imported.” Calhoun argued
that this would be a great injustice to the South, as the price of
goods being cheaper in the Northern than in the Southern cities, a
home valuation would give the former a preference.[83] But that was
exactly what Clay had proposed, and was determined to do, and although
Webster and Silsbee of Massachusetts, Hill of New Hampshire, Dallas of
Pennsylvania and Kane and Benton of Missouri came to Calhoun’s support,
Calhoun fearing evidently to wreck his compromise with Clay, yielded
this vital point. To consider all that was involved in the surrender
of Calhoun, it will be necessary to revert to the past and to consider
some political views emanating from the mightiest intellect South
Carolina ever produced.
Prior to the framing of the Constitution of the United States and
subsequent to the peace between Great Britain and the States, the value
of the imports from Great Britain to America had exceeded the value
of the exports from America to Great Britain to such an amount as to
be nearly three times as great; while the commerce between the two
countries was very nearly ten times as great as that between the States
and the rest of the world. This condition had produced anything but
prosperity for America.
The statesman who had contributed most to the framing of the
Constitution, Charles Pinckney, in his effort to secure its
ratification by his own State, had made among other things this
remarkable statement:
“‘Foreign Trade’ is one of the enemies against which we must be
extremely guarded, more so than against any other, as none will ever
have a more unfavorable operation. I consider it as the root of our
present public distress, as the plentiful source from which our future
national calamities will flow, unless great care is taken to prevent
it.”[84]
Thirty years later he warned Congress along similar lines, “that a
country mainly agricultural and without mines of the precious metals,
could not have its imports greatly in excess of its exports, without
financial disaster.”[85]
From the time of the Union to the first embargo and the war of 1812,
the immense preponderance of the value of imports had been greatly
reduced from nearly treble to an excess of but twenty-five per cent;
but in the two years which followed the peace they had increased to
almost double the value of the exports. Under Lowndes’s tariff of 1816
they again fell to an excess of only about twenty per cent by 1821.[86]
From that period until the Compromise of 1833, they still further
fell to an excess of about eight per cent; the value of the exports
for these twelve years being $934,287,320, and that of the imports
$1,007,853,830, a total excess of value for imports in the twelve years
amounting to $73,566,502.
Considering the States through which this commerce moved, we
find, with regard to Massachusetts, for this period, the value of
exports, $125,378,462; imports, $182,861,825. Pennsylvania, exports,
$86,062,157; imports, $139,891,027. Maryland, exports, $53,048,043;
imports, $56,860,616. New York, exports, $267,371,444; imports,
$473,671,382. An excess of imports at Northern ports of the value of
$321,000,000.
Now taking the Southern States for the same period, we find Virginia,
exports, $47,535,525; imports, $7,093,499. South Carolina, exports,
$93,018,377; imports, $20,625,049. Georgia, exports, $56,167,842;
imports $5,828,581. Alabama, exports, $14,897,425; imports, $1,631,343.
Louisiana, exports, $138,670,081; imports, $68,321,568. An excess of
exports amounting to $247,000,000.[87]
While, therefore, a great amount of money from the South may have been
expended for Northern manufactures, a great deal also went out for
importation of goods through Northern markets.
The revision of the tariff was to correct both wrongs.
But the result was simply that in a period half as long, six years,
the excess of the value of imports over exports for the whole country
doubled and this without any appreciable gain in the exports of
Virginia and but a slight gain, considering the agitation, for South
Carolina; or totally a condition which, with even the greater gain of
Georgia, still left the South Atlantic States in both import and export
trade far behind the Gulf States, more rapidly developing, and fed by
the great waterway of the Mississippi.
But it was when taking up for consideration the condition of the
Northern States after 1833 that the absolute ineffectiveness of the
revision of the tariff, at that time, to cure the wrongs of trade was
most glaringly exhibited. Even with a declining export, Massachusetts,
in the six years brought in goods to the amount of the value she had
imported in the previous twelve, and with those of Maryland, exceeded
those of the Gulf ports. The trade of Pennsylvania was indeed crippled.
But while the exports of New York fell behind those of Louisiana, in
the value of import goods in the six years, the importation of the
previous twelve were exceeded. The revision of the tariff in 1833
had not only not got at the root of the trouble, it had apparently
aggravated it; for it had while injuring Pennsylvania, stimulated
Massachusetts, New York and Maryland to make on importation what they
had lost on manufactures; while, in place of the money so expended
remaining in circulation in the United States, a great volume of it
must have gone abroad. The panic of 1837, which came in the spring,
and which followed the greatest of New York’s importations, a figure
not attained again in fourteen years of increasing population, had
its origin in New York. It did much to cramp the Southern railroad
movement of that date; but neither it nor the panic of 1839 did as much
to ham-string Southern effort as the divided councils and unfortunate
rivalries of South Carolina and Georgia and Hayne and Calhoun.
It might have been unreasonable to have expected Georgians to have
assisted a road to the West to pass through North Carolina from
Charleston, to the neglect of their own State, and they had every
right to start their “rival system,” as an apologist styles it; but
for South Carolinians to abandon what was under way in their own
State backed by North Carolina and Tennessee, however weakly, and to
pour their money into Georgia, when at the very threshold there was
refusal to permit the bridging of the Savannah river for them, was the
very extremity of folly, no matter by whom advocated, and for writers
of history to characterize as a bubble and fiasco the great scheme
launched by the Knoxville Convention in 1836, is simply to indicate a
lack of understanding of all that was involved in that undertaking,
and to resolutely shut eyes to the nature of the obstructions which
blocked its progress at the time it was most essential to push it most
determinedly.
As it was by the railroads that the Slavery Question was eventually
settled, it is interesting to note that the first intelligent move
towards railroad construction in the United States was contemporaneous
with the great speech of Robert Y. Hayne in the United States Senate in
1827 on the Negro Question. Some evidence has been adduced to indicate
the probability of his responsibility for the first suggestion of a
railroad to be operated by steam power, in the United States, in 1821
to run from Charleston to Augusta, with a fork to Columbia.[88] While
Hayne may have been this early suggester, it is quite possible and not
all improbable that the suggester, “H”, might have been Elias Horry.
But six years later, when the movement took definite shape, Hayne in
the United States Senate made an utterance, which may be considered as,
at that time, representing the view of his section concerning the Negro
Question, viz., that:
“The history of the country has proved that where the relative
proportion of the colored population to the white was greatly
diminished, slaves ceased to be valuable and emancipation followed
of course ... wherever free labor was put into full and successful
operation, slave labor ceased to be valuable.”[89]
“Time and patience,” he had then contended, were alone necessary to
solve the Negro Problem. But Nullification in 1832 and the Abolition
ebullition of 1835 had, however, later affected the sections profoundly
and from this latter date the political history of the Republic
depended more and more upon the influences which could be brought to
bear upon the West by the South and the North, and upon the South and
the North by the West. Every influence which contributed to homogeniety
was an influence towards peaceful development. That the Hayne of 1835
was, _ipsissimus verbis_, the Hayne of 1827 cannot be claimed; but
to no statesman in the Union was the necessity more apparent for the
promotion of this homogeneity than to him to whom had been confided by
the representatives of nine States the stupendous task of pushing the
great Western railroad from Charleston to Cincinnati, the front door of
the great West for “free social and commercial intercourse,”[90] with:
“Reciprocal dependence from Michigan to Florida, by establishing
connections in business, promoting friendships, abolishing prejudices,
creating greater uniformity in political opinions and blending the
feeling of distant portions of the country into a union of heart.”[91]
The “rival system,” in favor of which Calhoun abandoned Hayne’s
railroad in 1838, was not in all probability originally designed for
but eventually became the vehicle of a scheme of political conquest,
which aimed at an approach to the back door of the West through the new
State of Arkansas. This statement may be received with impatience, but
examination will show its truth.
The Charleston and Hamburg Railroad was chartered in 1828, and by 1831
was making fair progress. There must have been in contemplation at that
date, the original plan of the fork to Columbia, and a continuation
West, through North Carolina and Tennessee; for the first projector
in Georgia, James A. Merriwether, mentions it in a letter to Elias
Horry of date June 8th, 1831.[92] In answer Elias Horry advises him
distinctly that the company desires “the completion of a railroad, if
possible, by way of the Saluda Gap,” but sees the importance of the
one across Georgia, and advises that connection be made with Savannah,
which should reap some of the advantages which she is entitled to.[93]
[Illustration: U. S. 1830
WHITES
WHITES & BLACKS
NEGROES
RAILWAYS COMPLETED
” PROJECTED]
In the very year in which Calhoun was advising the people:—
“if all other effectual resistance should fail, it would be their duty
to take measures to concentrate the voice of the South, which should
plainly announce to their Northern brethren that either the Bill
(Force) or the political connection must yield:—”[94]
in his report on the completion of the Charleston and Hamburg Railroad
in 1833, Elias Horry alludes to the “Western and Atlantic Railroad
Convention” held in Asheville, North Carolina, September 3rd, 1832,
for a “Railroad up the French Broad River,” at which were pointed out
the many and great advantages that would be produced ... not less
in a political than in a commercial point of view, so indissolubly
connecting the Southern and Western interests, strengthening the bonds
of union and thereby perpetuating all the blessings of our valuable
institutions.[95]
But with the death of Horry in 1834, the project seems to have
slumbered until, in October, 1835, a well thought out statement,
emanating from a group of citizens of Ohio, one of whom was General
Harrison, brought the matter up again,[96] and on July 4th, 1836,
delegates from Indiana, Ohio, Kentucky, Virginia, North Carolina, South
Carolina, Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee, at Knoxville, launched the
Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad to connect the West and
South. Hayne became President of the company and Calhoun a Director.
From the outset, however, Calhoun was a continually disturbing element.
He was never able to shake off the view that railroads, if not adjuncts
to water courses, would be failures. It was a natural view in his day,
if it was an ignorant one, and one honestly held; but it was injurious
to the enterprise.
His known distrust of the route through North Carolina chilled the
enthusiasm of the people of North Carolina.[97] He deserted the South
Carolina Company at the most critical time, when the prospects of
the rival enterprise through Georgia seemed fairest. His powerful
obstructive force arrested the Carolina road at Columbia, by a
declaration pertinaciously sought to be made in advance that it should
not go further[98] and by so doing diverted to the “rival system”
in Georgia, funds in South Carolina which most materially aided
in preserving the Georgia venture from utter failure, when it had
collapsed, with unaccounted funds, to the extent of $2,602,457,26;[99]
while his sadly triumphant designation of Hayne’s road as an ended
“humbug,” one year after Hayne’s death, when it was at last determined
that it should not go beyond Columbia, has been accepted at its face
value by those more inclined to believe it, than to take the trouble to
examine the facts.
Yet Calhoun, himself, although he survived Hayne eleven years, died
before the “rival system” was assured; and nine years after his own
death, when, as yet, no great benefits to South Carolina trade had
accrued from the construction of the Georgia road, a vigorous attempt
was made to resurrect the French Broad route, with a declaration
that only the gap from Spartanburg, South Carolina, to Paint Rock,
on the Tennessee-North Carolina line, remained to be closed, C. G.
Memminger, in opposing the resurrection of the L. C. & C. R. R., made
the statement concerning it, that “it had been the mother of all
our interior railroads, and had not cost the State a dollar of her
money.”[100]
If such a statement could be made in 1858 by one who, while he had
materially assisted it up to 1839, had then opposed it, it may be well
to consider how the scheme was regarded in Europe, at the date at
which Mr. Memminger led the movement for the stopping it at Columbia,
evidently so as to concentrate all effort on the route through Georgia.
In the work of Alexander Trotter, of London, England, published in
1839, appears three allusions to Hayne’s Western road. One in the
general discussion of conditions in the United States at large; one in
the chapter treating of the State of South Carolina; and one in that
discussing Ohio. The first is as follows:
“Besides the outlet for their produce which the Ohio and Mississippi
afford to cultivators, the State of Pennsylvania has established a
communication on the former river by a series of canals and railroads,
and has opened to them the market of the Atlantic cities. The State of
New York, by means of the Erie Canal, has procured for them a similar
advantage at a port more to the North, while a still more gigantic
undertaking than either of these works is now in progress to connect
the city of Cincinnati with Charleston, which will bring the products
of these distant lands to the markets of the Southern Atlantic
States.”[101]
In that portion of his work which treats of South Carolina, Mr. Trotter
enters more particularly into the plan of the connection:
“The work contemplated by this company (The Louisville, Cincinnati and
Charleston Railroad) is the establishment of a railroad communication
between the city of Charleston and the Ohio. The distance between
Charleston and Cincinnati in a straight line, is about five hundred
miles. Several routes have been surveyed by which the length of the
railroad will be about six hundred, but no line seems to have been
definitely fixed upon. A railroad called the South Carolina, already
exists between Charleston and Hamburg, a town situated on the Savannah
opposite to Augusta, in Georgia, this railroad has been purchased by
the company, and will be made use of as far as Branchville or Aiken.
One plan is to carry the road projected from the former to Columbia,
the seat of Government in South Carolina, and then up the valley of
the Broad river into the State of North Carolina. After surmounting
the Blue Ridge by inclined planes with stationary engines, the road
would by this plan, be carried down the valley of the French Broad
River to Knoxville, in Tennessee, and thence through Cumberland Gap,
to Lexington in Kentucky; from the latter city separate roads would
proceed to Louisville, Cincinnati and Mayesville. The distance from
Charleston to Cincinnati by this route would be 607 miles.”[102]
Alluding to the Georgia route, he indicates the first as likely the
route to be decided upon finally, and in the remarkably accurate map,
for that date, shows that the line through North Carolina, is shorter
by something like a fifth of the distance and that “the success of
the South Carolina Railroad holds out a fair prospect for that of the
greater work” as it—
“although thus successful had to contend with great disadvantages;
it was not only the first railroad attempted in the Southern States,
but was at the time it was completed the longest railroad that had
been constructed in any part of the world ... so that the projectors
could derive little benefit from the experience of other works of a
similar nature—the whole work too, which is a singular circumstance,
was executed by the black population. In addition to these drawbacks,
the limited means of the company caused the work to be executed
in a very imperfect manner.... The original cost of the road was
$904,500.00 but the filling up of the spaces between the piles and
other expenses increased the cost up to the 31st of October 1834 to
$1,336,615.09. The present company have almost reconstructed the whole
work; two-thirds of the purchase money which has been paid, together
with the expenses which have already been incurred, having amounted to
nearly two million of dollars.”[103]
Georgia had started its system from a point afterwards becoming
Atlanta, towards which two roads were pointing, one from Augusta about
due west and another from Savannah northwest to Macon, from which by
an inclination north it moved towards the same point.
Hayne’s review of the commercial situation in the spring of 1838
indicated how clearly he grasped the fact that the revision of the
tariff had failed to cure the conditions under which the South labored;
for exporting more than a sixth of the total exports of the country,
the three States of Virginia, South Carolina and Georgia imported less
than one fortieth. If the South could only have been made to see it
before the opportunity passed. His comment put it fairly:
“Look at the present course of trade between the South and the West.
The importations from Tennessee and Kentucky into South Carolina and
Georgia amount to millions of dollars, but instead of their being paid
for in foreign goods imported directly into Charleston and Savannah
in exchange for our own cotton and rice, we pay for them in gold or
silver or in bills upon the North, thereby losing entirely the profits
on the importation and greatly embarrassing our merchants by the
operation. Now if we only had the means of transporting these goods
by railroad to the West, everything would be changed. Not only would
we pay for Western production consumed by the South, in foreign goods
received in exchange for our own produce, but we should be able to
supply a large portion of the Western country with all the goods now
obtained by them from abroad, receiving in exchange their products to
be distributed in Southern ships throughout the world. The truth is
that all our efforts to establish a direct trade with Europe must in a
great measure be unavailing unless we can provide a market in the West
for the goods we may import. Our railroad with the aid of the South
Western Railroad Bank, will achieve for us this important and peaceful
victory.”[104]
But Kentucky and Tennessee did not constitute all that the railroad
to Cincinnati led to. The description given by the English student of
American affairs in 1839, shows what Ohio was at that date:
“Of the 75 counties of which it is composed, 14 lie upon the Ohio
River, which in its windings bounds the State for 436 miles; while
seven which border on Lake Erie possess a coast of upwards of 200
miles in extent. The great works which have been described, and others
the result of private enterprise, have given almost equal advantage
to the interior districts. Canals now made or making pass through 32
counties, railroads through six, and macadamized roads through five,
so that of the 75 counties into which the State is divided, there are
only 11 which do not benefit from either natural or improved means
of communication, and many even of these are traversed or bounded
by rivers of inferior magnitude. While its natural advantages and
the industry of its inhabitants have thus secured for this State
the benefits of an easy internal communication, its position is
no less favorable for external commerce. The Ohio River affords
a direct communication with all the country in the valley of the
Mississippi, which requires much of its agricultural produce and of
its manufactures while by means of Lake Erie, which has several good
natural or artificial harbors, it communicates with Canada and New
York on the one side and with the country of the upper lakes on the
other.... When the communication is complete between the Ohio and
Pennsylvania lines, and still more when the railroad is finished which
is meant to connect Cincinnati with Charleston, in South Carolina, an
additional stimulus will be given to the industry of the State. The
completion of the latter work, by the importance it will confer on
Cincinnati, is scarcely of less interest to Ohio than it is to the
States whose territories it traverses.”[105]
It was from Ohio in 1835 that the movement had come headed by General
Harrison, for railroad connection with South Carolina. We have
discussed commercial conditions. What of political? Professor Paxson
says:
“The Southern counties of the old Northwest were never unanimous
for slavery, but they were thoroughly impregnated with the ideals
of the South before the Northern tier of counties had been surveyed
or cleared of Indians. North of the National Road (from Wheeling to
Columbus, Indianapolis, Vandalia and St. Louis) roughly speaking, was
the zone of the Erie Canal—by 1840 a new New England stood rival to a
northern South within the three oldest States of the old Northwest.
For another twenty years, from the election of Harrison to that of
Lincoln, the political future of the section was indeterminate.”[106]
But in 1835 Calhoun had been convinced that the movement of population
and industry was towards Arkansas,[107] and that consequently “we
should look much further West than Cincinnati or Lexington”.[108] This
he announced in his letter to Hayne resigning from his position as one
of the directors of the Louisville, Cincinnati and Charleston Railroad
in 1838.
On what did he base the view? The Census figures of 1830 as compared
with those of 1820 indicated that the increase of population of
Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, were all greater than the increase in
Arkansas, even if the increase of Ohio’s 581,295 to 937,903 was not
as great a percentage of increase as that of Arkansas from 14,314, to
33,388 in the same period. Nevertheless at the time when the road was
determined to be stopped at Columbia, South Carolina, in favor of
the movement to be worked out through Georgia to Arkansas, the white
population of Ohio was 1,502,122, the colored 17,345. At the same date
the white population of Arkansas was 77,174, the colored 20,865. If it
be claimed that north of Arkansas was Missouri with a white population
of 323,888 and a colored population of 61,388; yet, if we took the
three States just north of Kentucky and across the Ohio River and the
State of Michigan just beyond, we will know that the region which
held 2,864,634 whites and 29,483 colored was abandoned to build to a
region inhabited by 401,662 whites and 82,253 colored persons. Was
this a reasonable commercial movement? If it was not, what was it? An
attempt will be made to answer these two questions in the two following
chapters, which attempt should open with some description of railroad
movement in the North and West.
FOOTNOTES:
[82] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 348.
[83] Ibid. p. 349.
[84] Ibid. p. 22.
[85] Ibid. p. 502.
[86] Census, U. S. 1850, p. 185.
[87] Ibid. p. 185.
[88] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 122.
[89] Ibid. p. 208.
[90] Ibid. p. 458.
[91] Ibid. p. 401.
[92] A. E. Miller, Pub. 1833, Address by Horry p. 31.
[93] Ibid. pp. 34-35.
[94] _Charleston Mercury_, November 25, 1833.
[95] A. E. Miller, Pub. 1833, Address by Horry, p. 21.
[96] _Charleston Courier_, Oct. 8, 1835.
[97] Ibid, Dec. 18, 1839.
[98] _Charleston Mercury_, Aug. 16, 1839.
[99] Phillips, Transportation Eastern Cotton Belt, p. 316.
[100] W. E. Cog. Pub. Address Memminger, Vol. XXI Pam. C. L. S. p. 9.
[101] Trotter: Finances, North American States, p. 61.
[102] Ibid. p. 223.
[103] Ibid. p. 226.
[104] Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne & His Times, p. 457.
[105] Trotter: Finances, North American States, p. 277.
[106] Paxson, Early Railroads of the Old Northwest, p. 254.
[107] _Charleston Courier_, Nov. 9, 1835.
[108] Jameson, Calhoun’s Correspondence, pp. 411-412.