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EXPANSION AND
CONFLICT
BY
WILLIAM E. DODD
PROFESSOR OF AMERICAN HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON NEW YORK CHICAGO
The Riverside Press
Cambridge
COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY WILLIAM E. DODD
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE · MASSACHUSETTS
U. S. A.
PREFACE
The purpose of this volume is to show the action and reaction of the
most important social, economic, political, and personal forces that
have entered into the make-up of the United States as a nation. The
primary assumption of the author is that the people of this country did
not compose a nation until after the close of the Civil War in 1865. Of
scarcely less importance is the fact that the decisive motive behind the
different groups in Congress at every great crisis of the period under
discussion was sectional advantage or even sectional aggrandizement. If
Webster ceased to be a particularist after 1824 and became a nationalist
before 1830, it was because the interests of New England had undergone a
similar change; or, if Calhoun deserted about the same time the cause of
nationalism and became the most ardent of sectionalists, it was also
because the interests of his constituents, the cotton and tobacco
planters of the South, had become identified with particularism, that
is, States rights.
And corollary to these assumptions is the further fact that public men
usually determine what line of procedure is best for their constituents,
or for what are supposed to be the interests of those constituents, and
then seek for "powers" or clauses in State or Federal Constitutions
which justify the predetermined course. This being, as a rule, true, the
business of the historian is to understand the influences which led to
the first, not the second, decision of the Representative or Senator or
President or even Justice of the Supreme Court. Hence long-winded
speeches or tortuous decisions of courts have not been studied so
closely as the statistics of the cotton or tobacco crops, the reports of
manufacturers, and the conditions of the frontier, which determined more
of the votes of members of Congress than the most eloquent persuasion of
great orators.
Thus the following pages utterly fail of their purpose if they do not
picture the background of congressional and sectional conflicts during
the period from Andrew Jackson to Abraham Lincoln. But, to be sure, in
so brief a book all the contributing elements of the growing national
life cannot be fully described or even be mentioned. Still, it is the
hope of the author that all the greater subjects have been treated. What
has been omitted was omitted in order to devote more space to what
seemed to be more important, not in order to suppress what some may
consider to be of primary significance. Three hundred short pages for
the story of the great conflict which raged from 1828 to 1865 do not
offer much latitude for explanations and diversions along the way. Nor
is it possible for any one to describe this conflict satisfactorily even
to all historians, to say nothing of the participants who still live and
entertain the most positive and contradictory convictions. Hence one
must present one's own narrative and be content if open-mindedness and
honesty of purpose be acknowledged.
The book is intended for the maturer students in American colleges and
universities and for readers who may be desirous of knowing why things
happened as they did as well as how they happened. And by the employment
of collateral readings suggested in the short bibliographies at the
close of each chapter, both the college student and the more general
reader may find his way through the labyrinth of conflicting opinion and
opposing authorities which make up the body of our written history.
To make this task easier some twenty-five maps have been prepared and
inserted at the appropriate places in the text. These maps, perhaps one
might say photographs of social or economic conditions, attempt to
present the greater sectional and industrial groups of "interests" which
entered into the common life of _ante-bellum_ times. They treat party
evolution, economic development, and social antagonisms in a way which,
it seems to the author, should help the reader to a better understanding
of things than would be possible by the simple narrative.
For permission to use the maps on pages 291, 313, and 327 the author
expresses his thanks to the publishers of _The Encyclopedia Americana_.
In this connection cordial thanks are extended to Professor J. F.
Jameson and Dr. C. O. Paullin, of the Carnegie Institution of
Washington, for the privilege of using the data which they collected on
the election of 1828 and the vote in Congress on the Tariff of 1832.
Likewise Mr. P. L. Phillips, of the Division of Maps of the Library of
Congress, has given the author much assistance. Nor must I fail to say
that many of my students have rendered practical aid in working out the
details of several of the maps. Mr. Edward J. Woodhouse, of Yale
University, very kindly read all the proof and prepared the index. And
Professors A. C. McLaughlin and M. W. Jernegan, of the University of
Chicago; Allen Johnson, of Yale; Carl Becker, of Kansas; and Frederic L.
Paxson, of Wisconsin, have all given counsel and criticism on certain
chapters which have been of great practical benefit.
But in making these acknowledgments for assistance rendered, it is not
intended to shift to other shoulders any of the responsibility for
statements or manner of treatment which may arouse criticism. The book
is intended to be helpful, interpretative, and beyond any sectional
bias. If the author has not been successful, it is not the fault of
others, nor because of any sparing of personal efforts.
_William E. Dodd._
CONTENTS
I. _Andrew Jackson_ 1
II. _The West_ 20
III. _The East_ 39
IV. _Conflict and Compromise_ 58
V. _The Triumph of Jackson_ 77
VI. _Distress and Reaction_ 96
VII. _The Militant South_ 114
VIII. _War and Conquest_ 147
IX. _The Abolitionists_ 161
X. _Prosperity_ 184
XI. _American Culture_ 208
XII. _Stephen A. Douglas_ 231
XIII. _Abraham Lincoln_ 251
XIV. _The Appeal to Arms_ 268
XV. _One Nation or Two?_ 289
XVI. _The Collapse of the Confederacy_ 309
_Index_ i
MAPS
_The Presidential Election of_ 1828 _between_ 18 _and_ 19
_Distribution of Indians and Location of Indian
Lands and Unorganized Territory of
the United States or the States_ 26
_The Distribution of Industrial Plants in_ 1833 49
_The Vote in the House of Representatives on
the Tariff of_ 1832 _in Eastern and Western
States_ _between_ 66 _and_ 67
_Growth of the West and Removal of Indians
from Cotton, Tobacco, and First Western
Grain Belts_ 88
_The Presidential Election of_ 1836 _between_ 92 _and_ 93
_Tobacco Areas in_ 1840 133
_Cotton Areas in_ 1840 134
_Wheat Areas in_ 1840 139
_The Presidential Election of_ 1844 _between_ 148 _and_ 149
_Annexations of_ 1845-53 159
_Location of Abolition Societies in_ 1847 169
_The Presidential Election of_ 1852 _between_ 180 _and_ 181
_The Industrial Belt of_ 1860 188
_Railroads in Operation_, 1850 190
_Railroads in Operation_, 1860 191
_The Black Belt of_ 1860 193
_The Cotton Belt of_ 1860 196
_Tobacco Areas in_ 1860 197
_Wheat Areas in_ 1860 200
_The Presidential Election of_ 1860 _between_ 264 _and_ 265
_Conflicting Sectional Interests_, 1850-60 237
_One Nation or Two_? 291
_The Confederacy in_ 1863 313
_Regions which surrendered with Lee and
Johnston, April, 1865_ 327
EXPANSION AND CONFLICT
CHAPTER I
ANDREW JACKSON
"Let the people rule"--such was the reply that Andrew Jackson made to
the coalition of Henry Clay and John Quincy Adams which made the latter
President. And Andrew Jackson was an interesting man in 1825. He was to
be the leader of the great party of the West which was forming for the
overthrow of the old political and social order. Born in a cabin on the
southern frontier in 1767 and reared in the midst of poverty during the
"hard times" of the Revolution, Jackson had had little opportunity to
acquire the education and polish which so distinguished the leaders of
the old Jeffersonian party. After a season of teaching school and
studying law in Salisbury, North Carolina, he emigrated, in 1788, to
Tennessee, where he soon became a successful attorney, and a few years
later a United States Senator. But public life in Philadelphia proved as
unattractive as school-teaching had been; he returned to the frontier
life of his adopted State and was speedily made a judge, and as such he
sometimes led _posses_ to enforce his decrees. During the second war
with England he made a brilliant campaign against the Creek Indians, who
had sided with the British, and gained the reputation of being the
mortal enemy of the aborigines, a reputation which added greatly to his
popularity in a community which believed that the "only good Indian is a
dead Indian."
At the close of the war, when most men were expecting news that the
British had conquered the lower Mississippi Valley and that the Union
was breaking to pieces, he proved to be the one American general who
could "whip the troops who had beaten Napoleon." The battle of New
Orleans made Jackson an international character, and the West was ready
to crown him a hero and a savior of the nation. Nor did his arbitrary
conduct in the Seminole War, or later, when he was Governor of Florida,
injure him in a region where Indians, Spaniards, and Englishmen had few
rights which an American need respect. The attacks of Henry Clay in the
House of Representatives, and of William H. Crawford in the Cabinet,
were regarded as political maneuvers. When, therefore, Jackson offered
himself in 1823 as a candidate for the Presidency, most Western men
welcomed him, fearing only that his age and his delicate health, of
which he had said too much in public, might cut him off before he could
render his country the great service of which they considered him
capable. The politicians, especially those who followed Henry Clay, did
their utmost to defeat him, and the votes of the West were divided
almost evenly between the two backwoods rivals. But when it became clear
in 1825 that Speaker Clay of the House of Representatives had added his
influence to that of John Quincy Adams in order to prevent Jackson from
winning, Western men everywhere made his cause their cause. "Let the
people rule" became a battle-cry which was taken up in every frontier
State from Georgia to Illinois.
It was time that the people devoted more attention to public affairs;
they had in fact well-nigh abdicated. In Virginia, with a white
population of 625,000, only 15,000 had voted in the election of 1824; in
Pennsylvania, whose population was over a million, only some 47,000 had
taken the trouble to go to the polls; while in Massachusetts, where the
"favorite son" motive operated, just one man in nineteen exercised the
right of suffrage. Government had become the business of "gentlemen" and
of those who made a specialty of politics. The old Jeffersonian machine,
organized as a popular protest against aristocracy and the "money
power," had itself become aristocratic, and it had ceased to represent
the democracy of the United States; and the democracy had lost interest
in its own affairs.
When Clay, the Westerner and long-time opponent of Adams and the New
England element in politics, executed his surprising somersault in
February, 1825, and thus made the eastern leader President and then
himself became Secretary of State, occasion was given to a second
Jefferson to arouse the people to a sense of their responsibility.
Jackson, a very different man from the former man of the people, seized
the opportunity. Thus the campaign of 1828 began in 1825, and in the
course of the bitter struggle which ensued men divided into social
classes much as they had done in 1800. The small farmers of the country
districts and the artisan classes in the towns of the East accepted the
leadership of the West and waged relentless war on behalf of the "old
hero," as Jackson came to be called. The Southern gentry who had
followed Crawford, the Calhoun men, and certain remnants of ancient
Federalism were now compelled to choose between the so-called radicalism
of the West and John Quincy Adams, the Conservative. Two parties thus
took the place of the four Republican factions which had contended for
the control of the Government and especially the offices in 1824.
But contemporary with this larger national conflict there were important
state and local struggles on which the success of Jackson and the West
depended, and which we must survey and estimate, else the real
significance of the campaign of 1828 is apt to be overlooked.
Beginning with the South, where Jackson's lieutenants were expecting
their greatest gains, South Carolina was rent in twain by a conflict of
social and economic forces which was soon to overshadow national issues.
According to the constitutional bargain of 1809, the low country and the
black belt, that is, the region of the historic river plantations and
the newer cotton country, were always to have a majority in both houses
of the legislature, which chose the governor, the judges, and other
important officials. The reason of this was that the great majority of
the slaves were held in this section, and without complete control of
the Government the masters felt that their interests would be
sacrificed to the democracy of the up-country. The hill and mountain
region, on the other hand, had a large majority of the white population.
But by the arrangement of 1809 the people of this section must content
themselves with remaining in the minority in the state legislature, and
suppress whatever of opposition they felt toward the institution of
slavery, the cause of their effacement.
It was, however, this up-country which had been the mainstay of the
Jeffersonian party. Calhoun was a son of this region, and he had grown
up in the midst of the bitterest opposition to the eastern aristocracy.
But gradually, under the influence of cotton-growing, he and some of his
fellows yielded to the old order of the Pinckneys and the Butlers, and
the older order yielded a little to the democratic group in the State.
This produced the united South Carolina which gave to the country
Calhoun, Lowndes, and Hayne, nationalists of the most ardent type in
1816; and for a few years it seemed that these astute leaders would play
the rôle of the old Virginia dynasty.
But when Calhoun, with the aid of high protectionist Pennsylvania, was
bending all his energies, in 1824, to winning the Presidency, there
broke out an insurgency in the former Federalist section of his State
which boded ill for the future. The burden of its complaint was the
national tariff, which bore heavily on the cotton and rice planters.
Between 1824 and 1828 the lower Carolinians developed a vindictive
hostility toward the leaders of nationalism in the State and especially
toward Calhoun, who was considered responsible for the oppressions of
the tariff. Robert Barnwell Rhett and William Smith, two perfect
representatives of aristocratic South Carolina, led the fight. Senator
Hayne was among the first to yield; George McDuffie, an up-country
leader, next surrendered; finally most Southern members of the National
House of Representatives took up the cry against the tariff and extreme
nationalism. Nothing was more certain in 1826 than that Calhoun and his
nationalist party would be driven to the wall.
Vice-President Calhoun had taken note of the coming storm, and in 1827,
when the woolens bill, a highly protectionist measure, was before
Congress, a measure in which all the Middle States' interests were
greatly concerned, he took pains to have his vote recorded against the
bill. Thus he publicly announced his change of heart. A year later he
was even more outspoken in his opposition to the famous "Tariff of
Abominations." However, he had already made an alliance with Jackson,
whose attitude on the tariff no one knew, and who was very popular with
the protectionists of Pennsylvania. It was clearly understood that
Jackson would serve only one term as President and that Calhoun should
succeed him. The leaders of the older section of South Carolina, urging
secession, were now confronted with a peculiar dilemma. A conference
with Calhoun led in 1828 to a reversal of the secession movement, and
culminated in the proposition that South Carolina should suspend the
tariff law of the country and ask a referendum of the various States on
the subject. If this failed, then secession was to be the remedy.
"Nullification" was the name which this referendum soon acquired.
The attitude of South Carolina was that of every other Southern State
from Virginia to Mississippi, and everywhere it was the older and more
important groups of counties which so bitterly opposed the protective
policy. In Virginia college boys met in formal session and resolved to
wear "homespun" rather than submit to the "yoke" of the Northern
manufacturers; in North Carolina the legislature declared the tariff law
unconstitutional. At the commencement of the University of Georgia the
orator of the occasion appeared in a suit of white cotton cloth, while
his valet wore the cast-off suit of shining broadcloth. The "Tariff of
Abominations," passed in 1828, was producing revolutionary results in
all the region where tobacco, cotton, and rice were grown, and this was
the governing section of the South.[1]
[Footnote 1: See maps on pp. 133, 134.]
Nor was this all; Georgia was still at the point of making actual war
upon the United States because the President and Congress did not remove
the Creek and Cherokee Indians as rapidly as the cotton planters
desired. The Cherokees had declared themselves a State within the
boundaries of Georgia, defied both local and national authority, and
applied to the United States Supreme Court for recognition and support.
The Government of Georgia had formally spread her laws over the Indian
lands and imprisoned those who resisted her sway.
This Indian problem which Jackson would have to solve was of the utmost
importance to all the region from Georgia to northwestern Louisiana, for
in that region lived the ambitious and prosperous cotton planters, who
were bent on getting possession of all the fertile lands of their
section, and the legislatures of Alabama and Mississippi followed the
example of Georgia in assuming jurisdiction over all Indians within
their boundaries. Jackson entertained no tender scruples about
dispossessing the natives, a fact which was well known and widely
advertised. When, therefore, Crawford, who had been very popular with
the planters of all the South, gave up his antagonism to the Tennessee
candidate, and joined with the friends of Calhoun, whom Crawford hated
only a little more than he had disliked Jackson, there was no
substantial resistance in any of the States, from South Carolina to
Louisiana. The way was preparing for a united South and West.
If the Crawford men of the lower South gave up their hostility to
Jackson and the extreme anti-nationalists of South Carolina submitted
once more to "Calhoun and Jackson," it was by no means certain what the
gentry of the eastern counties of North Carolina would do. They had
supported Crawford in the last campaign, and there was neither Indian
nor land question to compel them to support the Western candidate.
Moreover, there was a bitter struggle between the east and the west of
North Carolina which resembled very much the secession movement in South
Carolina. The eastern men owned most of the slaves and produced the
large staple crops; controlled the lawmaking and the other departments
of the State Government; and its leaders were generally, if not always,
the spokesmen of the State in national affairs. This position and these
advantages were legacies of the constitution of 1776. The fact that they
were in the minority in point of population served only to whet their
appetites for more power. On the other hand, the leaders of the western
section of the State had fought for twenty-five years to reform the
constitution and the laws, to create new counties in order to secure
proportionate representation, and to expand the suffrage in order that
their majorities might be properly counted.
The bitterness of the two sections threatened to result in civil war or
at least a division of the State. But the eastern men yielded and in
1835 a convention met in Raleigh. The planters were in the majority.
They made concessions, however, in the matter of representation and in
the popular election of the governors, which tended to reconcile the
up-country people. But the control of taxation, suffrage, and
representation remained securely in the hands of the legislative
majority of the low-country counties. Slavery and the allied social
system were henceforth immune, and the distinctions, forms, and
realities of a growing aristocracy made steady encroachments upon the
life of the State until the outbreak of the Civil War.
Contrary as it may seem to the ordinary political interests of such men,
the North Carolina gentry accepted Jackson and the Western party in
1828, and the State was almost a unit in support of the more democratic
element in the nation at the very time it was at the point of breaking
to pieces locally because one section of the State was unwilling to
grant the other a fair chance in the common life.
Nor was it different in Virginia. There the small counties of the east,
with a minority of the white population, controlled both houses of the
assembly, the governorship, the courts, and the majority of the State's
representatives in Congress. This advantage, as in North Carolina, had
been guaranteed by the constitution of 1776. The motive for this
one-sided arrangement was the protection of slave property which, it
must be said, paid the larger share of the taxes. In western Virginia,
extending then to the Ohio River, there was a teeming population whose
ablest leaders constantly resisted this system and demanded their
rights. As elsewhere in the West the program was manhood suffrage, equal
representation, and the popular election of important state officials.
After twenty-five years of agitation, a constitutional convention met in
Richmond in the autumn of 1829. Reformers everywhere looked to this body
in the hope that something might be done to "put slavery in a way to
final extinction." Madison, Monroe, Chief Justice Marshall, and John
Randolph were members. All of these favored eastern Virginia and
defended the privileged minority. Thomas Jefferson Randolph, grandson of
Jefferson, Philip Doddridge, and Alexander Campbell represented the
western section of the State and democracy. After months of debate
which covered every subject in government, and especially slavery and
its possible abolition, the convention decided, in the face of serious
threats of secession on the part of the up country, to grant to the more
populous section only a slight increase in the number of
representatives. The power of property in government was once again
confirmed, and so hopeless was the outlook that prominent anti-slavery
men deserted their own cause and joined the other side during the next
decades.
It was not an easy thing for John Randolph, and the other champions of
the eastern Virginia oligarchy to commit their cause to the democratic
party of the Mississippi Valley, whose leader was the "lawless" Jackson.
Yet this is what they did. Nowhere outside of South Carolina was the
influence of Calhoun more effective than in Virginia, and it must have
been this which turned the balance in favor of "the General."
From northern Virginia, even from eastern Maryland, to middle Georgia
the case of democracy seemed doomed. John Randolph had denounced it as a
monstrous "tyranny of King Numbers"; Judge Gaston, one of the purest and
best men of North Carolina, declared that the cry, "let the people
rule," was fallacious, and asked with great concern, "What is then to
become of our system of checks and balances?" While the radical
spokesmen of the South Carolina aristocracy declared that they would
never submit to that "dangerous principle of majority rule."
The growth of the cotton industry between 1800 and 1830 had done much to
retard the growth of democracy, so urgently advocated by Jefferson;
while the interests of the cotton planters and the fears of the tobacco
growers had served to "swing the leaders" of the aristocratic South into
the Jackson columns. Though the price of raw cotton had declined from
forty-four cents per pound in the former year to ten cents in the
latter, the annual increase in the value of the total output between
1820 and 1830 was $1,000,000 and from 1830 to 1840 the value of this
staple crop increased from $29,000,000 to $63,000,000, while all other
items of the national export amounted only to $50,000,000 per year.
Cotton was grown in a comparatively narrow belt of country extending
from lower North Carolina to the Red River counties of Louisiana and
Arkansas, with a total population in 1830 of little more than 1,500,000
people, of whom 500,000 were negro slaves. Yet their annual output was
worth in 1830, $29,000,000 and in 1840, $63,000,000.
In the older South the tobacco crop was not appreciably greater in 1830
than it had been in 1800, though in the succeeding decade the value of
the annual harvest rose from $5,000,000 to $9,000,000, and the
manufacturing of tobacco became an important industry in many
localities. Rice culture was at a standstill during these years, and
sugar was only making a beginning; but the total of these staples,
including cotton, reaches almost to two thirds of the national exports.
The annual _per capita_ income of the lower South ranged during the
Jacksonian era from thirty to forty dollars, while that of the older
Southern States like Virginia and Maryland was not half so great, and
the average for the country as a whole fell much below that of the
South. There was thus a marked contrast between the fortune of the
average Middle States man and that of the cotton planters.
The result was an extraordinary movement southwestward, especially from
the older South and Kentucky, where population was almost stationary
during a period of twenty years. In Virginia good lands sold for less
than the cost of the buildings on them. Jefferson's home, Monticello,
including two hundred acres of land, sold at public auction in 1829 for
$2500. Each autumn saw thousands of masters with their families and
slaves take up the march over the up-country road through Danville,
Virginia, and Charlotte, North Carolina, to Georgia and Alabama, or over
the mountains to the valley of Virginia, whence they followed the great
highland trough southwestward to the Tennessee and Tombigbee Valleys.
The population of Alabama alone increased from 300,000 in 1830 to
600,000 ten years later. Unimproved lands in the cotton country sold at
prices ranging from $2 to $100 per acre, and plantations spread rapidly
over the better parts of the lower South. Men could afford to give away
or abandon their homes in the old South in order to establish
plantations in the Gulf States, for in ten years thrifty men became
rich, as riches went in those days. The cotton country was a magnet
which drew upon the Middle and Atlantic States for their best citizens
during a period of twenty years.
While the Jackson leadership "captured" both the conservatives of
Virginia and the Carolinas and the radicals of the Gulf region, the
cause of democracy made great gains in the Middle States. Half of
Maryland favored Jackson, and strangely enough the conservative half.
Pennsylvania, the head and front of popular government since the days of
Benjamin Franklin, gave every evidence of joining the standard of
Jackson early in the contest. New York had held a constitutional
convention in 1821 and opened the way for universal suffrage and the
popular election of most state and county officers. So radical had been
the sweep of reform that Chancellor Kent and other conservatives spent
their energies in protest and prophecy of dire results to come. But it
was probably the work of Van Buren, a conservative "boss" of New York,
and of Samuel D. Ingham, a wealthy manufacturer of Pennsylvania and an
ally of Calhoun, that made sure the votes of these great States; for men
of the old Federalist party and extreme protectionists of both New York
and Pennsylvania ranged themselves behind Jackson and his Western
democracy.
If we turn now to the chances of Clay and Adams, we must look to a part
of Maryland, to Delaware and New Jersey evenly divided, it seems,
between the "forward and the backward-looking" men, and to New England.
Connecticut abandoned her State Church in 1818 and extended the
electoral franchise to all who enrolled in the militia. Vermont, New
Hampshire, and Maine were border States and distinctly Western in their
ideals, though they were in no way inclined to desert the New England
leader. Massachusetts, the great State of the East, held firmly to her
conservative moorings. In the constitutional convention of 1820 the
liberals had failed at every point. Webster and Story had defeated the
proposition for abolishing the property qualification for membership in
the State Senate; and the more radical plan for overthrowing the
established Congregational Church, the bulwark of steady habits in
Massachusetts, was similarly voted down. Webster, like Randolph, of
Virginia, and Rhett, of South Carolina, urged that property should rule
in every well-ordered community, and what Webster, Randolph, and Rhett
urged, their respective States adopted. Even more reactionary was little
Rhode Island, where privilege and inequality were as firmly intrenched
as anywhere else in the country. The suffrage was limited to freeholders
and representation was denied the majority of the people. The control of
governor, legislature, and courts was in the hands of the minority. In
1821, 1822, and 1824 leaders of the majority endeavored to secure
reforms, but without success.
From Augusta, Maine, to Baltimore stretched the long strip of country
which could be relied on to vote for John Quincy Adams and to sustain
conservative ideals in government. Western New York was also inclined to
Adams, and Clay was confident that he could carry Ohio and Kentucky, the
conservative communities of the West, for his ally. In the main the men
who supported the Administration were those who feared the rough ways of
plain men, the ideals of equality and popular initiative so dear to the
American heart.
The managers of Jackson's campaign were members of the United States
Senate. Calhoun sat in the Vice-President's chair; Van Buren was the
leader of the Middle States group of the opposition; John Randolph was
there and ever ready to turn his wonderful gifts of ridicule and sarcasm
against the Puritan who sat in the "Mansion" and "wasted the money of
the people"; Nathaniel Macon, one of the most popular of all the
Senators, opposed the second Adams as earnestly as he had fought the
first; George Poindexter, of Mississippi, was one of the most powerful
politicians of the cotton kingdom, and he showed a never-failing
hostility to "Clay and his President"; but Thomas H. Benton, of
Missouri, was the most effective, perhaps, of all these men who were
bent on the overthrow of Adams and Clay.
They kept the "bargain and sale" charge alive till the very day of the
election. Benton urged on every possible occasion the adoption of
constitutional amendments forbidding the President to appoint members of
Congress to office, restricting the presidential term to four years
without possibility of reëlection, and limiting the powers and
jurisdiction of the Supreme Court. He also kept the Western squatters on
the public lands closely attached to him by promising that if he ever
came to power their rights to the farms they had taken without leave
should be confirmed by law. Nor did he forget to denounce Adams for
"wantonly giving away Texas" in the negotiations with Spain in 1819.
Every movement of the Government was combated at every point and
defeated if possible. Van Buren, Calhoun, and Benton were an able trio,
and they resorted for four years to every possible device to discredit
the President and his Secretary of State and at the same time to secure
the election of Andrew Jackson.
Duff Green, of Missouri, was brought to Washington to establish and edit
_The Telegraph_, the organ of the opposition which began operations in
1826. It gave currency to the campaign literature and educated the
people in the cause of the West. Adams was an aristocrat; he lived
sumptuously every day at the public expense; he did not associate with
the people; and he aped the courts of Europe, where he had spent so much
of his life. The people of the South and West reached the point where
they could believe anything against John Quincy Adams. No other
President of the United States has ever been so shamefully treated, save
one, and that one was Martin Van Buren, the man who was leading the
onslaughts of 1828.
Adams and Clay were helpless; it was difficult for them to secure
popular allies or get a fair hearing. Richard Rush, the son of the
Jeffersonian radical of 1800, was made candidate for the Vice-Presidency
in the hope of winning Pennsylvania; Clay did his utmost to stem the
tide in the West; Daniel Webster was, of course, on the side of Adams;
William Wirt and James Barbour stood up bravely in Virginia for a doomed
cause. But these earnest and patriotic men could not rally the normal
strength of the conservatives, for the Southern planters had accepted
Jackson and the Middle States conservatives were demoralized by the Van
Buren and Ingham activity.
The rough backwoods General had proved a politician too astute for the
oldest heads. He had been able to enlist the services of Northern men
who did not believe in democracy, and he had the loyal support of
Southern leaders who were just then breaking down the power of democracy
in all the older States of their section. He was not less fortunate in
the expression of his opinions on public questions. On the tariff, the
burning question of the time, he had no views; on internal improvements
he had even less to say. Even on the subject of the free distribution of
the public lands he was silent, though most Westerners took his
hostility to the Indians to mean that he would do what was desired.
Jackson was "all things to all men" in 1828, and this discreet attitude
seems to have been effective, though it was to bring trouble when he
became President.
When the vote was counted, it was found that the people had been aroused
as they had not been before since 1800. The cry, "Shall the people
rule?" was answered by Pennsylvania by a vote for Jackson of 100,000 as
against 50,000 for Adams. Virginia gave Jackson as many votes in 1828 as
had been cast for all parties in 1824. And the total vote of the country
for Jackson was 647,276 as against 508,064 for Adams. The General had
won every electoral vote of the South and the West; and both
Pennsylvania and New York had sustained him. New England was solid for
her candidate, and New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland returned Adams
majorities. The lines were drawn, as had been foreseen, just as in the
contest between Jefferson and John Adams twenty-eight years before; and
in general the attitudes of the social classes were the same.
[Illustration: The Presidential Election of 1828]
The second alliance of South and West had been effected, and "the
people" had come to power a second time, only the West was now the
dominant element. How would the West and "the people" use their power?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
J. S. Bassett's _Life of Andrew Jackson_ (1911) is the best work on that
subject, though James Parton's _Life of Jackson_ (ed. of 1887) is still
the best for a documentary account. The biographies of Henry Clay and
John Quincy Adams in the _American Statesmen_ series are the best for
these men. Of more importance for a view of social and political
conditions of the South and the East are: the _Debates_ of the
constitutional conventions of Massachusetts (1820), New York (1821),
Virginia (1829), and North Carolina (1835), and _The Memoir of John
Quincy Adams_, in twelve large volumes, which covers minutely the period
of 1825 to 1848. This work appeared in 1874-76. It is a remarkable
record of a remarkable man. J. B. McMaster's _History of the United
States_ (1900-13) is a life of the people which no library can afford to
be without, and J. Schouler's _History of the United States under the
Constitution_ (revised ed. 1894-99) is equally good, giving a fuller
account of the political and constitutional development of the country.
A. B. Hart's _The American Nation_ (1904-08) is a fuller coöperative
work by the leading scholars of the United States. The volumes which
bear upon the period in hand will be cited in succeeding chapters.
Special studies of importance are: C. H. Ambler's _Sectionalism in
Virginia_ (1910); D. F. Houston's _Critical Study of Nullification in
South Carolina_ (1896); W. A. Schaper's _Sectionalism in South Carolina_
(1900); and H. M. Wagstaff's _States Rights and Political Parties in
North Carolina_ (1906).