THE DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
Personal Differences, and Party Division--Military Confederation of
the Spanish-American States--Invitation to the United States to send
Representatives to the Congress at Panama--The Acceptance of the
Invitation--Opposition in the Senate to the sending of Representatives
to Panama--Popular Sympathy in the United States for the
South-American States--The President's Nominations Confirmed--The
Haytian Question at the Congress--Cuba and Porto Rico--Real Nature of
the Opposition to the Panama Mission--The Failure of the Panama
Congress--Adams on Internal Improvements in his Message of December
6th, 1825--Van Buren's Resolution against Internal Improvements--The
Practices of the Adams Administration in respect to Internal
Improvements--The Chief Practical Difficulty in the way of a National
System of Internal Improvements--The Tariff of 1824 a Failure--The
Tariff Bill of 1827--Development of the Industrial Antithesis between
the North and the South--Hostility to the Measure in South
Carolina--The Tariff of 1828--The Character of the Bill as Reflected
in the Analysis of the Vote Upon It--The Tariff of 1828 not a Complete
Party Measure--The Presidential Campaign of 1828 still Dominated by
Personal Considerations--Election of Jackson--Advent of the
Parvenus--Foreign Affairs under Jackson's Administration--The
Democratic Party and its Divisions.
[Sidenote: Personal differences, and party division.]
In the absence of any well defined differences in political opinions,
and in the state of determined {146} personal hostility between the
leaders developed by the election of 1824, the fact that Adams and
Clay took broad national views, placed a liberal construction upon the
Constitution, and insisted upon the employment of all the powers
vested by it in the general Government to the highest point of their
usefulness in the promotion of the general welfare, had the natural
effect of forcing the opposition upon the opposite grounds, and,
therefore, tended to make a particularistic party, the so-called
"States' rights" party, out of the Jackson-Calhoun-Crawford faction.
One of the most patent indications of the correctness of the
proposition that the opposition in principle between the National
Republican party and the Democratic party, as the Administrationists
and the Anti-administrationists were soon termed, took its rise
largely in the personal hostility of the leaders, is to be found in
the history of the chief question of the foreign relations with which
the Adams Administration had to deal in the years 1825 and 1826.
[Sidenote: Spanish-American interpretations of "the Monroe Doctrine."]
The Spanish Americans had taken the cautious utterances of President
Monroe, in his December message of 1823, for much more than he meant
them. They thought, or professed to think, that the Government had
pledged itself to meet any intervention of the Allied Powers of Europe
in American affairs by any resistance necessary to defeat it. They
were also acquainted with the fact that both Mr. Adams and Mr. Clay
were more pronounced than President Monroe in favor of going to the
support of the new republics of South and Middle America. Naturally
then, when these two men came to the head of the Government, on March
4th, 1825, the Spanish Americans felt encouraged to expect some {147}
substantial aid from the United States in the further course of their
struggle with Spain and her possible allies.
[Sidenote: Military Confederation of the Spanish-American states.]
Already in the summer of 1822 the Republic of Colombia had initiated
the plan of a Confederation of the Spanish-American states. By a
treaty with Peru, bearing date of July 12th, 1823, by another with
Chili of the same date, by another with the United Provinces of
Central America, of April 12th, 1825, and by another with Mexico, of
September 20th, 1825, the Republic of Colombia had established a
military confederation between these five states, and had pledged them
to send plenipotentiaries to a "general assembly of American states
... with the charge of cementing, in the most solid and stable manner,
the intimate relations which ought to exist between all and every one
of them." According to this agreement the assembly of
plenipotentiaries was to serve as a council in conflicts, as a
rallying-point in common dangers, as a faithful interpreter of
treaties between their respective states, and as an umpire and
conciliator in the disputes and differences which might arise between
their respective states.
[Sidenote: Invitation to the United States to send representatives to
the congress at Panama.]
During the spring of the year 1825 the Ministers of Colombia and
Mexico sought Mr. Clay, and communicated to him the desires of their
respective governments to have the United States send representatives
to this proposed congress; but before giving the formal invitation
they asked to know if it would be accepted. They stated to Mr. Clay
that they did not expect the United States to abandon the attitude of
neutrality, or to take part in those deliberations of the congress
which might relate to the prosecution of the existing war.
[Sidenote: The President's hesitation to accept the invitation.]
Clay's genial spirit was much excited by the grand prospect of a
league of the American states under the {148} hegemony of the United
States. It satisfied the plan of his daring imagination. It filled the
bounds of his far-reaching vision. He immediately communicated the
propositions of the two ministers, Mr. Salazar and Mr. Obregon, to
President Adams, and urged the President to allow him to give them the
assurance that the invitation to send representatives to the congress,
to be held the following October at Panama, would be accepted by the
United States. The President, however, proceeded rather cautiously. He
was, indeed, very friendly in his feelings toward the Spanish-American
states, and was ready to aid their cause in any manner consistent with
the duties of a neutral. But he had a calmer way of regarding things
than his brilliant Secretary of State, and, moreover, upon him rested
the ultimate responsibility. He required Mr. Clay to procure from
Messrs. Salazar and Obregon some information in regard to the subjects
which would be considered by the congress, the nature and form of the
powers to be given to the diplomatic agents which were to compose it,
and the mode of its organization and procedure. At the same time he
allowed Mr. Clay to encourage them to believe that, if satisfactory
answers should be returned to these inquiries, their invitation would
be accepted. He also caused Mr. Clay to warn them that the United
States could not become a party to the existing war with Spain, or
give any counsel in regard to its further prosecution.
[Sidenote: The acceptance of the invitation.]
The answers to these inquiries were not received until the following
November, and in Mr. Clay's letter acknowledging their receipt, they
were said to be not entirely satisfactory to the President. The
ministers were informed, however, that the President had resolved to
send {149} commissioners to the congress at Panama, in case the
Senate, which was to assemble in a few days, should assent to it; but
that the commissioners would not be empowered to do or say anything
which would compromise the neutrality of the United States.
[Sidenote: The President too hasty after all.]
As a matter of fact, the replies from the Governments of Colombia and
Mexico to President Adams' questions would have been regarded as
highly unsatisfactory by any judicious mind, entirely uncommitted;
for, while they left the President's second and third questions
entirely unanswered, they suggested a joint resistance of all the
American states to European interference in American affairs, and to
any further European colonization upon the American continents, as the
principal subjects in the discussion and determination of which the
United States would be expected to take part. They referred to the
fact that President Monroe in his noted message had characterized
these things as being matters of common interest to both North and
South America.
[Sidenote: Opposition in the Senate to the sending of representatives
to Panama.]
Here was certainly a fine opportunity for all sorts of entanglements;
and it is not at all astonishing that, when the subject was brought
before the Senate of the United States by the President's message of
December 26th, 1825, asking the Senate to approve his nominations of
Richard C. Anderson and John Sergeant as ministers from the United
States to the "Assembly of American Nations at Panama," a very strong
opposition to the project was developed in that body. The Senate
referred the nominations to a committee, and called for the diplomatic
correspondence and other papers relating to the subject, which, upon
examination, revealed the facts briefly stated above.
The committee, which was the regular committee on {150} Foreign
Relations, reported against the nominations, or rather against the
policy of having representatives at the congress at all, on the ground
that it might compromise the neutrality of the United States, and
involve the United States in entangling connections with foreign
powers. This report was made to the Senate on January 16th, 1826. The
Senate debated, in secret session, the questions involved in the
report during the latter half of February and the first half of March.
The view held by those who favored the report was that the Panama
congress was to have the character of a military confederation, and
that membership in it would be inconsistent with a status of
neutrality toward Spain and her revolting American colonies. The view
of those who opposed the report and desired to send representatives to
the congress was, that the congress was only a meeting, in one place,
of the plenipotentiaries of the different states for an interchange of
opinions, and would not necessarily alter the attitude of any of the
powers taking part in it upon any subject, or toward any other power.
[Sidenote: Popular sympathy in the United States for the
South-American states.]
The strong sympathy of the people of the United States for the cause
of independence in Middle and South America really violated the spirit
of neutrality, and the influence of this sympathy upon the Senators
and Representatives in Congress was very disturbing to a cool and
judicial consideration of the attitude which the Government should
preserve in the matter of the Panama mission.
[Sidenote: The President's nominations confirmed.]
[Sidenote: No influence of slavery perceptible in the vote upon the
nominations.]
The friends of the mission at last won the day by a vote of
twenty-four to nineteen. Fifteen Northern Senators voted to send
representatives to the congress, and seven voted against doing so.
Nine Southern Senators voted to send representatives, and twelve voted
against doing so. This {151} vote hardly sustains the claim of certain
of the historians, that the slavery interest was the primal cause of
the opposition to the Panama mission. One of the most eminent among
these says that the historical significance of the contest over the
question was that slavery threw aside its municipal character, its
character as a Commonwealth institution, and demanded to prescribe
both the internal and external policies of the nation. This sounds
dramatic, but if it means, as it appears to mean, that when, in a
federal system of government, any interest or institution regulated by
Commonwealth law asks protection from the general Government against
foreign influence and interference it thereby asserts command over the
nation, it is a proposition which also sounds decidedly _outre_ to an
American lawyer. The Constitution of the United States imposed the
international protection of all such interests and institutions upon
the general Government when it reserved such interests and
institutions to the jurisdiction of the Commonwealths and gave the
general Government alone international standing. When, then, such
interests and institutions claim that protection, they are only asking
for a right guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and are by no
means asserting an authority over the Constitution and the country.
[Sidenote: The Haytian question at the congress.]
It is true that Mr. Salazar said in his communication something about
the status of Hayti being a subject of deliberation for the congress.
It was also true that Hayti had been for thirty years in a state of
chronic insurrection and revolution, and that the former negro slave
population had, by the assassination of their former masters and
mistresses, freed themselves from bondage, taken possession of the
country, and were reducing it to barbarism at a rapid {152} pace. It
is furthermore true that the slaveholders in the United States did not
wish their own homes to be made the scenes of any such ruin and
savagery, or themselves or their families to be made subject to any
such fate; and, it may be confidently hazarded, that no Northerner, at
that day, viewed such possibilities with anything but aversion and
horror. It required a quarter of a century of radical abolition
recklessness, the blunder-crime of secession, and the desperation of
long-continued, and at first unsuccessful, war, to make the men of the
North regard without sympathy such dangers to their Southern brethren.
The North and the South simply could not have divided, at that time,
upon the question of the relation to Hayti. There was only one view
upon that subject, and that was that the example and influence of
Hayti must be held far away from these shores. This could have been
accomplished, however, as well by attending the congress as by staying
away, perhaps better. At least, the Haytian question was no chief
ground of opposition to the mission, and certainly no chief ground in
favor of the mission.
[Sidenote: Cuba and Porto Rico.]
It is more probable that one of the reasons which moved President
Adams and Mr. Clay to urge attendance upon the congress was to be in a
position to restrain the Spanish-American states from attempting to
seize Cuba and Porto Rico. During the latter half of the year 1825, at
the very moment when the Government was communicating with the
Spanish-American states in regard to the congress, Mr. Clay was urging
the Czar of Russia, on the one side, to exercise his influence upon
the Spanish court for the cessation of hostilities on the part of
Spain against the revolting American colonies, on the ground that
Spain could never resubjugate them, and would by a continuance of
hostilities exasperate them and excite them to attack {153} Cuba and
Porto Rico with the purpose of expelling the Spanish power from these
islands, and was urging the Spanish-American states, on the other
side, to refrain from such an attack, on the ground that if they did
attempt to seize these islands the Czar would not only cease his good
offices with the Spanish King to end the war, but might bring the
entire power of the Holy Alliance to the aid of the Spanish King for
the resubjection of his former American colonies. The policy of
President Adams' Administration was clearly opposed to the occupation
of Cuba and Porto Rico, either by the Spanish Americans or by any
European state other than Spain herself. In this matter, also, the
Administration and the opposition held the same view.
[Sidenote: Real nature of the opposition to the Panama mission.]
The only natural explanations of the determined opposition to the
Panama mission were, thus, either the dread of embarrassing
entanglements with the Spanish-American states, and the consequent
compromise of the status of neutrality toward them and their
motherland, or the spirit of personal hostility to the Administration.
From the merits of the question the former would seem the more likely.
It was certainly, to any candid mind, a sufficient reason. On the
other hand, an expression uttered by Mr. Van Buren as he left the
Senate chamber, after having just made a most earnest appeal against
the mission and cast his vote against it, would indicate that the
opposition fought the Administration in this matter from factional
motives purely. He is reported to have said: "They have beaten us by a
few votes, after a hard battle; but if they had only taken the other
side and refused the mission, we should have had them."
[Sidenote: The failure of the Panama congress.]
The debate continued so long, however, that the congress at Panama
adjourned to Tacubaya before the {154} representatives from the United
States appeared. Spain ceased to wage war against her former colonies.
The Holy Alliance did not interfere. The Spanish-American states
suspended their operations against Cuba and Porto Rico. Hayti remained
in isolated barbarism. And the congress of the American nations never
reassembled.
It is possible that the jingo policy of the Administration may have
helped to produce all these results. It is probable that the same
results would have followed had the Senate refused the mission to
Panama. It is certainly most fortunate that these results were
attained without the attendance of the representatives of the United
States upon the congress. All possible entanglements were thus
avoided, while the purposes of the Administration, in so far at least
as they subserved the true interests of the country, were
substantially accomplished.
It is true that the special commercial advantages which Clay had hoped
for were not secured, nor his dream of an American Confederacy under
the protectorate of the United States realized. Neither were the
President's ideas in regard to methods for settling mooted questions
of international relations, nor those in regard to the advancement of
religious liberty, fulfilled. But these things were all premature, to
say the least, and none of them would, probably, have been helped
onward by any discussion in the congress of the American nations. With
the exception of the United States, those nations were altogether too
immature to deal with such problems; and the United States itself was
not sufficiently consolidated and powerful to assume the duties of
instructor and guardian over them. It is not probable that any
opportunity for doing good or receiving good was lost by the
non-attendance of representatives {155} from the United States upon
the deliberations of the Panama congress. It is far more probable that
both the doing and the suffering of injury were escaped.
While the question of the relation of the United States to the other
states upon the American continents is by no means transitory, the
question of the Panama mission was so, at least so much so as not to
serve well as an issue for the division of the Republican party into
two permanently hostile forces.
[Sidenote: Adams on internal improvements in his message of December
6th, 1825.]
[Sidenote: Van Buren's resolution against internal improvements.]
The question of internal improvements was a better issue, from this
point of view. In his first annual message President Adams took high
national ground upon this subject. He seemed to attribute to the
general Government unlimited power to construct roads and canals,
establish universities and observatories, and to do any and every
thing conducive to the improvement of the people. Clay himself, it is
said, was a little staggered by the exceeding broadness of Mr. Adams'
ideas. While Mr. Van Buren, the leader of the opposition in the
Senate, offered a resolution in that body, a fortnight after the
message, which declared that Congress did not possess the power to
make roads and canals within the respective Commonwealths, and
proposed the formation of an amendment to the Constitution, which
should prescribe the powers that the general Government should have
over the subject of internal improvements.
[Sidenote: The practices of the Adams Administration in respect to
internal improvements.]
Mr. Adams seems to have yielded before the opposition in this matter,
and to have thus avoided making it a further issue. In his subsequent
messages he confined himself chiefly to observations upon the work
done by the engineers appointed under the Congressional Act of April
30th, 1824, for making surveys, plans, {156} and estimates for
national routes. The Administration and Congress simply put into
practice the Monroe ideas upon the subject. Money was appropriated by
Congress for the construction and repair of roads, and was expended
under the supervision of the President, and stock was taken by the
Government in private corporations, organized under Commonwealth law,
and subject to Commonwealth jurisdiction, for the construction of
canals; but no jurisdiction and no administrative powers were
exercised or asserted by the general Government over such
improvements, except, perhaps, the power of eminent domain.
The opposition, however, which had been excited at first by Mr. Adams'
proposition to make a large advance upon Mr. Monroe's principles, was
not satisfied with his return in practice to those principles. They
professed to entertain the fear that the Administration had a settled
policy of encroachment upon the reserved rights and powers of the
Commonwealths, and they now began to watch and combat the movements of
the Administration chiefly from this point of view. This attitude must
not yet, however, be ascribed wholly or chiefly to the conscious
influences of the slavery interest. Factional hostility to the
Administration, and the general settling back into the "States'
rights" view of the Constitution, which manifests itself all through
the history of the United States as a reaction from the tension of war
and the enthusiasm of strong national exertion, did more to determine
it than the views of the slaveholders in regard to the interests of
their peculiar institution.
[Sidenote: The chief practical difficulty in the way of a national
system of internal improvements.]
The great practical difficulty in regard to the subject was in making
such determinations as to the national or local character of the
proposed improvements as would be satisfactory to the mass of the
people. {157} Naturally every Congressman considered the roads of his
district as matters of national concern; and, in spite of the law of
1824 vesting in the President and his board of engineers the laying
out of such routes as the President might decide to be required by the
general welfare, the scramble for national money to be expended for
local purposes increased from one session to another.
It was the question of the tariff which showed more clearly than
anything else the influence of the interests of slavery in the
attitude which the slaveholders would finally take toward the
industrial policies of the nation, and which would contribute more
than anything else to the division of the Republican party from the
point of view of principle.
[Sidenote: The Tariff of 1824 a failure.]
The great purpose of the Tariff of 1824 was to give the American
manufacturers of coarse woollens a substantial control of the home
markets. In two years of trial this result had not been realized. A
vast amount of capital had been transferred from other enterprises to
build new woollen mills, and the markets were so glutted with their
fabrics that sale for them could only be found by virtually excluding
foreign goods of the same material and grade. It was claimed that the
foreign goods were sold upon foreign account, and not by _bona fide_
American merchants, and that the goods were thus undervalued by the
fictitious parties to the importation, and the duty thus so largely
avoided as to make the importation practically free. It was,
therefore, contended that the agent of the foreign manufacturer or
merchant was ruining the American manufacturer, on the one hand, and
the American merchant, on the other. President Adams himself, in his
message of December 5th, 1826, referred to the frauds thus committed
on the revenue. The {158} manufacturers of woollens in New England and
Pennsylvania memorialized Congress, during the latter part of the year
1826, representing themselves to be in dire distress and praying for
aid. These memorials were referred to the Committee on Manufactures of
the House of Representatives for report. On January 10th, 1827, the
chairman of this committee, Mr. Mallary, of Vermont, introduced a bill
to meet the difficulties above described.
[Sidenote: The Tariff Bill of 1827.]
This bill proposed to introduce a system of minimal valuations at the
custom-house instead of taking the foreign invoice as the basis for
the levy of the duty, as was the existing practice, and it placed the
valuation of coarse woollens so high as practically to prohibit their
importation. The bill proposed, however, to raise the tariff on wool
to such a rate as would deprive the manufacturers very largely of the
benefit to be secured by the system of minimal valuations. It was
questionable whether the manufacturers would get any very material aid
out of this bill, which contained so high a rate of duty upon the raw
material, but it was necessary to incorporate the provision in order
to secure the support of the West to the measure.
[Sidenote: Development of the industrial antithesis between the North
and the South.]
The industrial antithesis between the North and the South became more
exactly organized under the issue presented by this bill.
Massachusetts joined the high protection ranks, and Kentucky went over
to the side of the South. Missouri, however, still voted for the
tariff, while New York City still preserved its attitude of
opposition, and Maine's Representatives were evenly divided in the
final vote on the bill. The protection phalanx from Pennsylvania was
broken, too, by the defection of her two most important
Representatives, Ingham and Buchanan. The attitude of {159} Buchanan
was a matter of especial note. He held that the constitutionality of
the tariff and the policy of a moderate protection had been completely
settled by the founders of the Constitution and by the uniform
practice of the Government, but that so high a tariff as the one now
proposed on woollens was impolitic, from the point of view of the
general welfare, and unjust, from that of an equal distribution of the
burdens of taxation. Mr. Buchanan owed much of his subsequent success
to the moderate views which he advanced and adhered to at this
juncture.
[Sidenote: The bill passed by the House of Representatives.]
It will be seen, however, that the support of, and the opposition to,
the tariff respectively had not yet become entirely sectional, though
an advance had been made since 1824 toward that result. The bill
passed the House on February 10th, 1827, but the Senate did not reach
its consideration before the conclusion of the session.
[Sidenote: Hostility to the measure in South Carolina.]
It had the effect, however, of arousing most intense excitement and
bitter opposition in South Carolina. In fact, it is from this date and
issue that we must trace the history of nullification in South
Carolina. In the summer following the Congressional session of 1826-27
the chief personages of the Commonwealth assembled at Columbia. The
Governor, Mr. Taylor, presided, and the principal orator of the
occasion was the President of the College of the Commonwealth, Dr.
Cooper, a man of rare powers and great learning, an Englishman by
birth and education, a free-trader in his political economy, and a
"States' rights" man in his political science. In his speech he
suggested disunion as preferable to submission to the tariff
legislation of Congress. The resolutions passed by the assembly were
not so inflammatory as the Doctor's speech, but they declared that
such legislation {160} was calculated to give rise to the inquiry
whether the Union was of any benefit, under such conditions, to the
Southern Commonwealths.
[Sidenote: The bill neglected by the Senate.]
Copies of these resolutions were sent to the legislative bodies of the
several Southern Commonwealths, but they evoked no response
whatsoever. The proposed tariff had, by the inaction of the Senate,
been virtually abandoned, and it was therefore unnecessary to protest
against its passage as law, or make threats against its execution.
[Sidenote: The Tariff of 1828.]
At the beginning of the next session of Congress, that of 1827-28, the
committee on Manufactures brought in another bill. It advanced the
duty on iron by from ten to fifteen per centum; it advanced the duty
on wool by from about fifty to more than one hundred per centum,
imposing both a specific and an _ad valorem_ duty upon it. It changed
the duty upon woollen goods costing less than $2.50 a square yard from
an _ad valorem_ to a specific duty, and increased the duty by about
twenty per centum. It retained the _ad valorem_ duty on woollens
costing more than $2.50 a square yard, and increased the same by about
twenty per centum, and in addition thereto it imposed a minimum
valuation of $4 a square yard upon all such goods costing between
$2.50 and $4 a square yard, which would effect an additional increase
of duty of about fifty per centum on the average. It finally increased
the duty on hemp by about twenty-five per centum immediately, and by
about eighty per centum in three years.
This was a far more moderate protection upon woollen fabrics than that
proposed at the previous session, on account of the fact that the duty
on the raw material was so greatly increased. It was at least
questionable whether the manufacturers would receive any substantial
benefit out of the measure. Mr. Mallary, the {161} chairman of the
committee, felt so dubious about this that he dissented from the
committee's report in regard to woollen fabrics, and offered an
amendment to the bill for the purpose of curing this defect. He could
not, however, bring the House to accept his proposition, but his
opposition to the committee's report opened the way for some
modification of the bill to the advantage of the manufacturers. It was
still, however, no great boon to the manufacturers. It was about as
much a wool- and hemp-grower's bill as a manufacturer's bill. Nobody
could tell whether it would be more beneficial to the manufacturers
than to the wool- and hemp-growers.
One thing alone was certain, and that was, that the cotton-planters
and those engaged in foreign commerce would have no direct share in
the benefits of the measure. And it was also very difficult to figure
out any indirect benefits for them. It would not widen the domestic
market for raw cotton. It would increase the price of woollen fabrics.
It would increase the domestic demand for the products of Western
agriculture, and thereby increase the price of these products to the
Southern consumers of them. And it would discourage the importation of
woollen goods. These were all the results easily discernible, and
every one of them bore hard upon the planting and shipping interests.
The representatives from the Southern Commonwealths pointed out these
things, but they were told to establish manufactures themselves, and
then they would be tributary to nobody.
[Sidenote: The Southerners not yet agreed that slave labor could not
be employed in manufacture.]
Some of the Southerners, like Colonel Hayne, frankly replied that they
could not establish manufactures with slave labor; while others, like
Mr. McDuffie, threatened ruin to the Northern manufacturers if they
succeeded in having the duties raised so high as to drive the South,
with its cheap slave labor, into manufactures.
{162} [Sidenote: The character of the bill as reflected in the
analysis of the vote upon it.]
The vote in the House of Representatives reflects quite perfectly the
character of the bill. The members from the wool- and hemp-growing
sections supported the bill; those from the manufacturing section were
indifferent; those from the shipping and commercial sections opposed
it; and those from the planting section opposed it unanimously.
In the Senate, amendments were made to the bill which altered it in
the direction of a slightly increased protection to the manufacturers.
Still, Mr. Webster, who had become a champion of protection since his
section had become a manufacturing section, claimed that the bill was
of little worth to the manufacturers, while the increased duty on hemp
would bear heavily on the shipping interests of New England. He voted
for the bill, however, while his colleague, Mr. Silsbee, voted against
it. The vote in the Senate differed only slightly, as regards
sectional distribution, from that in the House. It was finally passed
by both Houses as amended by the Senate, and was signed by the
President on the nineteenth day of May, 1828; and opposition to it
thereafter must take on the form of petition for its repeal, or that
of resistance to its execution. Before it could come to the latter,
however, three things must be accomplished. The first was the
invention of the morale of such resistance. The second was the
creation of the party of resistance. And the last was the capture of
some existing governmental organization by that party.
[Sidenote: The Tariff of 1828 not a complete party measure.]
While thus it cannot be said that the "Jackson men" voted against this
bill and the Administration men for it, still there was something
which looked like an approach toward this relation. Certainly the
Southern wing of the Jacksonians, or of the Democratic party, as the
Jacksonians now called {163} themselves in distinction from the
National Republicans, opposed the measure with something like
unanimity. Many of Jackson's Northern supporters, however, voted for
the bill, and it may be said that the Democratic party of the North
was then in favor of moderate protection to all the interests of the
country.
The party divisions of 1828 were still largely dominated by
considerations of personal partisanship, and the organization of the
two parties, which had now emerged from the all-comprehending
Republican party, upon the basis of different political creeds, still
lacked much of completion.
[Sidenote: The presidential campaign of 1828 still dominated by
personal considerations.]
The campaign of 1828 was not fought upon the issues of any well
established differences in political and economic policies. Jackson
and his followers simply appealed to the mass of the people,
especially to the lower classes, "to turn the rascals out," on the
ground that the "Old Hero," the friend of the people, had been
cheated, by a corrupt bargain between the two chiefs of the
Administration, out of his rights in 1824, and that the whole pack of
officials serving under them had been corrupted by the venality of
their superiors. The people must take possession of their Government
and send the wicked aristocracy of office holders to the right about,
was the chief demand of the Democracy of 1828, and it was with the
empty phrases, with which they rang the changes upon this demand, that
they won the battle.
[Sidenote: Election of Jackson.]
Jackson and Calhoun were elected by an electoral vote of more than two
to one. Every Commonwealth west of the Alleghanies, and every one
south of Mason and Dixon's line, except Delaware and Maryland, gave
its electoral vote entire to Jackson and Calhoun; and in addition
thereto Pennsylvania {164} gave them its entire vote, New York gave
them twenty of its thirty-six votes, Maine one of its nine, and
Maryland five of its eleven.
[Sidenote: Advent of the parvenus.]
It was a tremendous _bouleversement_. The mob of malcontents had
gotten together, had pulled together, and had accomplished their
purpose. The old ruling class in American society was driven from
place and power, and a new, untried, and inexperienced set of men
seized the reins of Government. It looked something like a combination
of the South and West against the East. They had, however, secured the
two most important Eastern Commonwealths through Van Buren's activity
in New York and Jackson's own popularity in Pennsylvania. It was not
yet, however, a socialistic uprising against the wealth of the East.
It was a political uprising against the monopoly of office-holding by
the old official aristocracy. It was the introduction of a new class
of eligibles into the official positions. Whether the subsequent
effects of this change would be a modification of the structure of the
Union or the policies of the Government remained to be seen.
[Sidenote: Foreign affairs under Jackson's Administration.]
Jackson placed Van Buren at the head of the Department of State, and
under the influence of this most astute politician started out upon
his presidential career. The foreign diplomacy of the Administration
was naturally successful. The disputes with Great Britain in regard to
the northeast boundary of the United States, and in regard to trade
between the United States and the British colonies, and the dispute
with France in regard to indemnity for the spoliations committed by
the French upon American commerce in the first years of the century,
were successfully dealt with, by a judicious admixture of shrewdness,
conciliatoriness, and firmness. These questions were not, however, of
sufficient importance to {165} turn the attention from the internal
questions of constitutional interpretation and governmental policies.
[Sidenote: The Democratic party and its divisions.]
The Jackson party, or the Democratic party, must make its creed, both
political and economic, and it must adjust that creed both to the
Constitution and to the working of the Government. The party was
composed of three tolerably distinct divisions, which may be termed
the Southern, the Western, and the Eastern divisions. Of these, the
Western division alone was a real democracy. The Southern and Eastern
divisions were rather aristocracies. The Southern division was
emphatically so. And when it came to policies, the Western division
favored internal improvements, and the Eastern and Southern divisions
opposed them; the Western division favored a tariff on wool and hemp,
the Eastern favored moderate protection of manufactures, and the
Southern division wanted as nearly free trade as the revenues of the
Government would allow. It was a great task for the Administration to
maintain the combination, and keep a reliable majority in Congress.
{166}