Distribution of Industrial Plants in 1833
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In a hopeless minority in their own States before 1830, they looked to the South for relief, and at least understood the politics of the planters. Their successors composed the nucleus of the party of Cushing, Everett, and Winthrop in 1860. It is difficult for us in our day of great things to understand the industrial and social revolution of the decade which preceded the inauguration of the first Western President, and it was difficult for men to make the transition from the small farmer system of Jefferson's day to the industrial régime of 1830; many good people were broken in the process, while whole classes of the population exchanged the life of the open country for that of the crowded and unsanitary towns, exchanged a rude and hard independence for a semi-servile subjection.
The new Eastern régime readily enlisted the support of the old professional classes. The clergy and the votaries of the law, always doing the bidding of the strongest in society, promptly took their places in the system. When dignitaries of an Eastern town gradually laid aside their rough farmers' clothes and put on the smooth garbs of directors of corporations or financial magnates, the legal briefs and sermons underwent a similar change. Social amenities displaced Calvinistic theology; dancing, which had been a crime against the Church, became mere frivolity and finally an innocent pastime. Leading lawyers ceased to plead in petit courts to inferior magistrates, and learned to devise forms of contracts, to lobby in legislatures, or appear with the great Maryland and Virginia practitioners before the Federal Supreme Court.
The legal profession of the East naturally madecommon cause with their clients. The state courts, already accustomed to curb the democracy of the time and declare public enactments unconstitutional, when the interests of property required, as readily joined the new standards. The careers of Justice Parsons of Massachusetts and Chancellor Kent of New York, to whom all judges and lawyers of the time looked up as sources of inspiration, illustrate admirably the common tendency. Everywhere in the East as in the South “independent” judges asserted the power to declare laws unconstitutional.
The national courts had undergone the same evolution, except that they had met with violent opposition in the South and West. In many decisions from 1792 to 1830 the Federal Supreme Court asserted its authority over Congress, the President, and the States. In almost all of these instances the federal judges found the heartiest support from the East. The great institution over which Chief Justice Marshall presided with such perfect dignity, and which was not paralleled anywhere else in the world, lent its support to the interests of the East. If the constitutionality of the tariff were denied by irate planters, Eastern men pointed to decisions of the Federal Supreme Court; if the powers of the General Government under which the industrial or financial interests of the East operated were questioned, it was easy to find a decision of Chief Justice Marshall to cover the case. Nothing proved more fortunate for the leaders of the industrial revolution than the almost constant support of the federal courts and of the legal profession as a whole.
The compact social life of the industrial towns was still further reinforced by the clergy. In the shift from a stern theology to an easy-going religious philosophy, William Ellery Channing was a conspicuous leader. Harvard had already become a Unitarian center, and in 1836 the Transcendental Club was organized in Boston with Ralph Waldo Emerson, a preacher in revolt against the old theology, as one of its leaders; high-toned men, whose minds revolted alike against the old Puritanism, the grosser talk of rates of exchange and the building of common roadways, found consolation in speculative philosophy and romantic literature. TheNorth American Reviewwas already fifteen years old, and the best minds of the country were happy to have their thought and inspirations printed in its staid columns. Boston was a state of mind in 1830, and a good Methodist preacher who visited the city a little later lamented the lapse from the great virtues and the great theology of the Mathers.
But outside of Boston and its university suburb, there was little patience with a new religion or with a theology which did not teach the world the total depravity of man and the vengeance of an angry Deity consigning his wayward children to everlasting perdition. Southern gentlemen like Calhoun or Hayne might accept the mild and humane God of Channing, but not the farmers of the rural districts or the business men of the small towns.
If Boston cultivated philosophy and religious reform, New York was the seat of a literature that was read. Washington Irving, the author of theSketch-BookandTales of a Traveller, was just returning from a long and triumphant literary sojourn in Europe to make his home on the Hudson. James Fenimore Cooper was publishing hisLeather Stocking Tales, which have made the hair on so many boys' heads stand on end. William Cullen Bryant was making theNew York Evening Postthe organ of American culture and setting the pace for the better element of the press. In Philadelphia, Carey and Lea were alternately publishing the writings of struggling literary lights and fiery pamphlets on the tariff and internal improvements. In 1832 John Pendleton Kennedy, of Maryland, published hisSwallow Barn, a novel which portrayed the easy-going life of the Virginia planters; and in Richmond, William Wirt, disgusted with Western politics, rested on his laurels as the author of theBritish Spyand theLife of Patrick Henry. To match theNorth American Reviewthe Charleston lovers of literature were publishing their excellentSouthern Review. Even history was not without her muses. Reverend Jared Sparks was editing all the crudities of grammar and errors of spelling out of Washington's fourteen volumes of correspondence; George Ticknor, a young professor at Harvard, was beginning the work which was to culminate in his famousHistory of Spanish Literature; and George Bancroft was writing aHistory of the United Stateswhich was to win him international fame and ultimately to secure him a seat in the Cabinet of President Polk.
If literature and history were beginning to thrivein New England and the Middle States, painting and sculpture also had their devotees. Allston and Greenough had won laurels in Boston; Inman and Sully were making portraits in Philadelphia which well-to-do Middle States lawyers and Southern planters liked well enough to pay for in good banknotes; even in far-off Kentucky Joel T. Hart was making the busts of great American politicians on which his title to distinction was to rest. And Charleston, never outdone inante-bellumtimes, encouraged a real genius in James de Veaux, the painter, so soon to fall a victim to tuberculosis. That was a promising religious, literary, and artistic life, which kept time to the looms of the industrial belt or idealized the nascent feudalism of the South. But we must turn to the fierce economic and political struggles about to be reopened in Washington—struggles in which Americans of that day as well as of this always take supreme interest.
The change in Massachusetts and Connecticut from a defiant particularism and an uncompromising free-trade policy, during the short years of 1815 to 1830, to a positive nationalism and emphatic protective program parallels exactly the change at the same time in South Carolina from nationalism and a protective tariff to a strict states-rights and an unbending free-trade system. If Calhoun turned sharp corners in those years, Webster proved equally agile. The whole life of the East was being reconstructed, and all classes were adapting themselves to the new organization. The small farmers, allies in 1804 of Thomas Jefferson and his up-country democracy, became ancillary to the industrial towns where they found markets for their products; and the new river and canal and railroad towns were but the recent creations of the new order. With the exception of a few remote counties and certain old-fashioned merchants, all New England and the Middle States ranged themselves around the dominant industrial masters and presented an almost solid front to the Southern and Western combination which had swept the country in 1828. There was no doubt that Adams, Webster, and Clay would renew the fight in time to make an issue in 1832.
And their case was by no means hopeless. In the electoral college of 1832 these Northeastern States would cast 131 of the total 286 votes. If the industrial forces could hold their communities together as the West had learned to do, and regain their former hold on Ohio, their candidate would again be successful. Losing the Presidency, they would still have, after the apportionment of 1831, a majority of 10 in the Federal House of Representatives, which would guarantee the protective policy against serious modification. And the moral support of the Supreme Court was not without value. Thus if the new President and the Senate be conceded, the popular branch of Congress and the national judiciary would make steady bulwarks.
If there were sections of New England, like Maine, or of the Middle States, like western Pennsylvania, whose people would not support the industrial program, there were dominant sections of the old South, like eastern Virginia and all South Carolina, where the leaders either feared or hated Jackson. Nor did all the West love the South. In the States which bordered the Ohio River most men demanded internal improvements at national expense, which all knew the South could not grant. With the ablest New England and Middle States leaders in the Senate and House, why might not the arrangement of 1825 be renewed? It was, then, with every expectation of victory in 1832 that the sanguine Clay came back to Congress in December, 1831; even John Quincy Adams, who now became a member of the House, was not without hope that the ill-selected Cabinet of Jackson would go to pieces and that a “restoration” would follow in due time. Washington was to be the scene of still another conflict of the sections that would threaten the very existence of the Union, not yet accustomed to the idea of a compact nationality.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The best sources for the growth of the various industries before 1830 are government documents.The Report on Manufactures, Executive Documents, 22d Cong., 1st Sess., 2 vols., is a rare and valuable work; andExecutive Documents, 34th Cong., 1st Sess., vol. 4, gives the statistics of manufactures down to 1850 by States. Darby and Dwight'sNew Gazetteer of the United States(1833), and J. L. Bishop'sHistory of American Manufactures(1868), are useful if sometimes exasperating. Miss Katharine Coman'sThe Industrial History of the United States(1910) is the best account for general use. J. B. McMaster'sHistory of the United States, vol. v (1900), and F. J. Turner'sThe Rise of the New Westalready cited (1906), are always serviceable. For a cross-section of the industrial revolution in New England, read C. F. Adams'sThree Episodes of Massachusetts History(1903). Davis R. Dewey'sFinancial History of the United States(1903) is standard; and A. C. McLaughlin'sThe Court, the Constitution and Parties(1912), gives the best accountof the beginnings of judicial supremacy, while W. G. Sumner'sHistory of American Banking(1896) tells the story of the banks by sections. TheAmerican Commonwealthhistories are serviceable for the individual States. For the biographies of leading statesmen, theAmerican StatesmenandAmerican Crisesseries are satisfying. Intellectual life is well treated in W. P. Trent'sHistory of American Literature(1903), G. W. Sheldon'sAmerican Painters(1899), and Lorado Taft'sHistory of American Sculpture(1903).
The man against whom these powerful leaders were directing all their energies was still counted an amateur in politics, irascible and indiscreet. He was laughed at in the cities as a boor and condemned in New England as an ignoramus, though Harvard College, under some strange inspiration, was soon to award him the doctorate of laws. Having come to power by means of a combination of South and West, Jackson had found his followers divided and somewhat unmanageable. Half the members of his Cabinet, S. D. Ingham, Secretary of the Treasury; John Branch, Secretary of the Navy; and John M. Berrien, Attorney-General, looked to Calhoun as their chief, while the others, Martin Van Buren; Secretary of State, John H. Eaton, Secretary of War, and William T. Barry, the Postmaster-General, distrusted their colleagues and clung to the President. It was natural, therefore, that cabinet meetings should be embarrassing and that a nondescript group of clerks and newspaper editors, William B. Lewis, Frank P. Blair, and Amos Kendall, all from the West, should become a sort of closet cabinet with whom Jackson should take council.
Moreover, Jackson increased his difficulties by gratifying the Western demand that a clean sweep in the offices should be made. New and untried menand hot-headed partisans were placed in the thousands of vacancies created by removals. Such a change in the civil and subordinate offices of the Government had never before been made, and Washington society, which always takes a hearty interest in the offices, was not slow to manifest its contempt for “the man of the people” and his “hungry” followers. But there was still another trouble. Secretary Eaton had married the daughter of a tavern-keeper; her reputation was unsavory and notorious. She now proposed to enter Washington social life as a leader, and Jackson gave her his blessing. The wives of the members of the Cabinet refused to recognize Mrs. Eaton, and a social war followed, in which President, preachers to the various local churches, and newspaper editors had their say. Division in the Cabinet, bitter enmity between certain leaders of the party, and the greater war between the powerful industrial and agricultural sections of the country gave every assurance that a storm was approaching.
To postpone the evil day Jackson resorted to evasions and oracular utterances on the tariff and the other serious problems in all his public papers and speeches. But the South pressed every day its free-trade program; the East demanded at least a continuation of the measure of protection already accorded to its interests; and the West, really needing roadways and canals, insisted on the building of these improvements and on the opening of the public lands to settlement on easier terms. If the President yielded to any of these groups, his administration was likely to fail. He naturally sought to shift the issue andfelt the public pulse on the question of a renewal of the charter of the National Bank, which was not to expire till 1836. This was looking to the future; but on this subject it was possible to continue the union of South and West. The first annual message, in which the Bank was discussed, aroused at once the great financial interests, and they set in motion influences which speedily isolated the President and secured to the Bank the enthusiastic support of a Cabinet, divided on everything else, and of a majority of both houses of Congress. Instead of preventing a disruption of his party, Jackson had only hastened the event.
The people of South Carolina, supported as they hoped by most of the South, pressed through Calhoun, during the winter of 1828-29 and again in 1829-30, for some assurance that the President would aid them in their attack upon the protective policy of the Government, threatening state intervention in case of refusal. The East was no less insistent that nothing should be done. Congress seemed to be completely deadlocked. Under these circumstances Senator Foote, of Connecticut, voicing the fears of his section, introduced December 29, 1829, his famous resolution which contemplated the discontinuance of the federal land sales and the substantial curbing of the growing West. It was a blow at Benton and Jackson which was at once accepted by all the West as a challenge. The representatives of all three sections were deeply interested. Benton took the lead in the discussion which followed, and he urged once more his preëmption and graduationbills. In the former he would guarantee the prior claims of squatters on lands they had already unlawfully taken up; in the latter he meant to regulate the price of public lands according to quality and location. In both the object was to make the way of the pioneer easy; and the West supported him solidly. Whether the South would keep its tacit pledges in the face of Jackson's non-committal attitude on the tariff was the query of all until Hayne, an intimate friend of Calhoun and the recognized spokesman of his section, arose on January 19, 1830, and took the strongest ground on behalf of Benton and the West, and attacked the East for its long-continued resistance to westward expansion. The next day Webster made reply, and the debate between the two representative men continued to the end of the month. The importance to the present-day reader of this discussion consists in the revelation of the directly opposing and hostile attitudes of South and East on the great problems then before the country: (1) the South would support the West in its policy of easy lands and rapid development; the East would resist that policy; (2) the East would appeal to the nationalist sentiment of the interior and the West on behalf of its program of protection to industry, while the South would resist that program even to the extent of declaring national tariff laws null and void. Hayne and Benton showed in their speeches the substantial solidarity of the alliance of South and West. Webster undertook to break that alliance by his powerful appeal to the feelings of Western men who loved the Union, which the New Englandersought to show to be in especial danger. What was really on trial was the American system, the Tariff of 1828. It was a serious national crisis, as Calhoun wrote in May following: “The times are perilous beyond any that I have ever witnessed; all the great interests of the country are coming into conflict.” The protectionists thought they must control the country or the Union would be worth little to them; the Southern free traders insisted upon the mastery of the Government or else they would have a quiet dissolution of the Confederation; while the Western men must have freer control of the public lands and more immigrants or their sturdy nationalism would rapidly disappear.
Having failed for the moment to rally the leaders of his disintegrating party on the Bank issue, Jackson and his intimate advisers decided that above all things it was necessary for the old hero to stand again for the Presidency in the next election. Van Buren, who had been steadily growing in the estimation of Jackson, while Calhoun had been losing ground, was the foremost to urge a second term despite the understanding and the public promises that Jackson was to hold office only one term. Amos Kendall and William B. Lewis supported his view heartily, fearing as they did that Henry Clay would otherwise be the next President. At the dinner on Jefferson Day, April 13, 1830, for which elaborate preparations had been made, the President chose to give expression to more decided opinions than had been customary during his first year in office. His toast, “The Union, it must be preserved,” was akinto the utterances of Webster in the debate with Hayne. It was plain to the South that he would not longer support their contentions, that he would appeal to the same nationalist sentiment which had been shown to exist by the speeches of the great New England orator. The cause of the Southern radicals was lost in so far as it depended on the President, and, moreover, the arrangement whereby Calhoun was to succeed Jackson was dissolved. South Carolina, so long a leader in public life, was isolated.
Meanwhile the friends of Clay and the devotees of the tariff had prepared an internal improvements measure which was drawn so that the appropriation would apply to purposes wholly within the State of Kentucky. The Maysville Road Bill proposed to build a national highway from Maysville on the Ohio to Lexington, Clay's home, and it was drawn in order to compel the President to exercise his right of veto on a proposition in which the West was interested, and thus break down his popularity in that region. The proposed law came to him in May. Van Buren had been sounding public opinion in the Middle States, and with some hesitation he advised a veto. The President was of the same mind, and a vigorous veto message was sent to Congress. To the dismay of the tariff men, the country approved heartily, the West giving every evidence of its continued faith in the Executive. The atmosphere in Washington began to clear up; it was plain that a reorganization of the Cabinet must ensue, and that the lower South, as yet in sympathy with the sternanti-tariff policy of Calhoun, must be won away from the South Carolinian. It seemed that the West would support the President even if it were called upon to give up something that was held to be very important.
In due time William B. Lewis produced a letter from William H. Crawford which showed, what Jackson must have known since the summer of 1828, that Calhoun had not been the President's defender in 1818, when he was threatened with court-martial for his conduct during the Seminole War. Jackson now made an issue of this, and welcomed a controversy with the man who had done most to elevate him to the Presidency. Mrs. Eaton also became a more important character, and the attitude of the families of other members of the Cabinet were made subjects of official discussion and displeasure. Calhoun's friends were commanded to receive her into their circle or take the consequences. When these refused, it seemed that this tempest in a teapot was about to become a grave matter of state. None knew better than Jackson and Calhoun that other and deeper causes were forcing the disruption of the party of 1828, the alliance which had driven Adams and Clay from office.
Convinced that Van Buren had been the marplot of the Administration, Calhoun attacked him publicly, and all the world saw what some astute minds had long seen, that the two wings of the party in power were irreconcilable enemies. Congress adjourned in March, 1831, and in April the President demanded the resignations of all the friends of the Vice-President in the Cabinet. Calhoun and Hayne returned sadly to their constituents to advise actual resistance to the tariff, since both the President—"an ungrateful son of Carolina"—and Congress had, during two years, refused all relief to the suffering planters. Not one of the problems, the solution of which had been the purpose of Jackson's election, had been settled or seriously attacked. The East had defeated Benton's land program; the President had refused to take up the tariff; and internal improvements as a national policy had only been toyed with in the Maysville Bill. As Calhoun had said, all the great interests of the country had come into conflict, and even the most resolute of men knew not how to proceed.
But Jackson gathered about him a new official family who were supposed to owe no double allegiance. Edward Livingston, of Louisiana, protectionist, became Secretary of State in place of Van Buren, who had resigned for appearance' sake; Louis McLane, of Delaware, a conservative party leader of protectionist views, was made Secretary of the Treasury while Roger B. Taney, a former Federalist of Maryland, became Attorney-General. Lewis Cass, Secretary of War, was the only distinctly Western man in this new body. Jackson seems to have expected to make the Bank question the great issue between his party and that of Clay, but the new Cabinet soon proved as strongly pro-Bank as the old one had been, and he must still rely on the “kitchen council” for support in that direction.
The initiative in the great sectional struggle whichall foresaw was left to South Carolina, but the men of that planter Commonwealth refused to throw discretion to the winds. The price of cotton was falling and the tribute to the manufacturer under the law of 1828 seemed to be more burdensome than ever; yet it might be well to try Congress again. The new Congress, which would assemble in December, 1831, might give relief. This was Calhoun's last recourse; if it failed nullification must follow.
When the next Congress assembled, Clay was in the Senate and John Quincy Adams, his former ally, was just beginning his long career as a member of the House. Webster and the other New England tariff advocates were there, and as unbending as the Southerners themselves. The President sent in a non-committal message on the burning question, and even on his favorite Bank problem he showed signs of yielding. Clay took the message as preliminary to surrender, and his proverbial boldness rapidly grew to arrogance. On the tariff, on the Bank, and on the proposed nullification problems, he would give the deciding word and that word was defiance.
Vote in the House of Representatives on the Tarriff of 1832 in Western States
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When, therefore, the cotton and tobacco interests presented once more their demand for immediate downward revision of the tariff, Clay and his more ardent protectionists brushed aside the cautious Adams and defied “the South, the Democratic party, and the Devil.” The revision of the tariff which was made in 1832 was no revision, save in a few unimportant schedules in which the planters were not interested; but the vote on this measure showed a curious combination of the Jackson and the Clay
politicians in the West and considerable indifference in New England, as the accompanying map shows. Having challenged Calhoun to do his worst, Clay now pressed upon Jackson the question of renewing the Bank charter. Under his instructions the president of the Bank, Nicholas Biddle, a very able man, hitherto inclining to settle matters with Jackson and his friendly advisers, offered a memorial for a re-charter. That is, the Bank men thought the President of the United States was losing ground and they would take their chances with the party of the future. The Maysville veto was thought to have weakened Jackson; he had lost the support of Calhoun and had been compelled to reorganize his Cabinet; on the tariff he had no opinions, and he had done nothing to weld to him the Westerners. It seemed a very simple matter, with the East behind the brilliant Kentucky leader, to make the American System the law of the land and to drive the Goths and Vandals from the capital.
Mr. Clay had been nominated for the Presidency by an enthusiastic convention of his followers in December, 1831; and his friend William Wirt had also been nominated three months earlier by the Anti-Masons, who, it was supposed, would draw supporters from the Democrats, especially in Virginia, where Jackson had never won the approval of the ablest leaders. Never did the outlook of a political party seem so bright as when the plans of the tariff and Bank men were being laid in the spring of 1832. John Sargent, one of the directors of the Bank and brother-in-law of Henry A. Wise, a shrewdpolitician of Virginia, was made candidate for the Vice-Presidency; a large majority of the Senate was committed to the renewal of the charter,—even the Calhoun men agreed as to this,—and in the House John Quincy Adams and George McDuffie led a decided majority in the same direction. All the industrial forces of the country were enlisted and well organized. If there was any doubt that the old hero would be reëlected, there was none that the Bank and the tariff groups would retain control of Congress.
If Jackson was less confident than his opponents, he was not afraid. The effects of his “Union, it-must-be-preserved” speech were becoming evident; he gradually came to stand for the budding nationality among the self-seeking groups who would have their way or break up the Confederation. With the large majority of the up-country of the Middle States and South in favor of a tariff, even a high tariff, he promptly accepted the proposed revision. Already nominated by many of the States, his friends had no difficulty in securing him a unanimous renomination from the Democratic National Convention which met in Baltimore late in May, 1832. Meanwhile Van Buren had been appointed Minister to England. After reaching his post, the Senate, to gratify Calhoun as well as strike at the President, rejected the nomination. The humiliated minister was now nominated Vice-President and plainly marked by Jackson as his successor.
When the votes of both houses were shown to be decidedly for a continuation of the protective systemas enacted in 1828, Calhoun and the planter party gave every assurance that South Carolina, at least, would resist. The President gave out no indications of what his attitude would be, but the extreme Southerners could not expect that Jackson would support their contentions; nor could they think Clay, if elected, would yield the very base of the system on which he proposed to stand as President. But as the tariff bill came to its final reading, it was seen that even New England hesitated, and many voted against the measure; many districts of the Southern up-country gave their votes for the proposed law. In the West most men favored the bill. The tariff was, therefore, a local issue, and the test must come on the Bank. The bill for a re-charter of the National Bank reached the President on July 4. It was considered most carefully, and doubtless the desperate situation of the Administration was duly canvassed. With every evidence of a strong Southern secession from his party, with Clay and Webster leading the solid ranks of the East, it did seem that Jackson would fail if he vetoed the bill passed by great majorities in both Senate and House.
On July 10 the veto message went to Congress. Its contention about the constitutionality of the Bank was not important, for it was not a question of what was constitutional, but of sheer power. The majority of the votes in the coming election was what each side sought. Jackson appealed to the West and South, urging that the Bank was a sectional institution constantly drawing money to the big cities of the East, or worse still, sending it toEngland; that it was a monopoly which had given millions of the people's money to a few men, and that it was then proposed to continue that monopoly. So certain were Clay and Biddle that they would defeat the President that they circulated at the expense of the Bank thirty thousand copies of this remarkable document. Biddle declared that Jackson was like “a chained panther, biting the bars of his cage.” Webster and John Quincy Adams, taking counsel of their hopes, declared that the old man in the White House was in his dotage and at the end of his career.
A remarkable campaign ensued. While South Carolina prepared to put into effect its remedy of state intervention, the West and the lower South united, as in 1828, against the East. The gubernatorial contest in Kentucky, which came in August, showed that Clay had not regained his former hold on that State. From midsummer to November every effort was made to break the power of Jackson, but to no avail. Without the planter support of the older South the President proved stronger than he had been four years before with it; the plain people were now more of a unit than they had ever been before, though many of their number still voted for the industrial or planter interests. The outcome surprised all parties. Jackson received 219 electoral votes, while Clay received only 49. The popular majority over all other candidates, including William Wirt and John Floyd, for whom the Calhoun party of South Carolina cast its vote, was more than 125,000. No President has since received such alarge proportion of the suffrages of the people. Only one Western State, Kentucky, supported Henry Clay; while Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York gave Jackson larger majorities than ever. The alliance of the West and the up-country held together in spite of the untoward circumstances.
The significance of the election was that the President could rely upon the people in a fight with Congress; it was the first appeal to the country made over the heads of the national legislature. To this triumphant President, Calhoun and his ardent nullifiers must refer their case; the Bank would also have to reckon with a much stronger man than its spokesmen had contemplated.
Without awaiting the results of the election, Calhoun, Hayne, and their allies called South Carolina into special convention to consider the state of the Union. The nullification program was carried by safe majorities, despite the most strenuous resistance on the part of the minority who called themselves Unionists. South Carolina now formally declared the tariff laws of the United States suspended after February 1, 1833, unless the Federal Government gave some relief; and it was further declared that in case no relief were accorded, and the national authority should be enforced within the boundaries of their State, war would immediately ensue. The new governor, James Hamilton, and the legislature, which might be called into extra session at any time, were authorized to call out the militia, purchase arms, and organize for the conflict.
Meanwhile Jackson had been preparing for thecontest in the Southwest. In 1827-28 all the legislatures of that region had declared the protective tariff unconstitutional and some had threatened secession. But after the election of 1828 these same legislatures refused to concur in the doctrines of nullification which South Carolina submitted to them. The situation had changed. John Quincy Adams, the New Englander, was President in 1828; Andrew Jackson, the Westerner and the most popular man in the country, was at the head of the Union in 1832. Besides, Jackson was already moving the Indians from the cotton lands, going so far as to acquiesce in the flagrant nullification of the federal law by the Georgia governor and legislature. The decision of the Supreme Court in favor of the Cherokees, who refused to surrender their lands, was publicly flouted by the President. It was plain that the planters of the Southwest would get what they wanted even if they had to violate treaties of the Federal Government. They refused to sustain South Carolina. Had not the President carried every county in Alabama and Mississippi in the recent election?
And in the older South the anti-national feeling had wonderfully cooled since 1828. North Carolina reversed her attitude; Tennessee would not consider Calhoun's plan of bringing the Union to terms. In Virginia the tobacco counties of the Piedmont section united with the tidewater counties and made a show of supporting South Carolina. New England men who had as recently as 1820 declared the protective system unconstitutional had no thought of maintaining such a doctrine when advocated by Calhoun.
Thus, instead of a solid group of planter States, South Carolina's proposed national referendum met with almost unanimous opposition. Jackson had undermined the party of Calhoun, which at the time of the break-up of the Cabinet in 1831 seemed more powerful in the South than any other. Jackson and Van Buren had proved to be master politicians, and when Congress met for the short session in December, 1832, it was plain that Calhoun was practically alone and that the President would have to deal with only one recalcitrant State.
From this vantage-ground, Jackson issued his proclamation of December 10, in which he plainly told South Carolina that the federal laws would be enforced at the point of the bayonet, and that, furthermore, the Union was an indissoluble nation, as Webster and himself had declared; and he at the same time urged upon Congress the so-called “Force Bill,” granting him full power to punish all infractions of the national revenue laws. And now for the first time he expressed his real view that the tariff was unjust. The Verplanck Bill to reduce the tariff to a twenty-five per cent basis was the President's confession that Calhoun had been right. The two measures were pressed by the Administration, the one strongly national and supported by a strong majority, the other strongly Jacksonian and opposed by most of the leaders who desired to see Calhoun humiliated. It seemed almost certain, early in 1833, that this program would be carried out to the letter.
Such a victory for the Union forces and especiallyfor Jackson was too much for the opposition. Henry Clay stopped in Philadelphia on his way to Washington and held a conference there with the industrial leaders of the Middle States. He went on to the capital with a plan of his own. Its purpose was to keep the control of things in the hands of the friends of the American System and to deprive the President of the prestige of settling the tariff and the nullification problems at the same time. He held acarte blanchefrom the leading protected interests to do what he thought best. Webster and John Quincy Adams hesitated. They urged the passage of the “Force Bill” at once; but hoped to defeat the Verplanck measure, its counterpart. Clay made overtures to Calhoun, and Washington was surprised to see the two great antagonists associating and planning together, apparently in concert as of old when they forced the War of 1812 upon an unwilling President.
The “Force Bill” was to be accepted by the Calhoun men; but a new and final tariff measure was to take the place of the one upon which Jackson had set his heart. The famous compromise law of 1833 was the result. This gave the planters a reduction to twenty per cent, a lower rate than Jackson had offered, but the reductions were to be made gradually during a period of ten years, thus giving time for the industrial men to readjust their affairs without great losses. There was one joker in the scheme which the Southerners seem to have winked at: that which exempted the wool-growers of the Middle States and the West from the reductions. The author of the AmericanSystem now hotly urged the men who a year ago would defy the “South, the Democratic party, and the Devil” to undo all their work. On March 1, three days before the close of the session, both the President's “Force Bill” and Clay's compromise tariff passed.
Meanwhile South Carolina, acting on Calhoun's advice, had postponed the enforcement of her nullifying ordinance, and now, as Congress adjourned, the former Vice-President, ill and greatly discouraged, hurried by rapid stages to Columbia to make sure that the crisis should be brought to a peaceful close. The convention was reassembled; an embassy from Virginia was on the ground urging peace, and, as was natural, the ordinance was repealed. The planters had really won a victory and the rising industrial groups understood this both at the time and later, when they clamored for the restoration of their privileges. The cotton and tobacco men, producing the larger part of the national exports, had shown their strength. Their opponents, the manufacturers and the bankers of the East, with a much greater income, were as yet not so strong as the planters. The West and the South were their markets, and concessions must be made; the Union was to them essential, while to the South, selling its huge crops in European markets, it was less important. As yet the West, with its hero the master in Washington, had obtained none of the reforms for which it had so long striven. Benton and his friends looked to the next Congress for results. Would they be disappointed?
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The Messages and Papers of the Presidents(1900), vol.II, gives Jackson's official statements. Bassett's and Parton's biographies, already mentioned, are still very serviceable. There is no full biography of Clay, but C. Colton'sThe Private Life of Henry Claycontains some of Clay's letters. Carl Schurz'sHenry Clayand T. H. Clay'sHenry Clay, already noted, offer some good information. The best source for Calhoun is J. F. Jameson'sThe Correspondence of John C. Calhoun(1899). G. Hunt'sLife of Calhoun(1908), inAmerican Crisesseries, is excellent, while D. F. Houston'sCritical Study of Nullification, already referred to, and W. E. Dodd'sCalhoun, inStatesmen of the Old South(1911), offer still further information as to Calhoun and nullification. C. H. Van Tyne'sLetters of Daniel Webster(1902) supplies information about Webster which is lacking in the olderWorksby Everett (1851) or F. Webster (1857). H. C. Lodge'sDaniel Webster, inAmerican Statesmenseries and J. B. McMaster'sDaniel Webster(1902) are the standard biographies. Thomas H. Benton has told his own story in hisThirty Years' View(1854), though Roosevelt'sThomas Hart Benton, in theAmerican Statesmen, and W. M. Meigs'sThomas Hart Benton, in theAmerican Crisesseries, are good brief portraits. William McDonald'sThe Jacksonian Democracy(1906), in theAmerican Nationseries, is an excellent general survey, while E. Stanwood'sAmerican Tariff Controversies(1903) is the best account of the tariff disputes.
Before the great conflict between the manufacturers and the planters had been brought to a lame conclusion in the force bill and the tariff compromise of 1833, so unsatisfactory to everybody, Jackson had taken up the Bank problem, in which the West was particularly interested. The annual message of 1832 indicated his intention to close up the business in accordance with what seemed to him to be the decree of the people. But while the President regarded an election as settling the matter, it soon became clear that Nicholas Biddle and the leaders of the United States Senate were far from that opinion. Having combined to defeat the “old Indian scalper,” as Biddle was wont to term Jackson, in his plan to bring South Carolina to terms, these able men continued their operations to balk him on the Bank question.
The Bank of the United States had a capital stock of $35,000,000, its twenty-nine branches ramified the commerce of the country, and its total volume of business was about $70,000,000, or more than the amount of the national exports each year. It practically controlled the currency, and it could increase or diminish the amount of money in circulation by about one third at any time. Nicholas Biddle, a trained financier and strong-willed aristocrat, who put littlefaith in popular elections and plebiscites, was the head of the Bank, and all the presidents and directorates of the subordinate banks were his appointees; he controlled absolutely all the departments and all the directors of the parent bank in Philadelphia, going so far in 1833 as to deny the government directors their lawful right to attend the board meetings. There has never been another financial leader in the United States who was so powerful or so much feared as was Nicholas Biddle in 1833.
Both sides prepared for a renewal of the struggle for or against a new charter. Jackson sent Secretary of State Livingston as Minister to France early in 1833, and transferred Secretary McLane from the Treasury to the State Department. It was known that both Livingston and McLane opposed the President in his plan of overthrowing the Bank, and this shift was made to avoid another break-up of the Cabinet and to enable Jackson to get a Secretary of the Treasury who would support him. William J. Duane, of Pennsylvania, accepted the vacant portfolio in January, 1833, knowing well the President's purpose, which was to withhold from the Bank the federal deposits. Agents were sent out to ascertain what state banks were in a condition to receive the proposed government funds, and of course a strong banking support was thus secured for the contemplated policy.
Biddle laughed at Jackson's message of 1832 which denounced the Bank. He expected to receive from Congress in due time the charter which the President had denied. More than fifty members ofthat body, including Clay, Webster, George McDuffie,—Calhoun's ally and the chairman of the House Committee on Ways and Means,—and the famous Davy Crockett, were borrowers from the Bank on the easiest of terms. The greater newspaper editors of New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and Richmond were either opposed to the President or on Biddle's list of beneficiaries; while scores of hack writers all over the country received their stipends from the “Monster,” as Jackson designated the Bank. It might have been an easy matter for Biddle and Clay to secure their charter from the Congress which sat in its closing session in the winter of 1833. But the great thing before them at that time was the nullification-tariff problem, which threatened civil war, and the friends of the Bank joined the protectionists and, under Clay's deft leadership, as we have seen, defeated Jackson's plan for tariff reform. The short session drew to a close, and Biddle, Clay, and Webster prepared for renewing their fight when Congress came together in December.
When the lines began to tighten in the summer of 1833, Duane weakened and finally refused to withhold the government deposits from the Bank. He was dismissed from office and Roger B. Taney, the Attorney-General, took the vacant place and agreed to do Jackson's bidding. From October 1, 1833, the income of the Treasury was placed as it accrued in the custody of the state banks which had been made ready for the new policy. Jackson declared that the National Bank had become unsafe and therefore an unfit place for the keeping of $10,000,000 of thepeople's money, the amount then on deposit. But the real reason of the change was social and political. The President desired to weaken the Bank, lest its representatives, its masterful lobbyists, and the financial pressure it was bringing to bear should wrest from Congress a charter which the people had repudiated.
Meanwhile Biddle had begun his campaign to compel both Jackson and the people to yield. On August 1, two months before the Treasury began to place its receipts in the state banks, Biddle ordered a curtailment of the loans of the National Bank and its branches. In the South and West, where large sums were needed at that moment to move the cotton and grain crops, the curtailment was double that of the East. This led to immediate financial stringency; National Bank notes, the standard money of the time, became scarce; and gold or silver was absolutely wanting. The state banks were naturally forced to withhold their accustomed loans and the anticipated government deposits could not be drawn upon. Business failures became frequent and laborers were discharged. It was a panic in the midst of prosperity. The program was executed with callous heartlessness by Biddle, and with the approval of men like Clay and Webster, till Congress met in December.
The people were beginning to see what a power they had attacked. Rates of interest rose from six to fifteen per cent; farms and crops were sold under the sheriff's hammer at absurdly low prices. The outlook was anything but bright when the next annual message of the President called upon the national legislature toaid him in his struggle. Petitions were pouring into Washington by the thousand, and delegations of business men appeared almost daily at the White House, asking Jackson to restore the deposits and surrender to the great corporation, thus acknowledging the subordination of the country to one of its interests.
Under these circumstances and awaiting confidently the effect of the Bank's drastic pressure upon public opinion, Clay began in January, 1834, the work of compelling the President to restore the deposits. For weeks and even months the Senate was the scene of the most extraordinary denunciations, and the press of the country was burdened with the attacks and counter-attacks of the parties to this fierce and unrelenting struggle. In the East business failures, the closing of the doors of manufacturing establishments, and the discharge of small armies of employees furnished all the proof necessary that the distress was real. From all sections of the country cries of distress, memorials, and petitions came up to Washington. Biddle and his friends had no thought of relenting, but continued the curtailment of the financial business of the country far beyond what might have seemed necessary on account of the removal of deposits; they were certain that only a few months more of pressure and of increased suffering on the part of the people would compel Jackson to yield or Congress to grant the desired charter over the head of the President.
But the Congress which was elected in 1832 andwhich sat from December, 1833, to March, 1835, was not so pliable as that which arranged the peace with South Carolina. Still, the Senate sustained the Bank by a decided majority, and in March it formally censured Jackson for his removal of the deposits. In this Clay was conspicuous, and Webster and Calhoun were his sympathetic allies. On the other hand, Benton, Silas Wright, of New York, and John Forsyth, of Georgia, made a most spirited defense of Jackson and of the cause of the people, as they insisted. In the House the situation was reversed, and all Biddle's energy and resolute lobbying failed to secure a favorable vote. It became clear early in the spring that the President could not be moved, and that impeachment, which had been the hope and talk of many, would be impossible. When the weight of public opinion inclined visibly to the side of Jackson at the end of spring, Clay, who had for some time doubted the loyalty of Biddle, and who was especially anxious to regain his former popularity in the West, refused to continue the fight; Webster, too, lost interest and advised the directors of the Bank that the cause was lost. Calhoun, who had supported Clay and Webster to humiliate Jackson, could not retreat; he was again isolated, and he felt his position bitterly. McDuffie resigned his seat and his chairmanship in the House in utter disgust. To all but the president of the United States Bank the case seemed hopeless when Congress adjourned in early summer without passing any act bearing on the situation. Biddle's remark in a letter to a friend in Baltimore, "If the Bank charter wererenewed or prolonged, I believe the pecuniary difficulties of the country would be immediately healed," shows his attitude; and by this time the people seem to have come to the conclusion that it was not a war of Jackson upon the Bank so much as a war of the Bank upon the country to compel the reissue of a charter which was about to expire. Petitions now poured into Biddle's office and delegations from Middle States cities urged a change of the Bank's policy; even Albert Gallatin, long a defender and ardent friend, deserted Biddle. And at last, after the nation's currency of some hundred millions had been reduced by one third, and when money rates in New York were running as high as twenty-four per cent, the order went out to the branch banks to suspend the stringent punitive measures in order that “We may save our beloved country from the curse of Van Burenism,” as one of the directors described it.
The decline of the power of the Bank was now rapid. In the state and congressional elections of 1834 the President of the United States was everywhere sustained, even the Whigs quietly taking the same ground. The friendship of the Bank was now enough to damn any party; Biddle realized the danger of his situation, and on election day sent his family out of town and barricaded his house and office. The legislatures of Pennsylvania and New York, where his flag had flown triumphantly for years, denounced him and planned to issue bonds for the relief of the people. The autumn saw a complete reversal of policy on the part of the Bank, and business at once resumed its normal course. Money became easy, prices rose to the former level, and the wheels of industry began to turn. Nothing seemed more conclusively shown than that most of the trouble had been due to the demand on the part of a few men for a continuation of financial privileges.
Jackson's first great victory was won, and he would have been more than human not to have shown his sense of triumph on the reassembling of Congress at the end of the momentous year. The Monster had been crushed; and all his great enemies—Clay, Webster, Adams, and Calhoun—had been beaten!
Before the first break in the Cabinet Jackson had proved the value of direct and simple methods in diplomacy. In colonial times and during the operation of the Jay Treaty the West India trade was most important. From New England and the Middle States fish, lumber, grain, and other plantation supplies had been sold to the West India planters in great quantities. The war of the Revolution curtailed this trade; that of 1812 practically destroyed it, and England thereafter refused to allow American shipping any rights in these possessions, though Adams and Clay had urged the reciprocal benefits of such a commerce.
The Jackson Administration succeeded in securing almost immediately the desired trade arrangements, and the shipping of the Chesapeake Bay, of Boston and New York, took its wonted course. This victory was hardly scored before the new President secured from France formal treaty recognition ofthe old spoliation claims arising from the depredations of Napoleon I, which no former administration had been able to collect. In 1831 the Government of Louis Philippe agreed to pay these damages to the amount of 25,000,000 francs. But the French legislature delayed to vote the necessary appropriations. Jackson, assuming that the obligations would be met promptly, drew upon the French treasury for the first installment and asked the National Bank to collect the bills—somewhat over $900,000. The papers were duly presented in Paris, but they were dishonored. This happened in 1833, when the Bank was in the midst of the fight on the President. Biddle, without hesitation, charged the Government $15,000 for the damage to the reputation of the Bank because the draft had been dishonored in Paris. The Government refused to pay the claim, and a lawsuit of ten years followed which was finally decided against the Bank.
It was at this juncture that Jackson, preparing for the removal of the deposits, sent Secretary Livingston to France to urge the execution of the treaty of 1831. Livingston failed to convince the French assembly that it was necessary either to pay the overdue claims or to execute certain reciprocity clauses of the treaty. In December, 1834, when the Bank crisis had passed, the President sent to Congress a message which asked for the passage of an act authorizing reprisals on French shipping or other property. Such a warlike proposition, with the explanation which accompanied it, aroused the country. In commercial centers there was greatexcitement, and insurance companies changed their contracts in expectation of war.
Once more the President was opposed and denounced in the Senate as a reckless Executive who would rush headlong into war. But the treaty with France authorized just such procedure as had been suggested, and only recently France had taken the same course with other countries. It soon became so clear that Jackson was within his rights and that the country was behind him, that resolutions were suffered to pass the Senate virtually approving this part of the message. In the House the vote indorsing the Executive was unanimous, though it was not thought advisable to do more than this until there had been ample time for reconsideration of the subject in France.
The strong language of the President aroused a storm of criticism in France, and for a time war was threatened. The French Minister in Washington was recalled, and of course the diplomatic representative of the United States in Paris was withdrawn. The conservative press of Europe made this another occasion for ridiculing the Yankee Republic, whose money-making propensities should be curtailed and whose gaudy wares and vulgar rocking-chairs should be tabooed everywhere. “Let the French navy sweep the Atlantic Ocean of their ships and again take possession of Louisiana” was the unfriendly advice of certain English journals. Before the summer of 1835 closed, all relations between France and the United States had ceased, though actual war was not expected. When Congress met, Jackson reviewed thesituation in a calm manner and gave every opportunity for the reopening of negotiations, though warlike preparations were recommended to meet those of France. But England tendered her friendly offices, and the difficulty was promptly brought to a satisfactory conclusion by the payment of the indemnity so long due.