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.
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.
Clay's genial spirit was much excited by the grand prospect of a league of the American states under thehegemony 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.
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 sendcommissioners 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.
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.
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 onForeign 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.
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.
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. Thisvote 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 decidedlyoutréto 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.
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 rapidpace. 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.
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 attackCuba 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.
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."
The debate continued so long, however, that the congress at Panama adjourned to Tacubaya before therepresentatives 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 representativesfrom 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.
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.
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,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.
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.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.
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 bybona fideAmerican 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. Themanufacturers 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.
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.
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 ofBuchanan 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.
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.
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 legislationwas calculated to give rise to the inquiry whether the Union was of any benefit, under such conditions, to the Southern Commonwealths.
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.
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 anad valoremduty upon it. It changed the duty upon woollen goods costing less than $2.50 a square yard from anad valoremto a specific duty, and increased the duty by about twenty per centum. It retained thead valoremduty 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, thechairman 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.
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.
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.
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 calledthemselves 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.
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.
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 Pennsylvaniagave 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.
It was a tremendousbouleversement. 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.
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 toturn the attention from the internal questions of constitutional interpretation and governmental policies.
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.
DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROTECTION
DEMOCRATIC OPPOSITION TO INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS AND PROTECTION
Jackson's Ideas Concerning Internal Improvements—The Maysville Road Bill—The Slavery Question not Involved in the Vote on the Bill or in the Veto—Railway Building Begun—The Commencement of the Struggle for the Repeal of the Tariff of 1828—Jackson on the Tariff of 1828, in his First Annual Message—George McDuffie as South Carolina's Political Economist—Dr. Thomas Cooper—Mr. McDuffie's Tariff Bill—The Tariff Bill of 1830—McDuffie's Amendment—McDuffie's Doctrine that the Producers of Exports Pay Finally the Duties on the Imports—The Acceptance of Mr. McDuffie's Doctrine at the South—Growing Belief in the Incapacity of Slave Labor for Manufacture—The Tariff Pronounced Unconstitutional—Growth of the Protection Idea—Jackson on the Tariff and the Surplus Revenue Derived therefrom, in the Message of December, 1830—Southern Disappointment—"The South Carolina Exposition"—Calhoun's Doctrine of "States' rights"—Nullification in Theory—The Nullification and Anti-nullification Parties in South Carolina—First Attempt to try the Validity of the Tariff in the United States Courts—Nullification and Rebellion—Jackson's Message of December, 1831, on the Tariff Issue—The Bill from the Committee on Ways and Means—The Tariff Bill of 1832 from the Committee on Manufactures—Passage of the Tariff of 1832 by the House of Representatives—The "American System."