A Brief History of the United States Part 34

Adams, it was well known, would also be renominated, as the candidate of the supporters of the tariff and internal improvements. They were the Adams men, or National Republicans. Thus was the once harmonious Republican party broken into fragments, out of which grew two distinctly new parties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LETTER WRITTEN BY JACKSON, THEN A SENATOR.]

THE TARIFF OF 1828.--The act of 1824 not proving satisfactory to the growers and manufacturers of wool, a new tariff law was enacted in 1828.

So many and so high were the duties laid that the opponents of protection named the law the Tariff of Abominations. To the cotton states it was particularly hateful, and in memorials, resolutions, and protests they declared that a tariff for protection was unconst.i.tutional, unjust, and oppressive. They made threats of ceasing to trade with the tariff states, and talked of nullifying, or refusing to obey the law, and even of leaving the Union.

THE ELECTION OF 1828.--Great as was the excitement in the South over this new tariff law, it produced little effect in the struggle for the presidency. The campaign had really been going on for three years past and would have ended in the election of Jackson had the tariff never existed.

"Old Hickory," the "Hero of New Orleans," the "Man of the People," was more than ever the favorite of the hour, and though his party was anti- tariff he carried states where the voters were deeply interested in the protection of manufactures. Indeed, he received more than twice the number of electoral votes cast for Adams. [9]

SUMMARY

1. After the election of Monroe (1816) the Federalist party died out, the old party issues disappeared, and Monroe's term is known as the Era of Good Feeling.

2. The South American colonies of Spain, having rebelled, formed republics, and were recognized by the United States. To prevent interference with them by European powers, especially by the Holy Alliance, Monroe announced the doctrine now known by his name (1823).

3. The growth of the West and the rise of new states brought up the question of internal improvements at national expense.

4. The growth of manufactures brought up the question of more protection and a new tariff. In 1824 a new tariff law was enacted, in spite of the opposition of the South, which had no manufactures and imported largely from Great Britain.

5. These issues, which were largely sectional, and the action of certain leaders, split the Republican party, and led to the nomination of four presidential candidates in 1824.

6. The electors failed to choose a President, but did elect a Vice President. Adams was then elected President by the House of Representatives.

7. A new tariff was enacted in 1828, though the South opposed it even more strongly than the tariff of 1824.

8. In 1828 Jackson, one of the candidates defeated in 1824, was elected President.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CONESTOGA WAGON, SUCH AS WAS IN USE ABOUT 1825.]

FOOTNOTES

[1] James Monroe was a Virginian, born in 1758; he entered William and Mary College, served in the Continental army, was a member of the Virginia a.s.sembly, of the Continental Congress for three years, and of the Virginia convention that adopted the Federal Const.i.tution in 1788. He strongly opposed the adoption of the Const.i.tution. As United States senator (1790- 94), he opposed Washington's administration; but was sent as minister to France (1794-96). In 1799-1802 Monroe was governor of Virginia, and then was sent to France to aid Livingston in the purchase of Louisiana; was minister to Great Britain 1804-6, and in 1811-17 was Secretary of State, and in 1814-15 acted also as Secretary of War. In 1817-25 he was President. He died in 1831.

[2] Monroe carried every state in the Union and was ent.i.tled to every electoral vote. But one elector did not vote for him, in order that Washington might still have the honor of being the only President unanimously elected.

[3] In the new Western states were great tracts which belonged to the United States, and which the Western states now asked should be given to them, or at least be sold to them for a few cents an acre. The East opposed this, and asked for gifts of Western land which they might sell so as to use the money to build roads and ca.n.a.ls and establish free schools.

[4] Read McMaster's _History of the People of the U. S._, Vol. V, pp.

28-54.

[5] Jackson had 99 votes, Adams 84, Crawford 41, and Clay 37. The Const.i.tution (Article XII of the amendments) provides that if no person have a majority of the electoral votes, "then from the persons having the highest numbers, not exceeding three, on the list of those voted for as President, the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President."

[6] By a vote of 13 states, against 7 for Jackson, and 4 for Crawford.

[7] John Quincy Adams was born at Braintree, Ma.s.sachusetts, in 1767, went with his father John Adams to France, and spent several years abroad; then graduated from Harvard, studied law, and was appointed by Washington minister to the Netherlands and then to Portugal, and in 1797 to Prussia.

He was a senator from Ma.s.sachusetts in 1803-8. In 1809 Madison sent him as minister to Russia, where he was when the war opened in 1812. Of the five commissioners at Ghent he was the ablest and the most conspicuous. In 1815 Madison appointed him minister to Great Britain, and in 1817 he came home to be Secretary of State under Monroe. In 1831 he became a member of the House of Representatives and continued as such till stricken in the House with paralysis in February, 1848.

[8] John Caldwell Calhoun was born in South Carolina in 1782, entered Yale College in 1802, studied law, and became a lawyer at Abbeville, South Carolina, in 1807. In 1808 he went to the legislature, and in 1811 entered Congress, and was appointed chairman of the committee on foreign relations. As such he wrote the report and resolutions in favor of war with Great Britain. At this period of his career he favored a liberal construction of the Const.i.tution, and supported the tariff of 1816, the charter of the Second Bank of the United States, and internal improvements. He was Secretary of War in Monroe's Cabinet, and was Vice President from 1825 until 1832, when he resigned and entered the Senate, where he remained most of the time till his death in 1850.

[9] This election is noteworthy also as the first in which nearly all the states chose electors by popular vote. Only two of the twenty-four states made the choice by vote of the legislature; in the others the popular vote for Jackson electors numbered 647,276 and that for Adams electors 508,064.

A good book on presidential elections is _A History of the Presidency_, by Edward Stanwood.

CHAPTER XXIII.

POLITICS FROM 1829 TO 1841

In many respects the election of Jackson [1] was an event of as much political importance as was the election of Jefferson. Men hailed it as another great uprising of the people, as another triumph of democracy.

They acted as if the country had been delivered from impending evil, and hurried by thousands to Washington to see the hero inaugurated and the era of promised reform opened. [2]

THE NEW PARTY.--Jackson treated the public offices as the "spoils of victory," and within a few weeks hundreds of postmasters, collectors of revenue, and other officeholders were turned out, and their places given to active workers for Jackson. This "spoils system" was new in national politics and created immense excitement. But it was nothing more than an attempt to build up a new national party in the same way that parties had already been built up in some of the states. [3]

JACKSON AS PRESIDENT.--In many respects Jackson's administration was the most exciting the country had yet experienced. Never since the days of President John Adams had party feeling run so high. The vigorous personality of the President, his intense sincerity, his determination to do, at all hazards, just what he believed to be right, made him devoted friends and bitter enemies and led to his administration being often called the Reign of Andrew Jackson. The questions with which he had to deal were of serious importance, and on the solution of some of them hung the safety of the republic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: GENERAL ANDREW JACKSON.]

THE SOUTH CAROLINA DOCTRINE.--Such a one was the old issue of the tariff.

The view of the South as set forth by the leaders, especially by Calhoun of South Carolina, was that the state ought to nullify the Tariff Act of 1828 because it was unconst.i.tutional. [4] Daniel Webster attacked this South Carolina doctrine and (1830) argued the issue with Senator Hayne of South Carolina. The speeches of the two men in the Senate, the debate which followed, and the importance of the issue, make the occasion a famous one in our history. That South Carolina would go so far as actually to carry out the doctrine and nullify the tariff did not seem likely. But the seriousness of South Carolina alarmed the friends of the tariff, and in 1832 Congress amended the act of 1828 and reduced the duties.

SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFIES THE TARIFF.--This did not satisfy South Carolina.

The new tariff still protected manufactures, and it was protection that she opposed; and in November, 1832, she adopted the Ordinance of Nullification, which forbade any of her citizens to pay the tariff duties after February 1, 1833.

When Congress met in December, 1832, the great question was what to do with South Carolina. Jackson was determined the law should be obeyed, [5]

sent vessels to Charleston harbor, and asked for a Force Act to enable him to collect the revenue by force if necessary. [6]

THE GREAT DEBATE.--In the course of the debate on the Force Act, Calhoun (who had resigned the vice presidency and had been elected a senator from South Carolina) explained and defended nullification and contended that it was a peaceable and lawful remedy and a proper exercise of state rights.

Webster [7] denied that the Const.i.tution was a mere compact, declared that nullification and secession were rebellion, and upheld the authority and sovereignty of the Union. [8]

[Ill.u.s.tration: BIRTHPLACE OF DANIEL WEBSTER.]

THE COMPROMISE OF 1833.--Clay meantime came forward with a compromise. He proposed that the tariff of 1832 should be reduced gradually till 1842, when all duties should be twenty per cent on the value of the articles imported. As such duties would not be protective, Calhoun and the other Southern members accepted the plan, and the Compromise Tariff was pa.s.sed in March, 1833. [10] To satisfy the North arid uphold the authority of the government, the Force Act also was pa.s.sed. But as South Carolina repealed the Ordinance of Nullification there was never any need to use force.

FIRST NATIONAL NOMINATING CONVENTIONS.--In the midst of the excitement over the tariff, came the election of 1832. Since 1824, when the Republican party was breaking up, presidential candidates had been nominated by state legislatures and caucuses of members of state legislatures. But in 1831 the Antimasons [11] held a convention at Baltimore, nominated William Wirt and Amos Ellmaker for President and Vice President, and so introduced the national nominating convention.

The example thus set was quickly followed: in December, 1831, a national convention of National Republicans nominated Clay (then a senator) for President, and John Sergeant for Vice President. In May, 1832, a national convention of Jackson men, or Democrats as some called them, nominated Martin Van Buren for Vice President. There was no need to renominate Jackson, for in a letter to some friends he had already declared himself a candidate, and many state legislatures had made the nomination. He was still the idol of the people and was re-elected by a greater majority than in 1828.

THE BANK ATTACKED.--One of the issues in the campaign was the recharter of the Bank of the United States, whose charter was to expire in 1836.

Jackson always hated that inst.i.tution, had attacked it in his annual messages, and had vetoed (1832) a recharter bill pa.s.sed (for political effect) by Clay and his friends in Congress.

REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS.--Jackson therefore looked upon his reflection as a popular approval of his treatment of the bank. He continued to attack it, and in 1833 requested the Secretary of the Treasury, William Duane, to remove the deposits of government money from the bank and its branches.

When Duane refused, Jackson turned him out of office and put in Roger B.

Taney, who made the removal. [12]