The Middle Period 1817-1858 Part 15

Finally, Mr. McDuffie uttered, in this speech, the threat of resistance to the execution of the tariff laws, the threat of nullification. It was ill timed, as threats generally are, and it had the effect of producing the large majority by which Mr. McDuffie's amendment was voted down.

The bill suffered some modification in the course of its pa.s.sage, but its principle remained the same. It reduced the duty on no article whatever, but only provided for a stricter enforcement of the existing laws.

[Sidenote: Growth of the protection idea.]

By another bill, which received the President's approval on May 20th (1830), eight days before this administrative bill was signed, the duties on tea, coffee, and cocoa had been reduced. This meant that the protectionists were very {178} willing to free those articles from duty which did not come into compet.i.tion with home productions, in order to preserve and increase the duties on those that did. This was the direction in which the tariff system was growing. It became, two years later, the p.r.o.nounced principle of the "American system," as we shall see.

[Sidenote: Jackson on the Tariff and the surplus revenue derived therefrom, in the message of December, 1830.]

In the message of December 7th, 1830, President Jackson defended the const.i.tutionality of the protective system, said that the existing tariff needed some corrections in details, and expressed the opinion that no law reducing duties could be made which would be satisfactory to the American people that would not leave a considerable surplus in the Treasury. He suggested the employment of such surplus upon internal improvements under the direction of the legislatures of the several Commonwealths.

[Sidenote: Southern disappointment.]

This was a stunning blow to the hopes of the Southerners. The extinction of the debt and the existence of an unemployed surplus were the conditions to which they had looked forward as necessitating in all conservative minds the reduction of the duties. But here was a plan, suggested by a Southern President, for relieving the Treasury of any amount of surplus for an indefinite period, without the reduction of a single penny of duty upon a single article. Thus encouraged the protectionists in both Houses of Congress refused, during the session of 1830-31, to consider any propositions looking toward a reduction of duties.

It is hardly a cause of wonder that the South Carolinians began to despair of obtaining through Congress any relief from what they regarded as dire oppression, and that some of them were reviewing the Const.i.tution, and the political principles upon which it was founded, with {179} the purpose of finding other means with which to meet the great emergency. It was in this part of the work that Mr. Calhoun took the lead.

[Sidenote: "The South Carolina Exposition."]

[Sidenote: Calhoun's doctrine of "States' rights."]

As far back as 1828, just after the enactment of the tariff measure which was giving so much offence, Mr. Calhoun had started out in this direction in the paper which he furnished the South Carolina legislature, which served as the basis of the first p.r.o.nunciamento from that body upon the subject, the so-called South Carolina Exposition. This doc.u.ment by Mr. Calhoun was comparatively temperate in its language and not very clear in its political doctrines and its const.i.tutional interpretation. The great debate between Hayne and Webster on the floor of the Senate, over which body Mr. Calhoun, as Vice-President, presided, in regard to the fundamental principles of the Union, taught Mr. Calhoun several very important points in the evolution of his doctrine of "States' rights." Especially was he warned against the great error, made by Mr. Hayne, of representing the United States Government as one of the parties to the "const.i.tutional pact" and the "States" as the other. Mr. Webster so completely demolished this theory that Mr. Calhoun was preserved from introducing this fallacy or any of its corollaries into his reasoning, if he had ever been inclined to do so. In his "Address on the Relations of the States and Federal Government," and in his "Address to the People of South Carolina," both published in the summer of 1831, he shows that he had maturely reflected upon all that had been said and written upon the fundamental question of the relation of the "States" to the Union and to the general Government. He had given up his hope both in the Congress and in the President. With him the question of the tariff had now, {180} therefore, been removed from the domain of governmental policy into that of const.i.tutional powers and political principle.

This was the point of view which he took in the doc.u.ments just mentioned.

He began, as innovators generally do, with the a.s.sertion that his interpretation of the Const.i.tution was no new invention of his own, but was the ancient principle of the Const.i.tution. That principle was, he contended, that the Const.i.tution was made by the "States," as sovereign bodies, and that through it the "States" created only a governmental agent for their general affairs. The term or phrase United States was only the name of the general governmental agent of the "States." Sovereignty was in the "States" only. Consequently, when the United States a.s.sumed powers not conferred by the "States" in the Const.i.tution, the "States," by virtue of the sovereign attribute, might and should interpose, interpose individually, not collectively as they, of course, might do const.i.tutionally through the regular form of procedure for amending the Const.i.tution.

[Sidenote: Nullification in theory.]

Calhoun, like every other real statesman of his day, held that there is a domain of liberty secured not only to the minority, but to the individual, by the Const.i.tution, upon which the majority shall not encroach. The practical question was how to prevent the majority, in possession of the powers and machinery of the Government, from doing so. The answer to this question developed by precedent, and formulated clearly by Webster at that very moment, was that it could be done only by invoking the aid of the judicial power of the United States. But Calhoun said in reply to this, that the United States courts were a part of the Government, substantially under the control of Congress and the President, through the power of Congress to const.i.tute judgeships at pleasure, and of the President and the {181} Senate to fill them, and that they were interested, therefore, in the usurpations of power by the Government. He further held that these courts could not decide political questions, although these questions might incidentally involve the most sacred rights of individuals, and that, anyhow, they were as much subject to the "States," acting in their sovereign capacities, as any other part of the Government. He could see no way for preserving the rights of the minority and of individuals, in last resort, against governmental usurpation, save through the power of "_each of the parties_ to the compact" to prevent the execution within the territory subject to its jurisdiction of such governmental measures as it might deem usurpations.

[Sidenote: The nullification and anti-nullification parties in South Carolina.]

Down to the time of these utterances of Calhoun the party in South Carolina opposed to any resistance, by force, to the execution of the tariff laws, had been able to prevent the outbreak of nullification.

The leaders of this party were among the most distinguished and influential men of the Commonwealth. They were Mr. Drayton, the member of Congress from the Charleston district, Judge Johnson of the United States Supreme Court, Mr. Petigru, Mr. Grimke, the Lowndes, and others of scarcely less note. In the first half of the year 1831 they still held control of the munic.i.p.al government of Charleston, and of the legislature of the Commonwealth, although the "States' rights" men had obtained the governorship. Nearly all of the opponents of nullification denounced the tariff laws as unjust and oppressive to the South, but they also denounced the doctrine that the execution of any law of the United States could be const.i.tutionally resisted, except by means of the judicial processes provided for the case by the Const.i.tution itself. Resistance in any other {182} manner, they declared, would be rebellion at the outset, revolution if successful.

They said that they were not willing to a.s.sume any such responsibilities in opposing the tariff laws, and that they regarded the blessings of the Union as too great and manifold to hazard disunion, even if it could be successfully and peaceably accomplished.

Their views were so candid and reasonable that, in spite of the intense excitement which prevailed during the legislative session following the failure of the attempt to modify the tariff, they prevented the nullifiers from securing a sufficient majority in the legislature to order the call of a convention. The nullifiers had committed themselves to the doctrine that the nullifying power was a power of sovereignty, not of government, and that it resided, therefore, in the convention, not in the legislature. So long, then, as the a.s.sembly of the convention could be prevented, nullification could be certainly thwarted.

[Sidenote: Capture of the munic.i.p.al government of Charleston by the nullifiers.]

But the publication of Calhoun's new doctrine in the summer of 1831 gave great strength to the nullifiers, and in the munic.i.p.al election of the latter part of the year they captured the mayorship of Charleston.

[Sidenote: First attempt to try the validity of the Tariff in the United States courts.]

One of the strongest moral forces in the hands of the opponents of nullification against which the nullifiers had to contend was the generally received doctrine that the const.i.tutional means for meeting Congressional usurpation in any given case was a process in the United States courts. Unless they could say that they had tried this means in vain, they would still have to suffer the imputation of too hasty action, if nothing more. In order to escape this, two Charleston lawyers imported a package of dutiable goods, gave bonds for the payment of the duty, {183} refused payment, and were sued upon their bonds in the United States District Court. The plan was to have the question of the const.i.tutionality of the tariff submitted to the jury, but the court refused to allow the jury to decide any question except that which pertained to the due execution of the bond.

[Sidenote: Nullification and rebellion.]

The nullifiers could now declare that every means suggested by their opponents as regular and lawful had been tried and had failed, and that there now remained only submission to oppression, or nullification, or rebellion. They said that no true South Carolinian could accept the first, and that, therefore, the choice lay between nullification and rebellion. Calhoun taught that there was a vast difference between the two; that the former was a const.i.tutional, as well as a sovereign, method of resistance. He a.s.serted that it was the great conservative principle of the Const.i.tution, and defined it to be that reserved right whereby a "State," in convention a.s.sembled, might suspend the operation of a Congressional act upon its citizens which it considered unconst.i.tutional, until conventions in three-fourths of the "States" should p.r.o.nounce the Congressional act to be const.i.tutional. He did not claim that this right was reserved specifically, but by implication from the general language of the Tenth Amendment. He was doubtless sincere, or at least thought he was.

Many of his followers certainly were, and the ma.s.ses, who could not understand the doctrine, but took it on faith, were so certain of its truth that they were ready to risk anything for its vindication.

The Unionists, however, branded the doctrine as a deception. An editorial in one of their princ.i.p.al newspapers contained this sentence: "But this everlasting cant of devotion to the Union, accompanied by a recommendation to do those acts that must necessarily destroy {184} it, is beyond patient endurance from a people not absolutely confined in their own mad-houses." It was clear to them, at the outset, that nullification was piecemeal secession and rebellion.

[Sidenote: Jackson's message of December, 1831, on the Tariff issue.]

This was the state of things in South Carolina when Congress a.s.sembled on the first Monday of December, 1831. On the 6th the President's annual message was laid before the two Houses. It contained a much more distinct and decided recommendation for the reduction of duties than he had ever before expressed. He called attention to the prospect of the early extinguishment of the public debt, when the annual instalment to the sinking fund would be no longer needed, and recommended that Congress should at once deal with the question of the reduction of the duties to a point where they would produce no more revenue than would be necessary for an economical administration of the Government. He farther recommended the readjustment of the duties with a view to equal justice to all national interests, and said that the interests of both merchant and manufacturer required that the change should be prospective.

There was no suggestion in the message of increasing the expenditures of the Government for internal improvements, or for any other purpose.

The plain inference from the message was that by March 4th, 1833, the debt would all be paid, and the revenue could then be reduced by ten or twelve millions a year, and should be.

[Sidenote: The question of the proper committee to frame Tariff Bills.]

This was all that the South Carolinians had asked, and it would have been the height of folly for them to have pursued extraordinary means to relieve themselves when regular methods promised at last a prospect of success. This part of the message was referred to the committee on Manufactures, of which ex-President John Quincy Adams was then chairman. Mr. Adams {185} had far more moderate views in regard to the tariff than the majority of his protectionist brethren, and it could be reasonably hoped that he would report a bill from his committee which would be conciliatory in character. The Southerners were not quite willing, however, to rest entirely on his own good will, and raised the contention that the subject of the tariff ought to be referred either to the committee on Ways and Means, or to the committee on Commerce, since the power to impose duties was incident either to the raising of revenue or to the regulation of commerce. The result of the contention was that a resolution was introduced, and taken up, requesting the committee on Commerce to make a report on the working of the tariff, and the committee on Ways and Means was allowed to report a tariff bill, which was read twice and referred to the committee of the Whole House.

[Sidenote: The bill from the Committee on Ways and Means.]

The bill from the committee on Ways and Means provided for the reduction of the duty to twelve and one-half per centum _ad valorem_ on all articles; on some, immediately and totally, but on the more important articles gradually, and in a period of a little more than three years.

This was undoubtedly an ill digested measure. It was not only a radical reduction of duties, but it was an indiscriminate reduction.

Mr. McDuffie's own committee were not unanimous in recommending it.

[Sidenote: The Tariff Bill of 1832 from the Committee on Manufactures.]

On May 23rd Mr. Adams reported the bill from the committee on Manufactures. Mr. Adams based his bill on the report of the Secretary of the Treasury, of December 7th, 1831, and proposed the repeal of the existing system of minimal valuations and the duty on coa.r.s.e wool altogether, and a slight reduction of the duties on fine wool and woollen fabrics.

{186} It was calculated that Mr. Adams' bill would reduce the receipts from the customs by about five or six millions of dollars, leaving thus still an annual surplus of some five or six millions after the extinguishment of the debt.

Mr. McDuffie's bill was taken up first in the committee of the Whole House. Mr. McDuffie defended it with his argument, already stated, that the producers of the exports pay finally the duties on the imports for which the exports are exchanged in the foreign markets, and cited recent utterances of Professor Senior, the noted political economist of Oxford University, in support of his position. He could not, however, convince the House, and his bill was finally disposed of in less than a week. Mr. Adams' bill was then taken up. It was understood as proposing a slight reduction all around. It was intended to do so. But Mr. McDuffie made an argument against it, in which he undertook to prove, and declared that he did prove, that it discriminated still further against the South, and imposed a heavier burden upon that section than it was even then bearing, grievous as that was. He declared, finally, that he would not submit to it.

[Sidenote: Pa.s.sage of the Tariff of 1832 by the House of Representatives.]

The House, however, was neither convinced by his argument nor intimidated by his threat. It pa.s.sed the bill on June 28th, by a large majority, a majority of more than two to one.

Meanwhile the Senate had been occupying itself with an exhaustive discussion of the principle of the tariff. On January 9th, 1832, Mr.

Clay introduced the famous resolution for making the tariff upon articles coming into compet.i.tion with home manufactures a system of permanent high duties, and for abolishing, or greatly reducing, the duties upon all other articles.

{187} Senator Hayne immediately grasped the import of this proposition. He declared that it marked a new era in the tariff system. He demonstrated that down to that time the protection of manufactures had been regarded by all persons and parties as a temporary policy and had been justified as such, while this proposition looked to its establishment as a permanent principle of the policy of the country, which neither revenue surplus nor manufacturing experience should affect.

[Sidenote: The "American System."]

Mr. Clay, who had himself spoken of protection before this as only a temporary policy, acknowledged the truth of Colonel Hayne's criticism, and proceeded, in his famous three days' speech, to develop the arguments for the permanent protective system, the "American System,"

as he termed it, which made up the text-book for the later supporters of that system. His idea was simply to collect the duties from those foreign products which come into compet.i.tion in the home markets with domestic products, and prevent the acc.u.mulation of a Treasury surplus by fixing the duties so high in rate as to make them largely prohibitory. As we have seen, this idea had been already foreshadowed in one of President Jackson's earlier messages. It now received its complete formulation and its economic justification.

But it was a sad prospect for the South. The South had looked forward to the extinguishment of the debt as necessarily bringing in its train the decrease of duties to the gross amount of at least ten millions of dollars per annum, and now it was called upon to consider the plan for a decrease of revenue by an increase of duties. It is hardly astonishing that the disappointment should have been bitter, and that pa.s.sionate men should have thought of resistance to what appeared to them so grievously unjust.

{188} The Senate referred Mr. Clay's resolution, together with an amendment to it, proposed by Colonel Hayne, for a general reduction of duties, to its committee on Manufactures. The committee reported a bill based on Mr. Clay's principle. The Const.i.tution does not, however, allow the Senate to originate a bill for raising revenue, and the majority of the Senators voted to lay the bill on the table, and await the movements in the House.

[Sidenote: The bill in the Senate.]