The whole message is able, adroit, and, on its face, plainly intended as a campaign document.[1419] A shrewd appeal is made to the State banks. Popular jealousy and suspicion of wealth and power are skillfully played upon: "The rich and powerful" always use governments for "their selfish purposes." When laws are passed "to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society—the farmers, mechanics, and laborers—who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government.
"There are no necessary evils in government," says Jackson. "Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing"—thus he runs on to his conclusion.[1420]
The masses of the people, particularly those of the South, responded with wild fervor to the President's assault upon the citadel of the "money power." John Marshall, the defender of special privilege, had said that the Bank law was protected by the Constitution; but Andrew Jackson, the champion of the common people, declared that it was prohibited by the Constitution. Hats in the air, then, and loud cheers for the hero who had dared to attack and to overcome this financial monster as he had fought and beaten the invading British!
Marshall was infinitely disgusted. He informs Story of Virginia's applause of Jackson's veto: "We are up to the chin in politics. Virginia was always insane enough to be opposed to the Bank of The United States, and therefore hurras for the veto. But we are a little doubtful how it may work in Pennsylvania. It is not difficult to account for the part New York may take. She has sagacity enough to see her interest in putting down the present bank. Her mercantile position gives her a controul, a commanding controul, over the currency and the exchanges of the country, if there be no Bank of The United States. Going for herself she may approve this policy; but Virginia ought not to drudge for her benefit."[1421]
Jackson did not sign the bill for the improvement of rivers and harbors, passed at the previous session of Congress, because, as he said, he had not "sufficient time ... to examine it before the adjournment."[1422] Everybody took the withholding of his signature as a veto.[1423] This bill included a feasible project for making the Virginia Capital accessible to seagoing vessels. Even this action of the President was applauded by Virginians:
"We show our wisdom most strikingly in approving the veto on the harbor bill also," Marshall writes Story. "That bill contained an appropriation intended to make Richmond a seaport, which she is not at present, for large vessels fit to cross the Atlantic. The appropriation was whittled down in the House of Representatives to almost nothing.... Yet we wished the appropriation because we were confident that Congress when correctly informed, would add the necessary sum. This too is vetoed; and for this too our sagacious politicians are thankful. We seem to think it the summit of human wisdom, or rather of American patriotism, to preserve our poverty."[1424]
During the Presidential campaign of 1832, Marshall all but despaired of the future of the Republic. The autocracy of Jackson's reign; the popular enthusiasm which greeted his wildest departures from established usage and orderly government; the state of the public mind, indicated everywhere by the encouragement of those whom Marshall believed to be theatrical and adventurous demagogues—all these circumstances perturbed and saddened him.
And for the time being, his fears were wholly justified. Triumphantly reëlected, Jackson pursued the Bank relentlessly. Finally he ordered that the Government funds should no longer be deposited in that hated institution. Although that desperate act brought disaster on business throughout the land, it was acclaimed by the multitude. In alarm and despair, Marshall writes Story: "We [Virginians] are insane on the subject of the Bank. Its friends, who are not numerous, dare not, a few excepted, to avow themselves."[1425]
But the sudden increase and aggressiveness of disunion sentiment oppressed Marshall more heavily than any other public circumstance of his last years. The immediate occasion for the recrudescence of Localism was the Tariff. Since the Tariff of 1816 the South had been discontented with the protection afforded the manufacturers of the North and East; and had made loud outcry against the protective Tariff of 1824. The Southern people felt that their interests were sacrificed for the benefit of the manufacturing sections; they believed that all that they produced had to be sold in a cheap, unprotected market, and all that they purchased had to be bought in a dear, protected market; they were convinced that the protective tariff system, and, indeed, the whole Nationalist policy, meant the ruin of the South.
Moreover, they began to see that the power that could enact a protective tariff, control commerce, make internal improvements, could also control slavery—perhaps abolish it.[1426] Certainly that was "the spirit" of Marshall's construction of the Constitution, they said. "Sir," exclaimed Robert S. Garnett of Virginia during the debate in the House on the Tariff of 1824, "we must look very little to consequences if we do not perceive in the spirit of this construction, combined with the political fanaticism of the period, reason to anticipate, at no distant day, the usurpation, on the part of Congress, of the right to legislate upon a subject which, if you once touch, will inevitably throw this country into revolution—I mean that of slavery.... Can whole nations be mistaken? When I speak of nations, I mean Virginia, the Carolinas, and other great Southern commonwealths."[1427]