The high hopes of the protectionists were only partially realized. In the following session of Congress, economic interests became badly tangled with political. The President and the greater part of his supporters were protectionists. Indeed, it was openly charged by the opposition that the Harrisburg Convention was a device of the Adams men to promote his reëlection. The opposition, on the other hand, was far from united on the tariff question. The only affinity between Southern planters and their Northern allies in the Middle and Western States was hostility to the Administration. According to Calhoun, who in after years made a frank avowal of his part in the intrigue, the opposition determined to frame a tariff bill with a general high level of duties to satisfy the Middle and Western States, but to increase the duties on raw material which New England manufacturers needed. All the stanch Jackson men were to unite in forcing this bill to a passage without amendment. At the last moment, however, the Southern group were to part company with their allies and to vote against the bill. The Representatives from New England, and the supporters of the Administration generally, would of course vote against the bill also, and so compass its defeat. The odium would then fall upon the Adams men, while the Jackson men could pose as the only whole-hearted advocates of protection; and, finally, not the least factor in Calhoun's calculations, the South would escape the toils of high protection. There was only one hitch in this cleverly planned game. To the consternation of the plotters, enough New England Representatives swallowed the bitter dose to enact the bill.
The "tariff of abominations" deserves all the abuse which has been heaped upon it. Shapen in political iniquity, it bore upon its face the marks of its origin. High duties for which no one had asked were imposed on certain raw material like pig and bar iron, and hemp, the better quality of which was always in demand and never produced in the United States. Items like the increased duty on molasses and the heavy duty on sail-duck were added to make the bill distasteful to New England. But the woolen industry suffered the most grievous disappointment. Instead of the minimum principle advocated by the Harrisburg Convention, the Act of 1828 established a minimum of one dollar between the minimal points of fifty cents and two dollars and a half. Whereas the proposed rate would have fixed a prohibitory duty on woolens costing about a dollar a yard, the act allowed only a duty of forty-five per cent. "The dollar minimum," as one of the aggrieved manufacturers put it, "was planted in the very midst of the woolen trade."
Again the Middle States and the States of the Ohio Valley united in support of the protective principle. New England was divided against itself. Political considerations weighed heavily with those New Englanders who like Webster voted for the bill. John Randolph hardly exaggerated when he declared that "the bill referred to manufactures of no sort or kind, except the manufacture of a President of the United States."
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
To the bibliography at the close of the preceding chapter only a few titles need be added. The foreign policy of the Adams Administration is well described in F. E. Chadwick's The Relations of the United States and Spain (1909). The stages in the Indian controversy may be traced in U. B. Phillips's Georgia and State Rights (American Historical Association, Report, 1901), and in E. J. Hardin's Life of George M. Troup (1859). E. M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren (1888), and T. D. Jervey, Robert Y. Hayne and His Times (1909), are important biographies. Josiah Quincy's Figures of the Past (1883) contains some interesting sketches of Washington society, while N. Sargent's Public Men and Events (2 vols., 1875) supplies an abundance of political gossip.