Mr. Monroe became the author of what is now called the "Monroe doctrine,"—viz., that the effort of any foreign country to obtain dominion in America would thereafter and forever afterwards be regarded as an unfriendly act. Rather than be regarded as unfriendly, foreign countries now refrain from doing their dominion or dynasty work here.
The Whigs now appeared, and the old Republican party became known as the Democratic party. John Quincy Adams and Henry Clay were Whigs, and John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson were Democrats. The Whigs favored a high protective tariff and internal improvement. The Democrats did not favor anything especially, but bitterly opposed the Whig measures, whatever they were.
BALD-HEADED MEN NOT APPRECIATED.
In 1825, John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams, was elected President, and served one term. He was a bald-headed man, and the country was given four years of unexampled prosperity. Yet this experience has not been regarded by the people as it should have been. Other kinds of men have repeatedly been elected to that office, only to bring sorrow, war, debt, and bank-failures upon us. Sometimes it would seem to the thinking mind that, as a people, we need a few car-loads of sense in each school-district, where it can be used at a moment's notice.
Adams was not re-elected, on account of his tariff ideas, which were not popular at the South. He was called "The old man eloquent," and it is said that during his more impassioned passages his head, which was round and extremely smooth, became flushed, so that, from resembling the cue-ball on the start, as he rose to more lofty heights his dome of thought looked more like the spot ball on a billiard-table. No one else in Congress at that time had succeeded in doing this.
John Quincy Adams was succeeded in 1829 by Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans. Jackson was the first to introduce what he called "rotation in office." During the forty years previous there had been but seventy-four removals; Jackson made seven hundred. This custom has been pretty generally adopted since, giving immense satisfaction to those who thrive upon the excitement of offensive partisanship and their wives' relations, while those who have legitimate employment and pay taxes support and educate a new official kindergarten with every change of administration.
The prophet sees in the distance an eight-year term for the President, and employment thereafter as "charge-d'affaires" of the United States, with permission to go beyond the seas. Thus the vast sums of money and rivers of rum used in the intervening campaigns at present will be used for the relief of the widow and orphan. The ex-President then, with the portfolio of International Press Agent for the United States, could go abroad and be fêted by foreign governments, leaving dyspepsia everywhere in his wake and crowned heads with large damp towels on them.
Every ex-President should have some place where he could go and hide his shame. A trip around the world would require a year, and by that time the voters would be so disgusted with the new President that the old one would come like a healing balm, and he would be permitted to die without publishing a bulletin of his temperature and showing his tongue to the press for each edition of the paper.
South Carolina in 1832 passed a nullification act declaring the tariff act "null and void" and announcing that the State would secede from the Union if force were used to collect any revenue at Charleston. South Carolina has always been rather "advanced" regarding the matter of seceding from the American Union.