History of the United States, Volume 3

by Elisha Benjamin Andrews

The School-house of the Slashes.
As an orator Webster had no peer in his time, nor have the years since
evoked his peer. He was an influential party leader, and repeatedly
thought of for President, though too prominent ever to be nominated. On
two momentous questions, the tariff and slavery, he vacillated, his
dubious action concerning the latter costing him his popularity in New
England.

Henry Clay. From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype.
Yet in many respects the most interesting figure in the party was Henry
Clay. He was born amid the swamps of Hanover County, Va., and had grown
up in most adverse surroundings. His father, a Baptist clergyman, died
while he was an infant, leaving him destitute. In "The Slashes," as the
neighborhood where Clay passed his childhood was called, he might often
have been seen astride a sorry horse with a rope bridle and no saddle,
carrying his bag of grain to the mill. He had attended only district
schools. After obtaining the rudiments of a legal education in Richmond
by service as a lawyer's clerk, he removed to Kentucky. He was soon
famous as a criminal lawyer, and a little later as a politician. The
rest of his life was spent in Congress or cabinet.
Clay's speeches read ill, but were powerful in their delivery. He spoke
directly to the heart. As he proceeded, his tall and awkward form swayed
with passion. His voice was sweet and winsome. Once Tom Marshall was to
face him in joint debate over a salary grab for which Clay had voted.
Clay had the first word, and as he warmed to his work Marshall slunk
away through the crowd in despair. "Come back," said Clay's haters to
him; "you can answer every point." "Of course," replied Marshall, "but I
can't get up there and do it now." The common people shouted for Clay as
they shouted for neither Webster nor Adams. He had infinite fund of
anecdote, remembered everyone he had ever seen, and was kindly to all.
John Tyler is said to have wept when Clay failed of the Presidential
nomination in the Whig Convention of 1839.
[1840]
Clay's vices and inconsistencies were readily forgiven. He had denounced
duelling as barbarous, yet when sharp-tongued John Randolph referred to
him and Adams as having, in 1825, formed "the coalition of Blifil and
Black George, the combination of the Puritan and the blackleg"--for Clay
gambled--Clay challenged him. They met, the diminutive Randolph being in
his dressing-gown. Neither was hurt, as Randolph fired in air and Clay
was no shot. Being asked why he did not kill Randolph, Clay said: "I
aimed at the part of his gown where I thought he was, but when the
bullet got there he had moved." In 1842, when Lord Ashburton was in
Washington, there was a famous whist game, my lord, with Mr. Crittenden,
playing against Clay and the Russian Minister, Count Bodisco, while
Webster looked on. "What shall the stake be?" asked his lordship. "Out
of deference to Her Majesty," said Clay, "we will make it a sovereign."

John Randolph.
From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society.
Emphatically patriotic, super-eminent in debate, ambitious, adventurous
in political diplomacy, a hard worker, incessant in activity for his
party, temperate upon the slavery question, whole-souled in every
measure or policy calculated to advance nationality, this versatile man
may be put down as foremost among the leaders of the Whig Party from its
origin till his death.
CHAPTER II.
FLORIDA AND THE MONROE DOCTRINE
[1816]
It was a delicate question after the Louisiana purchase how much
territory it embraced east of the Mississippi. Louisiana had under
France, till 1762, reached the Perdido, Florida's western boundary at
present, and was "retroceded" by Spain to France in 1800 "with the same
extent that it had when France possessed it." The United States of
course succeeded to whatever France thus recovered. Spain claimed still
to own West Florida, the name given by Great Britain on receiving it
from France in 1763 to the part of Louisiana between the Perdido and the
Mississippi. Spain had never acquired the district from France, but
obtained it by conquest from Great Britain during our Revolution.
This claim by Spain, based only on the "retro" in the treaty of 1800,
our Government viewed as fanciful, regarding West Florida undoubtedly
ours through the Louisiana purchase. Spain was intractable, first of
herself, later still more so through Napoleon's dictation. Hence our
offer, in Jefferson's time, to avoid war, of a lump sum for the two
Floridas was spurned by her. In 1810 and 1811, to save it from
anarchy--also to save it from Great Britain or France, now in the
whitest heat of their contest for Spain--we occupied West Florida, as
certainly entitled to it against those powers, yet with no view of
precluding further negotiations with Spain. When in 1812 Louisiana
became a State, its eastern boundary ran as now, including a goodly
portion of the region in debate.
[1817]
The necessity of acquiring East Florida, too, was more and more
apparent. That country was without rule, full of filibusterers,
privateers, hostile refugee Creeks and runaway negroes, of whose
services the English had availed themselves freely during the war of
1812, when Spaniards and English made Florida a perpetual base for
hostile raids into our territory. A fort then built by the English on
the Appalachicola and left intact at the peace with some arms and
ammunition, had been occupied by the negroes, who, from this retreat,
menaced the peace beyond the line. Spain could not preserve law and
order here. This was perhaps a sufficient excuse for the act of General
Gaines in crossing into Florida and bombarding the negro fort, July 27,
1816. Amelia Island, on the Florida coast, a nest of lawless men from
every nation, was in 1817 also seized by the United States with the same
propriety. Knowledge that Spain resented these acts encouraged the
Floridians. Collisions continually occurred all along the line, finally
growing into general hostility. Such was the origin of the First
Seminole War.

James Monroe. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart--now the property of T.
Jefferson Coolidge.
[1818]
December, 1817, Jackson was placed in command in Georgia. To clear out
the filibusterers, the chief source of the Indians' discontent ever
since before the Creek War, the hero of New Orleans, mistakenly
supposing himself to be fortified by his Government's concurrence,
boldly took forcible possession of all East Florida. Ambrister and
Arbuthnot, two officious English subjects found there, he put to death.
This procedure was quite characteristic of Old Hickory. He acted upon
the theory that by the law of nations any citizen of one land making war
upon another land, the two being at peace, becomes an outlaw.
International law has no such doctrine, and most likely the maxim
occurred to Jackson rather as an excuse after the act than in the way of
forethought. Nor was it ever proved that the two victims were guilty as
Jackson alleged. With him this probably made little difference. Having
undertaken to quiet the Floridian outbreaks he was determined to
accomplish his end, whatever the consequences of some of his means.
With the country the New Orleans victor, who had now dared to hang a
British subject, was ten times a hero, but the deed confused and
troubled Monroe's cabinet not a little. Calhoun wished General Jackson
censured, while all his cabinet colleagues disapproved his high-handed
acts and stood ready to disavow them with reparation. On this occasion
Jackson owed much to one whom he subsequently hated and denounced, viz.,
Quincy Adams, by whose bold and acute defence of his doubtful doings,
managed with a fineness of argument and diplomacy which no then American
but Adams could command, he was formally vindicated before both his own
Government and the Governments of England and Spain.
The posts seized had of course to be given up, yet our bold invasion had
rendered Spain willing at last to sell Florida, while Great Britain,
wishing our countenance in her opposition to the anti-progressive,
misnamed Holy Alliance of continental monarchs, concurred. Spain after
all got the better of the bargain, as we surrendered all claim to Texas,
which the Louisiana purchase had really made ours.
[1823]
The Florida imbroglio nursed to its first public utterance a sentiment
which has ever since been spontaneously taken as a principle of American
public policy, almost as if it were a part of our law itself. Spain's
American dependencies had been sensible enough to avail themselves of
that land's distraction in Napoleon's time, to set up as states on their
own account. She naturally wanted them back. Ferdinand VII. withheld
till 1820 his signature of the treaty ceding Florida, in order to
prevent--which, after all, it did not--our recognition of these
revolted provinces as independent nations. Backed by the powerful
Austrian minister, Metternich, and by the Holy Alliance, France, having
aided Ferdinand to suppress at home the liberal rebellion of 1820-23,
began to moot plans for subduing the new Spanish-American States. Great
Britain opposed this, out of motives partly commercial, partly
philanthropic, partly relating to international law, yet was unwilling
so early to recognize the independence of those nations as the United
States had done.
Assured at least of England's moral support, President Monroe in his
message of December, 1823, declared that we should consider any attempt
on the part of the allied monarchs "to extend their system to any
portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety," and
any interposition by them to oppress the young republics or to control
their destiny, "as a manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward
the United States." This, in kernel, is the first part of Monroe's
doctrine.
The second part added: "The American continents, by the free and
independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are
henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by
any European powers." The meaning of this was that the mere hap of first
occupancy on the continent by the citizens of any country would not any
longer be recognized by us as giving that country a title to the spot
occupied.
These important doctrines--for though akin in principle they are really
two--were no sudden creation of individual thought, but the result
rather of slow processes in the public mind. Germs of the first are
traceable to Washington; express statements of both, yet not essentially
detracting from Monroe's originality, to Jefferson. Both were put in
form by Quincy Adams, Monroe's Secretary of State. Especially Monroe's,
we believe, is the second, a resolution to which Russia's advance down
the Pacific coast, and more still the recent vexations from the
proximity of Spain in Florida, had pushed him.
CHAPTER III.
THE MISSOURI COMPROMISE
Louisiana having become a State in 1812, that portion of the purchase
north of the thirty-third degree took the name of the Missouri
Territory. St. Louis was its centre of population and of influence.
[1818]
Being found in this extensive domain at the purchase, slavery had never
been hindered in its growth. It had therefore taken firm root and was
popular. The application, early in 1818, of the densest part of Missouri
Territory for admission into the Union as a slave State, called
attention to this threatening status of slavery beyond the Mississippi,
and occasioned in Congress a prolonged, able, angry, and momentous
debate. Jefferson, still alive, wrote, "The Missouri question is the
most portentous which has ever threatened the Union. In the gloomiest
hour of the Revolutionary War I never had apprehensions equal to those
which I feel from this source."
To see the bearing of the tremendous question thus raised, we have need
of a retrospect. Property in man is older than history and has been
nearly universal. It cannot be doubted that in an early stage of human
development slavery is a means of furthering civilization. Negro slavery
originated in Africa, spread to Spain before the discovery of America,
to America soon after, and from the Spanish colonies to the English. The
first notice we have of it in English America is that in
1619 a Dutch ship landed twenty blacks at Jamestown for sale. The Dutch
West India Company began importing slaves into Manhattan in 1626. There
were slaves in New England by 1637. Newport was subsequently a great
harbor for slavers. Georgia offered the strongest resistance to the
introduction of the system, but it was soon overcome. Till about 1700,
Virginia had a smaller proportion of slave population than some northern
colonies, and the change later was mostly due to considerations not of
morality but of profit. Anti-slavery cries were indeed heard from an
early period, but they were few and faint. Penn held slaves, though
ordering their emancipation at his death. Whitfield thought slavery to
be of God. But its most culpable abettor was the English Government,
moved by the profits of the slave trade. A Royal African Company, with
the Duke of York, afterward James II., for some time its president, was
formed to monopolize this business, which monarchs and ministries
furthered to the utmost of their power.
Thus the Revolution found slavery in all the colonies, north as well as
south. But it was then, so far south as Virginia, thought to be an evil.
That commonwealth had passed many laws to restrain it, but the King had
commanded the Governor not to assent to any of them. The Legislature,
replying, stigmatized the traffic as inhuman and a threat to the very
existence of the colony. Hostility extended from the trade to slavery
itself. Jefferson was for emancipation with deportation, and trembled
for his country as he reflected upon the wrong of slavery and the
justice of God. Patrick Henry, George Mason, Peyton Randolph,
Washington, Madison, in a word all the great Virginians of the time held
similar views.
The Quakers of Pennsylvania were, however, the most aggressive of
slavery's foes. So early as 1775 a society, the first in America if not
in the world for promoting its abolition, was formed in Pennsylvania. In
1789 it was incorporated, with Franklin for president. Similar
organizations soon rose in several northern States, numbering among
their members many of the most eminent men in the land. The British
Abolition Society, formed in 1787, and the labors of Wilberforce,
Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay against the slave trade in the West
Indies, had influence here, as had still more the French Assembly's bold
proclamation of the Rights of Man.
The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive
point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language,
there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the
said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the
everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental
Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose assent
as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights
over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the
strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana
purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the
presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory.
Vermont had never recognized slavery save to prohibit it in its first
constitution. In New Hampshire it existed but nominally. The
Massachusetts constitution of 1780 virtually ended it in that State.
Gradual abolition statutes passed in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Rhode
Island and Connecticut in 1784. The constitution made it possible to
forbid the importation of slaves in 1808. A national law to that effect
was passed in 1807, making the trade illegal and affixing to it heavy
penalties. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 for the
purpose of negro deportation. It did little of this, but rendered some
service toward carrying out the act against slave importation. A new law
in 1820, which made this traffic piracy, punishable with death, was
partly due to its influence. Also many, like Birney, Gerrit Smith and
the Tappans, who began as colonizationists, subsequently became
abolitionists.
Notwithstanding all these influences slavery increased in strength every
year. South Carolina and Georgia were finding it exceedingly profitable
for cotton and rice culture, and the income from slave traffic into the
vast opening lands of Tennessee and Kentucky constituted an irresistible
temptation. In spite of the law of 1807 and of the indescribable horrors
of the business, even the foreign slave trade went on. The institution
found many defenders in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in the first
and subsequent Congresses. The pleas began to be raised, so current
later, that the negro was an inferior being, slavery God's ordinance, a
blessing to slaves and masters alike, and emancipation a folly. Now
began also that policy of bravado by which, for sixty years, the friends
of slavery bullied their opponents into shameful inaction upon that
accursed thing politically as well as morally, which was so nearly to
cost the nation its life. Thus stood matters when the Missouri
Compromise was mooted in the national Legislature.
We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was
created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the
same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of
the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern
line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land
between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the
"Territory of Arkansaw."
In the memorable discussion over this issue, involving the country as
well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the
suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of
property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves
as tacitly guaranteed by the Constitution. They also made much of the
third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows:
"The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the
Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according
to the principles of the Federal Constitution, to the enjoyment of all
the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States;
and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free
enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they
profess."
There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best
to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger
to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the
sacred compromises in the Constitution, meaning the permission at first
to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in
Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the
necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of
Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto,
and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery,
as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was
the most earnest pleader for the compromise.
To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that
property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress
had full power over territorial institutions and should never have
permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed
error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms
of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they
had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign
power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been
admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly
said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed
its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way.
The chief strength of slavery in this crisis lay in the distressing
practical difficulty, if the prayer of Missouri were refused, of dealing
with slaves and slave proprietorship there, and of quieting a numerous
and spirited population bent upon statehood and slavery together. The
more decided foes of slavery did not sufficiently consider these
complications. Nor did they duly reflect upon the sweeping triumph which
freedom had withal secured in the pledge that the vast bulk of the
Louisiana purchase should be forever free. The pledge was indeed broken
in 1854, but not until such a sense of its sacredness had been impressed
upon the country that the breach availed slavery nothing.
CHAPTER IV.
THE GREAT NULLIFICATION
[1816-1828]
The tariff rates of 1816 on cottons and woollens were to be twenty-five
per cent. for three years, after that twenty. Instead of this the cotton
tariff was in 1824 replaced at twenty-five per cent., the same as that
upon woollens costing thirty-three and a third cents or less per square
yard; woollens over this price bearing thirty per cent. Wool, which by
the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty,
some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824,
from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred
per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The
duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four
and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a
half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made
the cry for protection louder than ever.
[1828]
From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one
hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had
never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the
Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except
Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and
saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong
was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic,
that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only
by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make
prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron,
hemp, and cordage for ship-building; also on molasses, the raw material
for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was
exported.

John Quincy Adams. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart.
The Whigs had arranged, to be now passed, a series of minimum rates on
woollens, by which all costing over fifty cents a square yard were to
pay as if costing $2.50, and all over this as if costing $4.00. The rate
was to be forty per cent. the first year, forty-five the second, and
fifty thereafter.
This illustrates the famous "minimum principle," which has played such a
figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to
make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us,
most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on
this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on
$2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent.
To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the
Whigs, the Democrats introduced a dollar "minimum," so that the tariff
on the bulk of our imported woollens, costing, as just stated, about
ninety cents, would come in at forty-four and four-tenths per cent.
But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had
before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one
hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members,
led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff
of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a
few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on
dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent.
No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South.
It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as
extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil
she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in
her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due
simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political
ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and
there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now
favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the
tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the
constitutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts.
[1830]
Nearly all the southern Legislatures consequently denounced the tariff
as unjust and as hostile to our fundamental law. Most of them were,
however, prudent enough to suggest no illegal remedies. Not so with
fiery South Carolina, where a large party, inspired by Calhoun, proposed
a bold nullification of the tariff act, virtually amounting to
secession. At a dinner in this interest at Washington, April 13, 1830,
Calhoun offered the toast: "The Union; next to our liberty the most
dear; only to be preserved by respecting the rights of the States."
[1832]
John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most
influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782,
of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated
like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and
through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the
only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of
Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for
seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and
reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and
seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had
built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and
Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history
of the formation of our Constitution. He had worked out to his own
satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in
the way of revolution but under the Constitution itself--as a contract
between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon
its own judgment of their unconstitutionality.