Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 / From Lincoln to Garfield, with a Review of the Events Which Led to the Political Revolution of 1860

by James Gillespie Blaine

Mr. Walker made an elaborate report on the question of revenue, and attacked the tariff of 1842 in a manner which might well be termed savage. He arraigned the manufacturers as enjoying unfair advantages,—advantages held, as he endeavored to demonstrate, at the expense and to the detriment of the agriculturist, the mechanic, the merchant, the ship-owner, the sailor, and indeed of almost every industrial class. In reading Mr. Walker's report a third of a century after it was made, one might imagine that the supporters of the tariff of 1842 were engaged in a conspiracy to commit fraud, and that the manufacturers who profited by its duties were guilty of some crime against the people. But extreme as were his declarations and difficult as were the obstructions in his path, he was able to carry his point. Mr. Buchanan, the head of the Cabinet, had voted for the tariff of 1842, and Mr. Dallas, the Vice-President, had steadily and ably upheld the doctrine of protection when a member of the Senate. It was the position of Buchanan and Dallas on the tariff that won the October election of 1844 for Francis R. Shunk for governor of Pennsylvania, and thus assured the election of Mr. Polk. The administration of which Buchanan and Dallas were such conspicuous and influential members could not forswear protection and inflict a free-trade tariff on Pennsylvania, without apparent dishonor and the abandonment of that State to the Whigs. It was therefore regarded not only as impracticable but as politically impossible.

THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1846.

It was soon ascertained however that Mr. Polk sympathized with Mr. Walker, and Mr. Buchanan was silenced and overridden. The free- trade tariff of 1846 was passed; and Mr. Dallas, who had been nominated because of his record as a protectionist, was subjected to the humiliation of giving his casting vote as Vice-President in favor of a tariff which was execrated in Pennsylvania, and which was honestly believed to be inimical in the highest degree to the interest of the American manufacturer and the American mechanic. The Act had no small influence in the overthrow of the Polk administration at the elections for the next ensuing Congress, and in the defeat of General Cass for the Presidency in 1848. As senator from Michigan, General Cass had voted for the bill, influenced thereto by his Southern associates, for whom he always did so much, and from whom he always received so little. Pennsylvania was at that time really a Democratic State, but she punished General Cass for his free-trade course by giving her electoral vote to Taylor. If she had given it to Cass he would have been chosen President.

It was in connection with the tariff agitation of 1846 that Simon Cameron originally obtained his strong hold upon the popular sympathy and support of Pennsylvania. He was a Democrat; had long been confidential adviser to Mr. Buchanan, and had supported Mr. Polk. But he was a believer in the doctrine of protection; and as he had aided in carrying Pennsylvania by declaring himself a friend to the tariff of 1842, he maintained his faith. When the Polk administration was organized, a vacancy was created in the Senate by Mr. Buchanan's appointment as Secretary of State. George W. Woodward was the regular nominee of the Democratic party for the place. But Cameron bolted, and with the aid of Whig votes was chosen senator. He resisted the passage of the tariff of 1846, stood firmly and consistently for the industrial interests of his State, cultivated an alliance with the Whigs in the Senate, and by their aid thwarted all the attempts of the Polk administration to interfere with his plans and purposes in Pennsylvania. The President endeavored to heal Judge Woodward's wounds by placing him on the bench of the Supreme Court as the successor of the eminent Henry Baldwin. Cameron induced the Whigs to reject him, and then forced the administration to nominate Robert C. Grier whose appointment was personally acceptable and agreeable to him. In the successful tactics then employed by Cameron may be found the secret of his remarkable career as a party manager in the field in which, for a full half-century, he was an active and indefatigable worker.

The Whig victory of 1848 was not sufficiently decisive to warrant any attempt, even had there been desire, to change the tariff. General Taylor had been elected without subscribing to a platform or pledging himself to a specific measure, and he was therefore in a position to resist and reject appeals of the ordinary partisan character. Moreover the tariff of 1846 was yielding abundant revenue, and the business of the country was in a flourishing condition at the time his administration was organized. Money became very abundant after the year 1849; large enterprises were undertaken, speculation was prevalent, and for a considerable period the prosperity of the country was general and apparently genuine. After 1852 the Democrats had almost undisputed control of the government, and had gradually become a free-trade party. The principles embodied in the tariff of 1846 seemed for the time to be so entirely vindicated and approved that resistance to it ceased, not only among the people but among the protective economists, and even among the manufacturers to a large extent. So general was this acquiescence that in 1856 a protective tariff was not suggested or even hinted by any one of the three parties which presented Presidential candidates.

THE FREE-TRADE TARIFF OF 1857.

It was not surprising therefore that with a plethoric condition of the National Treasury for two or three consecutive years, the Democratic Congress, in the closing session of Pierce's administration, enacted what has since been known as the tariff of 1857. By this law the duties were placed lower then they had been at any time since the war of 1812. The Act was well received by the people, and was indeed concurred in by a considerable proportion of the Republican party. The Senate had a large Democratic majority, but in the House three parties divided the responsibility,—no one of them having an absolute majority. The Republicans had a plurality and had chosen Mr. Banks Speaker, but the American party held the balance of power in the House and on several of the leading committees. Some prominent Republicans, however, remaining true to their old Whig traditions, opposed the reduction of duties. Mr. Seward voted against it, but his colleague, Mr. Hamilton Fish, voted for it. Mr. Seward represented the protective tendencies of the country districts of New York, and Mr. Fish the free-trade tendencies of the city. Mr. Sumner and Mr. Wilson both voted for it, as did also Senator Allen of Rhode Island, the direct representative of the manufacturers of that State. Mr. Bell of New Hampshire voted for it, while Senators Collamer and Foote of Vermont voted against it. Mr. Fessenden did not oppose it, but his colleague, Mr. Nourse, voted against it. The Connecticut senators, Foster and Toucey, one of each party, supported the measure.

In the House, the New-England representatives generally voted for the bill, but Mr. Morrill of Vermont opposed it. The Pennsylvania delegation, led by James H. Campbell and John Covode, did all in their power to defeat it. The two Washburns, Colfax, and George G. Dunn headed a formidable opposition from the West. Humphrey Marshall and Samuel F. Swope of Kentucky were the only representatives from slave States who voted in the negative; though in the Senate three old and honored Whigs, John Bell of Tennessee, John B. Thompson of Kentucky, and Henry S. Geyer of Missouri maintained their ancient faith and voted against lowering the duties. It was an extraordinary political combination that brought the senators from Massachusetts and the senators from South Carolina, the representatives from New England and the representatives from the cotton States, to support the same tariff bill,—a combination which had not before occurred since the administration of Monroe. This singular coalition portended one of two results: Either an entire and permanent acquiescence in the rule of free-trade, or an entire abrogation of that system, and the revival, with renewed strength, of the doctrine of protection. Which it should be was determined by the unfolding of events not then foreseen, and the force of which it required years to measure.

The one excuse given for urging the passage of the Act of 1857 was that under the tariff of 1846 the revenues had become excessive, and the income of the government must be reduced. But it was soon found to be a most expensive mode of reaching that end. The first and most important result flowing from the new Act was a large increase in importations and a very heavy drain in consequence upon the reserved specie of the country, to pay the balance which the reduced shipments of agricultural products failed to meet. In the autumn of 1857, half a year after the passage of the tariff Act, a disastrous financial panic swept over the country, prostrating for the time all departments of business in about the same degree. The agricultural, commercial, and manufacturing interests were alike and equally involved. The distress for a time was severe and wide-spread. The stagnation which ensued was discouraging and long continued, making the years from 1857 to 1860 extremely dull and dispiriting in business circles throughout the Union. The country was not exhausted and depleted as it was after the panic of 1837, but the business community had no courage, energy was paralyzed, and new enterprises were at a stand-still.

It soon became evident that this condition of affairs would carry the tariff questions once more into the political arena, as an active issue between parties. Thus far, the new Republican organization had passively acquiesced in existing laws on the subject; but the general distress caused great bodies of men, as is always the case, to look to the action of the Government for relief. The Republicans found therefore a new ground for attacking the Democracy,—holding them responsible for the financial depression, initiating a movement for returning to the principle and practice of protection, and artfully identifying the struggle against slavery with the efforts of the workingmen throughout the North to be freed from injurious competition with the cheapened labor of Europe. This phase of the question was presented with great force in certain States, and the industrial classes, by a sort of instinct of self- preservation as it seemed to them, began to consolidate their votes in favor of the Republican party. They were made to see, by clever and persuasive speakers, that the slave labor of the South and the ill-paid labor of Europe were both hostile to the prosperity of the workingman in the free States of America, and that the Republican party was of necessity his friend, by its opposition to all the forms of labor which stood in the wy of his better remuneration and advancement.