Despite the fact that there were no material differences in political principles, and the further fact that Adams retained Monroe's cabinet so far as he could, appointing new members only to positions made vacant therein by his own and Calhoun's promotion to the presidency and the vice-presidency, and by Crawford's refusal to accept the Treasury for another term, it was now perfectly evident that Jackson, Calhoun, and Crawford, with their followers, were determined upon an organized opposition to the Adams-Clay Administration, no matter what principles and policies that Administration should follow; that Jackson would, on account of his popularity with the masses, be put forward as the head of the new party; and that the cry of "bargain and corruption" between the President and the chief officer of his Administration, for robbing the "Old Hero" of his rights and the people of their choice, was to be their watchword in the conflict.
CHAPTER VII.
THE DIVISION OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY
[Personal Differences, and Party Division]—[Military Confederation of the Spanish-American States]—[Invitation to the United States to send Representatives to the Congress at Panama]—[The Acceptance of the Invitation]—[Opposition in the Senate to the sending of Representatives to Panama]—[Popular Sympathy in the United States for the South-American States]—[The President's Nominations Confirmed]—[The Haytian Question at the Congress]—[Cuba and Porto Rico]—[Real Nature of the Opposition to the Panama Mission]—[The Failure of the Panama Congress]—[Adams on Internal Improvements in his Message of December 6th, 1825]—[Van Buren's Resolution against Internal Improvements]—[The Practices of the Adams Administration in respect to Internal Improvements]—[The Chief Practical Difficulty in the way of a National System of Internal Improvements]—[The Tariff of 1824 a Failure]—[The Tariff Bill of 1827]—[Development of the Industrial Antithesis between the North and the South]—[Hostility to the Measure in South Carolina]—[The Tariff of 1828]—[The Character of the Bill as Reflected in the Analysis of the Vote Upon It]—[The Tariff of 1828 not a Complete Party Measure]—[The Presidential Campaign of 1828 still Dominated by Personal Considerations]—[Election of Jackson]—[Advent of the Parvenus]—[Foreign Affairs under Jackson's Administration]—[The Democratic Party and its Divisions.]
| Personal differences, and party division. |
In the absence of any well defined differences in political opinions, and in the state of determined personal hostility between the leaders developed by the election of 1824, the fact that Adams and Clay took broad national views, placed a liberal construction upon the Constitution, and insisted upon the employment of all the powers vested by it in the general Government to the highest point of their usefulness in the promotion of the general welfare, had the natural effect of forcing the opposition upon the opposite grounds, and, therefore, tended to make a particularistic party, the so-called "States' rights" party, out of the Jackson-Calhoun-Crawford faction.
One of the most patent indications of the correctness of the proposition that the opposition in principle between the National Republican party and the Democratic party, as the Administrationists and the Anti-administrationists were soon termed, took its rise largely in the personal hostility of the leaders, is to be found in the history of the chief question of the foreign relations with which the Adams Administration had to deal in the years 1825 and 1826.