American politics (non-partisan) from the beginning to date

by Thomas V. Cooper; Hector T. Fenton

In 1826 occurred the famous debates in the Senate and the House, on the proposed Congress of American States, to contract alliances to guard against and prevent the establishment of any future European colony within its borders. The mission though sanctioned was never acted upon or carried out. It was authorized by very nearly a party vote, the democracy as a party being against it. The President, Mr. Adams, stated the objects of the Congress to be as follows: “An agreement between all the parties represented at the meeting, that each will guard, by its own means, against the establishment of any future European colony within its own borders, may be advisable. This was, more than two years since, announced by my predecessor to the world, as a principle resulting from the emancipation of both the American continents. It may be so developed to the new southern nations, that they may feel it as an essential appendage to their independence.”

Mr. Adams had been a member of Mr. Monroe’s cabinet, filling the department from which the doctrine would emanate. The enunciation by him as above of this “Monroe Doctrine,” as it is called, is very different from what it has of late been supposed to be, as binding the United States to guard all the territory of the New World from European colonization. The message above quoted was written at a time when the doctrine as enunciated by the former President through the then Secretary was fresh in the mind of the latter, and when he himself in a communication to the American Senate was laying it down for the adoption of all the American nations in a general congress of their deputies. According to President Adams, this “Monroe Doctrine” (according to which it has been of late believed that the United States were to stand guard over the two Americas, and repulse all intrusive colonists from their shores), was entirely confined to our own borders; that it was only proposed to get the other States of the New World to agree that, each for itself, and by its own means, should guard its own territories; and, consequently, that the United States, so far from extending gratuitous protection to the territories of other States, would neither give, nor receive, aid in any such enterprise, but that each should use its own means, within its own borders, for its own exemption from European colonial intrusion.

No question in its day excited more intemperate discussion, excitement, and feeling between the Executive and the Senate, and none died out so quickly, than this, relative to the proposed congress of American nations. The chief advantage to be derived from its retrospect—and it is a real one—is a view of the firmness with which the minority maintained the old policy of the United States, to avoid entangling alliances and interference with the affairs of other nations; and the exposition, by one so competent as Mr. Adams, of the true scope and meaning of the Monroe doctrine.

At the session of 1825–26 attempt was again made to procure an amendment to the Constitution, in relation to the mode of election of President and Vice-President, so as to do away with all intermediate agencies, and give the election to the direct vote of the people. In the Senate the matter was referred to a committee who reported amendments dispensing with electors, providing for districts equal in number to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State was entitled in Congress, and obviating all excuses for caucuses and conventions to concentrate public opinion by providing that in the event of no one receiving a majority of the whole number of district votes cast, that a second election should be held limited to the two persons receiving the highest number of votes; and in case of an equal division of votes on the second election then the House of Representatives shall choose one of them for President, as is prescribed by the Constitution. The idea being that the first election, if not resulting in any candidate receiving a majority, should stand for a popular nomination—a nomination by the people themselves, out of which the election is almost sure to be made on the second trial. The same plan was suggested for choosing a Vice-President, except that the Senate was to finally elect, in case of failure to choose at first and second elections. The amendments did not receive the requisite support of two-thirds of either the Senate or the House. This movement was not of a partisan character; it was equally supported and opposed respectively by Senators and Representatives of both parties. Substantially the same plan was recommended by President Jackson in his first annual message to Congress, December 8, 1829.

It is interesting to note that at this Session of 1825 and ’26, attempt was made by the Democrats to pass a tenure of office bill, as applicable to government employees and office-holders; it provided “that in all nominations made by the President to the Senate, to fill vacancies occasioned by an exercise of the President’s power to remove from office, the fact of the removal shall be stated to the Senate at the same time that the nomination is made, with a statement of the reasons for which such officer may have been removed.” It was also sought at the same time to amend the Constitution to prohibit the appointment of any member of Congress to any federal office of trust or profit, during the period for which he was elected; the design being to make the members wholly independent of the Executive, and not subservient to the latter, and incapable of receiving favors in the form of bestowals of official patronage.

The tariff of 1828 is an era in our political legislation; from it the doctrine of “nullification” originated, and from that date began a serious division between the North and the South. This tariff law was projected in the interest of the woolen manufacturers, but ended by including all manufacturing interests. The passage of this measure was brought about not because it was favored by a majority, but because of political exigencies. In the then approaching presidential election, Mr. Adams, who was in favor of the “American System,” supported by Mr. Clay (his Secretary of State) was opposed by General Jackson. This tariff was made an administration measure, and became an issue in the canvass. The New England States, which had formerly favored free trade, on account of their commercial interests, changed their policy, and, led by Mr. Webster, became advocates of the protective system. The question of protective tariff had now not only become political, but sectional. The Southern States as a section, were arrayed against the system, though prior to 1816 had favored it, not merely as an incident to revenue, but as a substantive object. In fact these tariff bills, each exceeding the other in its degree of protection, had become a regular appendage of our presidential elections—carrying round in every cycle of four years, with that returning event; starting in 1816 and followed up in 1820–24, and now in 1828; with successive augmentations of duties; the last being often pushed as a party measure, and with the visible purpose of influencing the presidential election. General Jackson was elected, having received 178 electoral votes to 83 received by John Quincy Adams. Mr. Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania, who was on the ticket with Mr. Adams, was defeated for the office of Vice-President, and John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina, was elected to that office.

The election of General Jackson was a triumph of democratic principle, and an assertion of the people’s right to govern themselves. That principle had been violated in the presidential election in the House of Representatives in the session of 1824–25; and the sanction, or rebuke, of that violation was a leading question in the whole canvass. It was also a triumph over the high protective policy, and the federal internal improvement policy, and the latitudinous construction of the Constitution; and of the democracy over the federalists, then called national republicans; and was the re-establishment of parties on principle, according to the landmarks of the early years of the government. For although Mr. Adams had received confidence and office from Mr. Madison and Mr. Monroe, and had classed with the democratic party during the “era of good feeling,” yet he had previously been federal; and on the re-establishment of old party lines which began to take place after the election of Mr. Adams in the House of Representatives, his affinities and policy became those of his former party; and as a party, with many individual exceptions, they became his supporters and his strength. General Jackson, on the contrary, had always been democratic, so classing when he was a Senator in Congress under the administration of the first Mr. Adams; and when party lines were most straightly drawn, and upon principle, and as such now receiving the support of men and States which took this political position at that time, and maintained it for years afterwards; among the latter, notably the States of Virginia and Pennsylvania.

The short session of 1829–30 was rendered famous by the long and earnest debates in the Senate on the doctrine of nullification, as it was then called. It started by a resolution of inquiry introduced by Mr. Foot of Connecticut; it was united with a proposition to limit the sales of the public lands to those then in the market—to suspend the surveys of the public lands—and to abolish the office of Surveyor-General. The effect of such a resolution, if sanctioned upon inquiry and carried into legislative effect, would have been to check emigration to the new States in the West, and to check the growth and settlement of these States and Territories. It was warmly opposed by Western members. The debate spread and took an acrimonious turn, and sectional, imputing to the quarter of the Union from which it came an old and early policy to check the growth of the West at the outset by proposing to limit the sale of the Western lands, by selling no tract in advance until all in the rear was sold out; and during the debate Mr. Webster referred to the famous ordinance of 1787 for the government of the northwestern territory, and especially the anti-slavery clause which it contained.

Closely connected with this subject to which Mr. Webster’s remarks, during the debate, related, was another which excited some warm discussion—the topic of slavery—and the effect of its existence or non-existence in different States. Kentucky and Ohio were taken for examples, and the superior improvement and population of Ohio were attributed to its exemption from the evils of slavery. This was an excitable subject, and the more so because the wounds of the Missouri controversy in which the North was the undisputed aggressor, were still tender. Mr. Hayne from South Carolina answered with warmth and resented as a reflection upon the Slave States this disadvantageous comparison. Mr. Benton of Missouri followed on the same side, and in the course of his remarks said, “I regard with admiration, that is to say, with wonder, the sublime morality of those who cannot bear the abstract contemplation of slavery, at the distance of five hundred or a thousand miles off.” This allusion to the Missouri controversy, and invective against the free States for their part in it, by Messrs. Hayne and Benton, brought a reply from Mr. Webster, showing what their conduct had been at the first introduction of the slavery topic in the Congress of the United States, and that they totally refused to interfere between master and slave in any way whatever. But the topic which became the leading feature of the whole debate, and gave it an interest which cannot die, was that of nullification—the assumed right of a State to annul an act of Congress—then first broached in the Senate—and in the discussion of which Mr. Webster and Mr. Hayne were the champion speakers on opposite sides—the latter voicing the sentiments of the Vice-President, Mr. Calhoun. This turn in the debate was brought about, by Mr. Hayne having made allusion to the course of New England during the war of 1812, and especially to the assemblage known as the Hartford Convention, and to which designs unfriendly to the Union had been attributed. This gave Mr. Webster an opportunity to retaliate, and he referred to the public meetings which had just then taken place in South Carolina on the subject of the tariff, and at which resolves were passed, and propositions adopted significant of resistance to the act; and consequently of disloyalty to the Union. He drew Mr. Hayne into their defence and into an avowal of what has since obtained the current name of “Nullification.” He said, “I understand the honorable gentleman from South Carolina to maintain, that it is a right of the State Legislature to interfere, whenever, in their judgment, this government transcends its constitutional limits, and to arrest the operation of its laws,*** that the States may lawfully decide for themselves, and each State for itself, whether, in a given case, the act of the general government transcends its powers,*** that if the exigency of the case, in the opinion of any State government require it, such State government may, by its own sovereign authority, annul an act of the general government, which it deems plainly and palpably unconstitutional.” Mr. Hayne was evidently unprepared to admit, or fully deny, the propositions as so laid down, but contented himself with stating the words of the Virginia Resolution of 1798, as follows: “That this assembly doth explicitly and peremptorily declare, that it views the powers of the federal government as resulting from the compact, to which the States are parties, as limited by the plain sense and intention of the instrument constituting that compact, as no farther valid than they are authorized by the grants enumerated in that compact, and that, in case of a deliberate, palpable and dangerous exercise of other powers, not granted by the said compact, the States who are parties thereto have the right, and are in duty bound, to interpose, for arresting the progress of the evil, and for maintaining, within their respective limits, the authorities, rights, and liberties appertaining to them.”

This resolution came to be understood by Mr. Hayne and others on that side of the debate, in the same sense that Mr. Webster stated, as above, he understood the gentleman from the South to interpret it. On the other side of the question, he argued that the doctrine had no foundation either in the Constitution, or on the Virginia resolutions—that the Constitution makes the federal government act upon citizens within the States, and not upon the States themselves, as in the old confederation: that within their Constitutional limits the laws of Congress were supreme—and that it was treasonable to resist them with force: and that the question of their constitutionality was to be decided by the Supreme Court: with respect to the Virginia resolutions, on which Mr. Hayne relied, Mr. Webster disputed the interpretation put upon them—claimed for them an innocent and justifiable meaning—and exempted Mr. Madison from the suspicion of having framed a resolution asserting the right of a State legislature to annul an Act of Congress, and thereby putting it in the power of one State to destroy a form of government which he had just labored so hard to establish.