 Section 1 of History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy. Chapter 10. The Farmers Beyond the Appalachians. The nationalism of Hamilton was undemocratic. The democracy of Jefferson was, in the beginning, provincial. The historic mission of uniting nationalism and democracy was in the course of time given to new leaders from a region beyond the mountains, peopled by men and women, from all sections, and free from those state traditions which ran back to the early days of colonization. The voice of the democratic nationalism, nourished in the West, was heard when Clay of Kentucky advocated his American system of protection for industries. When Jackson of Tennessee condemned nullification in a ringing proclamation that has taken its place among the great American state papers. And when Lincoln of Illinois, in a fateful hour, called upon a bewildered people to meet the supreme test whether this was a nation destined to survive or to perish. And it will be remembered that Lincoln's party chose for its banner that earlier device, Republican, which Jefferson had made a sign of power. The rail splitter from Illinois united the nationalism of Hamilton with the democracy of Jefferson, and his appeal was clothed in the simple language of the people, not in the sonorous rhetoric which Webster learned in the schools. Preparation for Western Settlement The West and the American Revolution The excessive attention devoted by historians to the military operations along the coast has obscured the role played by the frontier in the American Revolution. The action of Great Britain in closing Western land to easy settlement in 1763 was more than an incident in precipitating the war for independence. Americans on the frontier did not forget it. When Indians were employed by England to defend that land, zeal for the patriot cause set the interior aflame. It was the members of the Western vanguard, like Daniel Boone, John Sevier, and George Rogers Clark, who first understood the value of the faraway country under the guns of the English forts, where the red men still wielded the tomahawk and the scalping knife. It was they who gave the East no rest until their vision was seen by the leaders on the seaboard who directed the course of national policy. It was one of their number, a seasoned Indian fighter, George Rogers Clark, who with aid from Virginia seized Kaskaskya and Vincennes, and secured the whole northwest to the Union while the fate of Washington's army was still hanging in the balance. Western Problems at the End of the Revolution The Treaty of Peace signed with Great Britain in 1783 brought the definite session of the coveted territory west to the Mississippi River, but it left unsolved many problems. In the first place, tribes of resentful Indians in the Ohio region, even though British support was withdrawn at last, had to be reckoned with. And it was not until after the establishment of the Federal Constitution that a well-equipped army could be provided to guarantee peace on the border. In the second place, British garrisons still occupied forts on Lake Erie, pending the execution of the Terms of the Treaty of 1783. Terms which were not fulfilled until after the ratification of the J. Treaty twelve years later. In the third place, Virginia, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had conflicting claims to the land in the northwest based on old English charters and Indian treaties. It was only after a bitter contest that the states reached an agreement to transfer their rights to the government of the United States, Virginia executing her deed of accession on March 1, 1784. In the fourth place, titles to lands bought by individuals remained uncertain in the absence of official maps and records. To meet this last situation, Congress instituted a systematic survey of the Ohio country, laying it out into townships, sections of 640 acres each, and quarter sections. In every township, one section of land was set aside for the support of public schools. The Northwest Ordinance The final problem which had to be solved before settlement on a large scale could be begun was that of governing the territory. Pioneers who looked with hungry eyes on the fertile valley of the Ohio could hardly restrain their impatience. Soldiers of the Revolution who had been paid for their services in land warrants entitling them to make entries in the West called for action. Congress answered by passing in 1787 the famous Northwest Ordinance, providing for temporary territorial government to be followed by the creation of a popular assembly as soon as there were 5,000 free males in any district. Eventual admission to the Union on an equal footing with the original states was promised to the new territories. Religious freedom was guaranteed. The safeguards of trial by jury, regular judicial procedure, and habeas corpus were established in order that the methods of civilized life might take the place of the rough and ready justice of Lynch law. During the course of the debate on the Ordinance, Congress added the sixth article forbidding slavery and involuntary servitude. The charter of the Northwest, so well planned by the Congress under the Articles of Confederation, was continued in force by the First Congress under the Constitution in 1789. The following year its essential provisions, except the ban on slavery, were applied to the territory south of the Ohio, seated by North Carolina to the national government, and in 1798 to the Mississippi territory once held by Georgia. Thus it was settled for all time that the new colonies were not to be exploited for the benefit of the parent states any more than for the benefit of England, but were to be autonomous and coordinate commonwealths. This outcome, bitterly opposed by some Eastern leaders who feared the triumph of western states over the seaboard, completed the legal steps necessary by way of preparation for the flood of settlers. The Land Companies, Speculators, and Western Land Tenure As in the original settlement of America, so in the opening of the West, great companies and single proprietors of large grants early figured. In 1787 the Ohio Land Company, a New England concern, acquired a million and a half acres on the Ohio and began operations by planting the town of Marietta. A professional land speculator, J. C. Sims, secured a million acres lower down where the city of Cincinnati was founded. Other individuals bought up soldiers' claims and so acquired enormous holdings for speculative purposes. Indeed there was such a rush to make fortunes quickly through the rise in land values that Washington was moved to cry out against the rage for speculating in and forestalling of land on the northwest of the Ohio. Protesting that, scarce a valuable spot within any tolerable distance of it is left without a claimant. He therefore urged Congress to fix a reasonable price for the land not too exorbitant and burdensome for real occupiers but high enough to discourage monopolizers. Congress however was not prepared to use the public domain for the sole purpose of developing a body of small freeholders in the West. It still looked upon the sale of public lands as an important source of revenue with which to pay off the public debt. Consequently it thought more of instant income than of ultimate results. It placed no limit on the amount which could be bought when it fixed the price at $2 an acre in 1796. And it encouraged the professional land operator by making the first installment only 20 cents an acre in addition to the small registration and survey fee. On such terms a speculator with a few thousand dollars could get possession of an enormous plot of land. If he was fortunate in disposing of it he could meet the installments which were spread over a period of four years and make a handsome profit for himself. Even when the credit or installment feature was abolished in 1821 and the price of the land lowered to a cash price of $1.75 an acre, the opportunity for large speculative purchases continued to attract capital to land ventures. The Development of the Small Freehold The cheapness of land and the scarcity of labor nevertheless made impossible the triumph of the huge estate with its semi-survile tenancy. For about $45 a man could get a farm of 160 acres on the installment plan. Another payment of $80 was due in 40 days but a four-year term was allowed for the discharge of the balance. With a capital of from $2 to $300 a family could embark on a land venture. If it had good crops it could meet the deferred payments. It was however a hard battle at best. Many a man forfeited his land through failure to pay the final installment. Yet in the end in spite of all the handicaps the small freehold of a few hundred acres at most became the typical unit of western agriculture except in the planting states of the Gulf. Even the lands of the great companies were generally broken up and sold in small lots. The tendency toward moderate holdings so favored by western conditions was also promoted by a clause in the northwest ordinance declaring that the land of any person dying in testate, that is, without any will disposing of it, should be divided equally among his descendants. Hildreth says of this provision, All these forces combined made the wide dispersion of wealth in the early days of the 19th century an American characteristic in marked contrast with the European system of family prestige and vast estates based on the law of primogeniture. The western migration and new states The people With government established, federal arms victorious over the Indians and the land surveyed for sale, the way was prepared for immigrants. They came with a rush. Young New Englanders wary of tilling the stony soil of their native states poured through New York and Pennsylvania, some settling on the northern bank of the Ohio but most of them in the lake region. Sons and daughters of German farmers in Pennsylvania and many a redemptioner who had discharged his bond of servitude pressed out into Ohio, Kentucky, Tennessee or beyond. From the exhausted fields and the clay hills of the southern states came pioneers of English and Scotch-Irish descent, the latter in great numbers. Indeed one historian of high authority has ventured to say that the rapid expansion of the United States from a coast strip to a continental area is largely a Scotch-Irish achievement. While Native Americans of mixed stocks led the way into the west, it was not long before immigrants direct from Europe under the stimulus of company enterprise began to filter into the new settlements in increasing numbers. The types of people were as various as the nations they represented. Timothy Flint, who published his entertaining recollections in 1826, found the west a strange mixture of all sorts of conditions of people. Some of them, he relates, had been hunters in the upper world of the Mississippi above the falls of St. Anthony. Some had been still farther north in Canada. Still others had wandered from the south, the Gulf of Mexico, the Red River and the Spanish country. French boatmen and trappers, Spanish traders from the southwest, Virginia planners with their droves of slaves mingled with English, German and Scotch-Irish farmers. Hunters, forest rangers, restless bordermen and squatters, like the foaming comers of an advancing tide, went first. Then followed the farmers, masters of the axe and plow, with their wives who shared every burden and hardship and introduced some of the features of civilized life. The hunters and rangers passed on to new scenes, the homemakers built for all time. The Number of Immigrants There were no official stations on the frontier to record the number of immigrants who entered the west during the decades following the American Revolution. But travelers of the time record that every road was crowded with pioneers and their families, their wagons and cattle, and that they were seldom out of the sound of the snapping whip of the teamster urging forward his horses or the crack of the hunter's rifle as he brought down his evening meal. During the latter half of 1787 says Komen, more than 900 boats floated down the Ohio carrying 18,000 men, women and children, and 12,000 horses, sheep and cattle, and 650 wagons. Other lines of travel were also crowded, and with the passing years the flooding tide of home seekers rose higher and higher. The Western Roots Four main routes led into the country beyond the Appalachians. The Genesee Road, beginning at Albany, ran almost due west to the present side of Buffalo on Lake Erie through a level country. In the dry season wagons laden with goods could easily pass along it into northern Ohio. A second route through Pittsburgh was fed by three eastern branches, one starting at Philadelphia, one at Baltimore, and another at Alexandria. A third main route wound through the mountains from Alexandria to Boonsboro in Kentucky and then westward across the Ohio to St. Louis. A fourth, the most famous of them all, passed through the Cumberland Gap and by branches extended into the Cumberland Valley and the Kentucky Country. Of these four lines of travel the Pittsburgh route offered the most advantages. Pioneers, no matter from what section they came, when once they were on the headwaters of the Ohio and in possession of a flatboat, could find a quick and easy passage into all parts of the west and southwest. Whether they wanted to settle in Ohio, Kentucky, or western Tennessee, they could find their way down the drifting flood to their destination, or at least to some spot near it. Many people from the south as well as the northern and middle states chose this route. So it came about that the sons and daughters of Virginia and the Carolinas mingled with those of New York, Pennsylvania and New England in the settlement of the northwest territory. The Methods of Travel into the West Many stories giving exact descriptions of methods of travel into the west in the early days have been preserved. The country was hardly opened before visitors from the Old World and from the eastern states, impelled by curiosity, made their way to the very frontier of civilization and wrote books to inform or amuse the public. One of them, Gilbert Imley, an English traveler, has given us an account of the Pittsburgh route as he found it in 1791. If a man, he writes, has a family or goods of any sort to remove, his best way then would be to purchase a wagon and team of horses to carry his property to Redstone Old Fort or to Pittsburgh, according as he may come from the northern or southern states. A good wagon will cost at Philadelphia about ten pounds and the horses about twelve pounds each. They would cost something more at Baltimore and at Alexandria. The wagon may be covered with canvas and, if it is the choice of the people, they may sleep in it of nights with the greatest safety. But if they dislike that, there are ends of accommodation the whole distance on the different roads, the provisions I would purchase in the same manner, that is, from the farmers along the road. And by having two or three camp kettles and stopping every evening when the weather is fine upon the brink of some rivulet, and by kindling a fire, they may soon dress their own food. This manner of journeying is so far from being disagreeable that in a fine season it is extremely pleasant. The immigrant, once at Pittsburgh or Wheeling, could then buy a flat boat of a size required for his goods and stock and drift down the current to his journey's end. The Admission of Kentucky and Tennessee When the 18th century drew to a close, Kentucky had a population larger than Delaware, Rhode Island or New Hampshire. Tennessee claimed 60,000 inhabitants. In 1792, Kentucky took her place as a state beside her none too kindly parent Virginia. The Eastern Federalists resented her intrusion, but they took some consolation in the Admission of Vermont because the balance of Eastern power was still retained. As if to assert their independence of old homes and conservative ideas, the makers of Kentucky's first constitution swept aside the landed qualification on the suffrage and gave the vote to all three white males. Four years later, Kentucky's neighbor to the south, Tennessee, followed this step toward a wider democracy. After encountering fierce opposition from the Federalists, Tennessee was accepted as the 16th state. Ohio The door of the Union had hardly opened for Tennessee when another appeal was made to Congress, this time from the pioneers in Ohio. The little posts founded at Marietta and Cincinnati had grown into flourishing centers of trade. The stream of immigrants flowing down the river added daily to their numbers and the growing settlements all around poured produce into their markets to be exchanged for store goods. After the Indians were disposed of in 1794 and the last British soldier left the frontier forts under the terms of the Jay Treaty of 1795, tiny settlements of families appeared on Lake Erie in the Western Reserve, a region that had been retained by Connecticut when she surrendered her other rights in the northwest. At the close of the century, Ohio, claiming a population of more than 50,000, grew discontented with its territorial status. Indeed, two years before the enactment of the Northwest Ordinance, squatters in that region had been invited by one John Emerson to hold a convention after the fashion of the men of Hartford, Windsor and Weathersfield in old Connecticut and draft a frame of government for themselves. This true son of New England declared that men have an undoubted right to pass into every vacant country and there to form their constitution and that from the confederation of the whole United States Congress is not empowered to forbid them. This grand convention was never held because the heavy hand of the government fell upon the leaders, but the spirit of John Emerson did not perish. In November 1802, a convention chosen by voters, assembled under the authority of Congress at Chillicothe, drew up a constitution. It went into force after a popular ratification. The role of the convention bore such names as Abbott, Baldwin, Cutler, Huntington, Putnam and Sargent, and the list of counties from which they came included Adams, Fairfield, Hamilton, Jefferson, Trumbull and Washington, showing that the new America in the west was peopled and led by the old stock. In 1803, Ohio was admitted to the Union. Indiana and Illinois As in the neighboring state, the frontier in Indiana advanced northward from the Ohio, mainly under the leadership, however, of settlers from the south, restless Kentuckians hoping for better luck in a newer country and pioneers from the far frontiers of Virginia and North Carolina. As soon as a tear of counties swinging upward like the horns of the moon against Ohio on the east and in the Wabash Valley on the west was fairly settled, a clamor went up for statehood. Under the authority of an act of Congress in 1816, the Indians drafted a constitution and inaugurated their government at Corridan. The majority of the members of the convention, we are told by a local historian, were frontier farmers who had a general idea of what they wanted and had sense enough to let their more erudite colleagues put it into shape. Two years later, the pioneers of Illinois also settled upward from the Ohio, like Indiana, elected their delegates to draft a constitution. Leadership in the convention, quite properly, was taken by a man born in New York and reared in Tennessee, and the constitution as finally drafted was in its principal provisions a copy of the then existing constitutions of Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana. Many of the articles are exact copies in wording, although differently arranged and numbered. Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama Across the Mississippi to the far south, clearing and planting had gone on with much bustle and enterprise. The cotton and sugar lands of Louisiana, opened by French and Spanish settlers, were widened in every direction by planters with their armies of slaves from the older states. New Orleans, a good market and a center of culture not despised even by the pioneer, grew a pace. In 1810, the population of Lower Louisiana was over 75,000. The time had come, said the leaders of the people, to fulfill the promise made to France in the Treaty of Session, namely, to grant to the inhabitants of the territory, statehood, and the rights of American citizens. Federalists from New England still having a voice in Congress, if somewhat weaker, still protested in tones of horror. I am compelled to declare it as my deliberate opinion, pronounced Josiah Quincy in the House of Representatives, that if this bill, to admit Louisiana passes, the bonds of this union are virtually dissolved. That as it will be the right of all, so it will be the duty of some states to prepare definitely for a separation, amicably if they can, violently if they must. It is a death blow to the Constitution. It may afterwards linger, but lingering its fate will, at no very distant period, be consummated. Federalists from New York, like those from New England, had their doubts about the wisdom of admitting western states, but the party of Jefferson and Madison, having the necessary majority, granted the coveted statehood to Louisiana in 1812. When a few years later, Mississippi and Alabama knocked at the doors of the Union, the Federalists had so little influence, on account of their conduct during the Second War with England, that spokesmen from the Southwest met a kindlier reception at Washington. Mississippi in 1817 and Alabama in 1819 took their places among the United States of America. Both of them, while granting white manhood suffrage, gave their constitutions the tone of the old east by providing landed qualifications for the governor and members of the legislature. Missouri Far to the north in the Louisiana Purchase, a new Commonwealth was rising to power. It was people by immigrants who came down the Ohio in fleets of boats or crossed the Mississippi from Kentucky and Tennessee. Thrifty Germans from Pennsylvania, hardy farmers from Virginia, ready to work with their own hands, freemen seeking freemen's homes, planters with their slaves moving on from worn out fields on the seaboard came together in the widening settlements of the Missouri country. Peoples from the north and south flowed together, small farmers and big planters mingling in one community. When their numbers had reached 60,000 or more, they precipitated a contest over their admission to the Union, ringing an alarm bell in the night, as Jefferson phrased it. The favorite expedient of compromise with slavery was brought forth in Congress once more. Maine consequently was brought into the Union without slavery and Missouri with slavery. At the same time, there was drawn westward through the rest of the Louisiana Territory, a line separating servitude from slavery. End of Section 1 Section 2 of History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Katie Gibbany. History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard, Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy, Chapter 10, The Farmers Beyond the Appalachians. The Spirit of the Frontier Over an immense western area there developed an unbroken system of freehold farms. In the Gulf States and the lower Mississippi Valley, it is true, the planter with his many slaves even led in the pioneer movement. But through large sections of Tennessee and Kentucky, as well as Upper Georgia and Alabama, and all throughout the Northwest Territory, the small farmer reigned supreme. In this immense dominion there sprang up a civilization without caste or class, a body of people all having about the same amount of this world's goods, and deriving their livelihood from one source, the labor of their own hands on the soil. The Northwest Territory alone almost equaled in area all the original thirteen states combined, except Georgia, and its system of agricultural economy was unbroken by plantations and feudal estates. In the subdivision of the soil and the great equality of condition, as Webster said on more than one occasion, lay the true basis, most certainly, of popular government. There was the undoubted source of Jacksonian democracy. The Characteristics of the Western People Travelers into the Northwest during the early years of the nineteenth century were agreed that the people of that region were almost uniformly marked by the characteristics common to an independent yeomanry, a close observer thus recorded his impressions. A spirit of adventurous enterprise, a willingness to go through any hardship to accomplish an object, independence of thought and action. They have felt the influence of these principles from their childhood, men who can endure anything, that have lived almost without restraint, free as the mountain air, or as the deer and the buffalo of their forests, and who know they are Americans all, an apparent roughness which some would deem rootness of manner, where there is perfect equality in a neighborhood of people who know little about each other's previous history or ancestry, but where each is lord of the soil he cultivates, where a log cabin is all that the best of families can expect to have for years, and of course can possess few of the external decorations which have so much influence in creating a diversity of rank in society. These circumstances have laid the foundation for that equality of intercourse, simplicity of manners, want of deference, want of reserve, great readiness to make acquaintances, freedom of speech, in disposition to brook real or imaginary insults which one witnesses among people of the West. This equality, this independence, this rudeness so often described by the traveler as marking a new country, were all accentuated by the character of the settlers themselves. Traces of the fierce, unsociable, eagle-eyed, hard-drinking hunter remained. The settlers who followed the hunter were, with some exceptions, soldiers of the Revolutionary Army, farmers of the middling order, and mechanics from the towns, English, Scotch-Irish, Germans, poor in possessions, and thrown upon the labor of their own hands for support. Sons and daughters from well-to-do Eastern homes sometimes brought softer manners, but the equality of life and the leveling force of labor in forest and field soon made them one in spirit with their struggling neighbors. Even the preachers and teachers who came when the cabins were raised in the clearings and rude churches and school houses were built, preached sermons and taught lessons that savored of the frontier as anyone may know who reads Peter Cartwright's A Muscular Christian or Eggleston's The Hoosier Schoolmaster. The West and the East Meet The East Alarmed A people so independent as the Westerners, and so attached to local self-government, gave the conservative East many a rude shock, setting gentlemen in powdered wigs and knee-breaches agog with the idea that terrible things might happen in the Mississippi Valley. Not without good grounds did Washington fear that a touch of a feather would turn the Western settlers away from the seaboard to the Spaniards, and seriously did he urge the East not to neglect them, lest they be drawn into the arms of or be dependent upon foreigners. Taking advantage of the restless spirit in the Southwest, Aaron Burr, having disgraced himself by killing Alexander Hamilton in a duel, laid wild plans, if not to bring about a secession in that region, at least to build a state of some kind out of the Spanish dominions adjoining Louisiana. Frightened at such enterprises and fearing the dominance of the West, the Federalists, with a few conspicuous exceptions, opposed equality between the sections. Had their narrow views prevailed, the West, with its new democracy, would have been held in perpetual tutelage to the seaboard, or perhaps been driven into independence as the thirteen colonies had been not long before. Eastern Friends of the West Fortunately for the nation, there were many Eastern leaders, particularly from the South, who understood the West, approved its spirit, and sought to bring the two sections together by common bonds. Washington kept alive and keen the zeal for Western advancement which he acquired in his youth as a surveyor. He never grew tired of urging upon his Eastern friends the importance of the lands beyond the mountains. He pressed upon the governor of Virginia a project for a wagon road connecting the seaboard with the Ohio country, and was active in a movement to improve the navigation of the Potomac. He advocated strengthening the ties of commerce, smooth the roads, he said, and make easy the way for them, and then see what an influx of articles will be poured upon us, how amazingly our exports will be increased by them, and how amply we shall be compensated for any trouble and expense we may encounter to affect it. Jefferson, too, was interested in every phase of Western development, the survey of lands, the exploration of the waterways, the opening of trade, and even the discovery of the bones of prehistoric animals. Robert Fulton, the inventor of the steamboat, was another man of vision who for many years pressed upon his countrymen the necessity of uniting East and West by a canal which would cement the Union, raise the value of the public lands, and extend the principles of Confederate and Republican government. The Difficulties of Early Transportation Means of communication played an important part in the strategy of all those who sought to bring together the seaboard and the frontier. The produce of the West, wheat, corn, bacon, hemp, cattle, and tobacco, was bulky, and the cost of overland transportation was prohibitive. In the Eastern market, a cow and her calf were given for a bushel of salt, while a suit of store clothes cost as much as a farm. In such circumstances, the inhabitants of the Mississippi Valley were forced to ship their produce over a long route by way of New Orleans and to pay high freight rates for everything that was brought across the mountains. Scows from five to fifty tons were built at the towns along the rivers and piloted down the stream to the Crescent City. In a few cases, small ocean-going vessels were built to transport goods to the West Indies or to the Eastern coast towns. Salt, iron, guns, powder, and the absolute essentials which the pioneers had to buy mainly in Eastern markets were carried over narrow wagon trails that were almost impassable in the rainy season. The National Road To far-sighted men, like Albert Gallatin, the father of internal improvements, the solution of this problem was the construction of roads and canals. Early in Jefferson's administration, Congress dedicated a part of the proceeds from the sale of lands to building highways from the headwaters of the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic to the Ohio River and beyond into the Northwest Territory. In 1806, after many misgivings, it authorized a great national highway binding the East and the West. The Cumberland Road, as it was called, began in Northwestern Maryland, wound through Southern Pennsylvania, crossed the narrow neck of Virginia at Wheeling, and then shot almost straight across Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois into Missouri. By 1817, stagecoaches were running between Washington and Wheeling. By 1833, contractors had carried their work to Columbus, Ohio, and by 1852, to Vandalia, Illinois. Over this ballasted road, mail and passenger coaches could go at high speed, and heavy freight wagons proceed in safety at a steady pace. Canals and Steamboats. A second epic in the Economic Union of the East and West was reached with the opening of the Erie Canal in 1825, offering an all-water route from New York City to the Great Lakes and the Mississippi Valley. Pennsylvania, alarmed by the advantages conferred on New York by this enterprise, began her system of canals and portages from Philadelphia to Pittsburgh, completing the last link in 1834. In the South, the Chesapeake and Ohio Company, chartered in 1825, was busy with a project to connect Georgetown and Cumberland when railways broke in upon the undertaking before it was half finished. About the same time, Ohio built a canal across the state, affording water communication between Lake Erie and the Ohio River through a rich wheat belt. Passengers could now travel by canal boat into the West with comparative ease and comfort, if not at a rapid speed, and the bulkiest of freight could be easily handled. Moreover, the rate charged for carrying goods was cut by the Erie Canal from $32 a ton per 100 miles to $1. New Orleans was destined to lose her primacy in the Mississippi Valley. The diversion of traffic to eastern markets was also stimulated by Steamboats, which appeared on the Ohio about 1810, three years after Fulton had made his famous trip on the Hudson. It took 20 men to sail and row a 5 ton scow up the river at a speed of from 10 to 20 miles a day. In 1825, Timothy Flint traveled 100 miles a day on the new steamer, Grecian, against the whole weight of the Mississippi Current. Three years later the round trip from Louisville to New Orleans was cut to eight days. Heavy produce that once had to float down to New Orleans could be carried upstream and sent to the east by way of the canal systems. Thus the far country was brought near. The timid no longer hesitated at the thought of the perilous journey. All routes were crowded with Western immigrants. The forests fell before the axe like grain before the sickle. Clearings scattered through the woods spread out into a great mosaic of farms stretching from the southern Appalachians to Lake Michigan. The national census of 1830 gave 937,000 inhabitants to Ohio, 343,000 to Indiana, 157,000 to Illinois, 687,000 to Kentucky, and 681,000 to Tennessee. With the increase in population and the growth of agriculture came political influence. People who had once petitioned Congress now sent their own representatives. Men who had hitherto accepted without protests, presidents from the seaboard, expressed a new spirit of dissent in 1824 by giving only three electoral votes for John Quincy Adams. And four years later they sent a son of the soil from Tennessee, Andrew Jackson, to take Washington's chair as chief executive of the nation. The first of a long line of presidents from the Mississippi Basin. References W. G. Brown, The Lower South in American History B. A. Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, Two Volumes A. B. Holbert, Great American Canals and The Cumberland Road T. Roosevelt, Thomas H. Benton P. J. Treat, The National Land System, 1785 to 1820 F. J. Turner, Rise of the New West, American Nation Series J. Windsor, The Westward Movement Questions 1. How did the West come to play a role in the Revolution? 2. What preparations were necessary to settlement? 3. Give the principal provisions of the Northwest Ordinance 4. Explain how freehold land tenure happened to predominate in the West 5. Who were the early settlers in the West? What routes did they take? How did they travel? 6. Explain the Eastern opposition to the admission of new western states Show how it was overcome 7. Trace a connection between the economic system of the West and the spirit of the people 8. Who were among the early friends of Western development? 9. Describe the difficulties of trade between the East and the West 10. Show how trade was promoted Research Topics Northwest Ordinance Analysis of text in MacDonald, Documentary Source Book Roosevelt, Winning of the West, Volume 5, Pages 5 through 57 The West Before the Revolution, Roosevelt, Volume 1 The West During the Revolution, Roosevelt, Vol. 2 and 3 Tennessee, Roosevelt, Volume 5, Pages 95 through 119 and Volume 6, Pages 9 through 87 The Cumberland Road A. B. Holbert, The Cumberland Road Early Life in the Middle West Calendar, Economic History of the United States Pages 617 through 633 636 through 641 Slavery in the Southwest Calendar, Pages 641 through 652 Early Land Policy, Calendar, Pages 668 through 680 Westward Movement of Peoples, Roosevelt, Vol. 4, Pages 7 through 39 Lists of books dealing with the early history of Western states are given in Hart, Channing and Turner, Guide to the Study and Reading of American History, Revised Edition, Pages 62 through 89 Kentucky, Roosevelt, Vol. 4, Pages 176 through 263 End of Section 2 Recording by Katie Gibbany Section 3 of History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy Chapter 11, Jacksonian Democracy The New England Federalists at the Hartford Convention prophesied that in time the West would dominate the East. Quote at the adoption of the Constitution they said a certain balance of power among the original states was considered to exist and there was at that time and yet is among those parties a strong affinity between their great and general interests. By the admission of these new states that balance has been materially affected and unless the practice be modified must ultimately be destroyed. The southern states will first avail themselves of their new Confederates to govern the East and finally the western states multiplied in number and augmented in population will control the interests of the whole. Strangely enough the fulfillment of this prophecy was being prepared even in federalist strongholds by the rise of a new urban democracy that was to make common cause with the farmers beyond the mountains. The Democratic Movement in the East The Aristocratic Features of the Old Order The revolutionary fathers in setting up their first state constitutions although they often spoke of government as founded on the consent of the governed did not think that consistency required giving the vote to all male adults. On the contrary they looked upon property owners as the only safe quote depository of political power. They went back to the colonial tradition that related taxation and representation. This they argued was not only just but a safeguard against the quote excesses of democracy. In carrying their theory into execution they placed tax paying or property qualifications on the right to vote. Broadly speaking these limitations fell into three classes. Three states Pennsylvania 1776 New Hampshire 1784 and Georgia 1798 gave the ballot to all who paid taxes without reference to the value of their property. Three Virginia, Delaware and Rhode Island clung firmly to the ancient principles that only free holders could be entrusted with electoral rights. Still other states while closely restricting the suffrage accepted the ownership of other things as well as land in fulfillment of the requirements. In Massachusetts for instance the vote was granted to all men who held land yielding an annual income of three pounds or possessed other property worth sixty pounds. The electors thus enfranchised numerous as they were owing to the wide distribution of land often suffered from a very onerous disability. In many states they were able to vote only for persons of wealth because heavy property qualifications were imposed on public officers. In New Hampshire the governor had to be worth five hundred pounds, one half in land. In Massachusetts one thousand pounds all free hold. In Maryland five thousand pounds one thousand of which was free hold. In North Carolina one thousand pounds free hold. And in South Carolina ten thousand pounds free hold. A state senator in Massachusetts had to be the owner of a free hold worth three hundred pounds or personal property worth six hundred pounds. In New Jersey one thousand pounds worth of property. In North Carolina three hundred acres of land. In South Carolina two thousand pounds free hold. For members of the lower house of the legislature lower qualifications were required. In most of the states the suffrage or office holding or both were further restricted by religious provisions. No single sect was powerful enough to dominate after the revolution. But for the most part Catholics and Jews were either disenfranchised or excluded from office. North Carolina and Georgia denied the ballot to anyone who was not a Protestant. Delaware withheld it from all who did not believe in the Trinity and the inspiration of the Scriptures. Massachusetts and Maryland limited it to Christians. Virginia and New York advanced for their day made no discrimination in government on account of religious opinion. The defense of the old order. It must not be supposed that property qualifications were thoughtlessly imposed at the outset or considered of little consequence in practice. In the beginning they were viewed as fundamental. As towns grew in size and the number of landless citizens increased the restrictions were defended with even more vigor. In Massachusetts the great Webster upheld the rights of property in government saying, quote, it is entirely just that property should have its due weight and consideration in political arrangements. The disastrous revolutions which the world has witnessed those political thunderstorms and earthquakes which have shaken the pillars of society to their deepest foundations have been revolutions against property, end quote. In Pennsylvania a leader in local affairs cried out against a plan to remove the tax-paying limitation on the suffrage, quote, what does the delegate propose to place the vicious vagrant, the wandering Arabs, the tartar hordes of our large cities on the level with the virtuous and good man, end quote. In Virginia Jefferson himself had first believed in property qualifications and had feared with genuine alarm the quote, mobs of the great cities. It was near the end of the eighteenth century before he accepted the idea of manhood suffrage. Even then he was unable to convince the constitution makers of his own state. Urged one of them, quote, it is not an idle chimera of the brain that the possession of land furnishes the strongest evidence of permanent common interest with and attachment to the community. It is upon this foundation I wish to place the right of suffrage. This is the best general standard which can be resorted to for the purpose of determining whether the persons to be invested with the right of suffrage are such persons as could be consistently with the safety and well-being of the community entrusted with the exercise of that right, end quote. Attacks on Restricted Suffrage The changing circumstances of American life, however, soon challenged the rule of those with property. Prominent among the new forces were the rising mercantile and business interests. Where the freehold qualification was applied, businessmen who did not own land were deprived of the vote and excluded from office. In New York, for example, the most illiterate farmer who had one hundred pounds worth of land could vote for the State Senator and Governor while the landless banker or merchant could not. It is not surprising, therefore, to find businessmen taking the lead in breaking down freehold limitations on the suffrage. The professional classes also were interested in removing the barriers which excluded many of them from public affairs. It was a schoolmaster, Thomas Doar, who led the popular uprising in Rhode Island which brought the exclusive rule by freeholders to an end. In addition to the business and professional classes, the mechanics of the town showed a growing hostility to a system of government that generally barred them from voting or holding office. Though not numerous, they had early begun to exercise an influence on the course of public affairs. They had led the riots against the Stamp Act, overturned King George's statute, and quote, crammed stamps down the throats of collectors, end quote. When the state constitutions were framed, they took a lively interest, particularly in New York City and Philadelphia. In June 1776, the mechanics in Union, in New York, protested against putting the new state constitution into effect without their approval, declaring that the right to vote on the acceptance or rejection of a fundamental law, quote, is the birthright of every man to whatever state he may belong, end quote. Though their petition was rejected, their spirit remained. When a few years later the federal constitution was being framed, the mechanics watched the process with deep concern. They knew that one of its main objectives was to promote trade and commerce, affecting directly their daily bread. During the struggle over ratification, they passed resolutions approving its provisions, and they often joined in parades organized to stir up sentiment for the constitution, even though they could not vote for members of the state conventions and so express their will directly. After the organization of trade unions, they collided with the courts of law and thus became interested in the election of judges and lawmakers. Those who attacked the old system of class rule found a strong moral support in the Declaration of Independence. Was it not said that all men are created equal? Whoever runs may read. Was it not declared that governments derive their just power from the consent of the governed? The doctrine was applied with effect to George III and seemed appropriate for use against the privileged classes of Massachusetts or Virginia. Quote, how do the principles thus proclaimed, asked the non-freeholders of Richmond in petitioning for the state ballot, accord with the existing regulation of the suffrage, a regulation which instead of the equality nature ordains creates an odious distinction between members of the same community, and vests in a favored class not in consideration of their public services but of their private possessions the highest of all privileges, end quote, abolition of property qualifications. By many minor victories rather than by any spectacular triumphs did the advocates of manhood suffrage carry the day. Slight gains were made even during the revolution or shortly afterward. In Pennsylvania the mechanics by taking an active part in the contest over the Constitution of 1776 were able to force the qualification down to the payment of a small tax. Vermont came into the Union in 1792 without any property restrictions. The same year Delaware gave the vote to all men who paid taxes. Maryland reckoned one of the most conservative of states embarked on the experiment of manhood suffrage in 1809. And nine years later Connecticut equally conservative decided that all taxpayers were worthy of the ballot. Five states, Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Rhode Island, and North Carolina remained obdurate while these changes were going on around them. Finally they had to yield themselves. The last struggle in Massachusetts took place in the Constitutional Convention of 1820. There Webster in the prime of his manhood and John Adams in the closing years of his old age alike protested against such radical innovations as manhood suffrage. Their protests were futile. The property test was abolished and a small tax-paying qualification was substituted. New York surrendered the next year and after trying some minor restrictions for five years went completely over to white manhood suffrage in 1826. Rhode Island clung to her freehold qualification through thirty years of agitation. Then Doors Rebellion, almost culminating in bloodshed, brought about a reform in 1843 which introduced a slight tax-paying qualification as an alternative to the freehold. Virginia and North Carolina were still unconvinced. The former refused to abandon ownership of land as the test for political rights until 1850 and the latter until 1856. Although religious discrimination and property qualifications for office holders were sometimes retained after the establishment of manhood suffrage, they were usually abolished along with the monopoly of government enjoyed by property owners and tax-payers. At the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century the white male industrial workers and the mechanics of the northern cities at least could lay aside the petition for the ballot and enjoy with the free farmer a voice in the government of their common country. Quote, Universal Democracy, sighed Carlisle, who was widely read in the United States, whatever we may think of it has declared itself the inevitable fact of the days in which we live, and he who has any chance to instruct or lead in these days must begin by admitting that. Where no government is wanted, save that of a parish constable as in America with its boundless soil, every man being able to find work and recompense for himself, democracy may subsist, not elsewhere. End quote. Amid the grave misgivings of the first generation of statesmen, America was committed to the great adventure in the populous towns of the east as well as in the forest and fields of the west. The new democracy enters the arena. The spirit of the new order soon had a pronounced effect on the machinery of government and the practice of politics. The enfranchised electors were now long in demanding for themselves a larger share in administration. The spoils system and rotation in office. First of all they wanted office for themselves regardless of their fitness. They therefore extended the system of rewarding party workers with government positions. A system early established in several states, notably New York and Pennsylvania, closely connected with it was the practice of fixing short term officers and making frequent changes in personnel. Quote, long continuance in office, explained a champion of this ideal in Pennsylvania in 1837, unfits a man for the discharge of its duties by rendering him arbitrary and aristocratic, and tends to beget first life office and then hereditary office, which leads to the destruction of free government. The solution offered was the historic doctrine of, quote, rotation in office. At the same time the principle of popular election was extended to an increasing number of officials who had once been appointed either by the governor or the legislature. Even geologists, veterinarians, surveyors, and other technical officers were declared elective on the theory that their appointment, quote, smacked of monarchy, end, quote, popular election of presidential electors. In a short time the spirit of democracy while playing havoc with the old order in state government made its way upward into the federal system. The framers of the constitution bewildered by many proposals and unable to agree on any single plan had committed the choice of presidential electors to the discretion of the state legislatures. The legislatures, in turn, greedy of power, early adopted the practice of choosing the electors themselves, but they did not enjoy it long undisturbed. Democracy, thundering at their doors, demanded that they surrender the privilege to the people. Reluctantly they yielded, sometimes granting popular election and then withdrawing it. The drift was inevitable and the climax came with the advent of Jacksonian democracy. In 1824 Vermont, New York, Delaware, South Carolina, Georgia, and Louisiana, though some had experimented with popular election, still left the choice of electors with the legislature. Eight years later South Carolina alone held to the old practice. Popular election had become the final word. The fanciful idea of an electoral college of, quote, good and wise men, end, quote, selected without passion or partnership by state legislatures acting as deliberative bodies was exploded for all time. The election of the nation's chief magistrate was committed to the tempestuous methods of democracy. The nominating convention. As the suffrage was widened and the popular choice of presidential electors extended, there arose a violent protest against the methods used by the political parties in nominating candidates. After the retirement of Washington, both the Republican and the Federalists found it necessary to agree upon their favorites before the election and they adopted a colonial device, the pre-election caucus. The Federalist members of Congress held a conference and selected their candidate and the Republicans followed the example. In a short time the practice of nominating by a congressional caucus became a recognized institution. The election still remained with the people, but the power of picking candidates for their approval passed into the hands of a small body of senators and representatives. A reaction against this was unavoidable. Two friends of, quote, the plain people, like Andrew Jackson, it was intolerable, all the more so because the caucus never favored him with the nomination. More conservative men also found grave objections to it. They pointed out that whereas the Constitution intended the President to be an independent officer, he had now fallen under the control of a caucus of congressmen. The supremacy of the legislative branch had been obtained by an extra-legal political device. Two such objections were added practical considerations. In 1824, when personal rivalry had taken the place of party conflicts, the congressional caucus selected as candidate William H. Crawford of Georgia, a man of distinction but no great popularity, passing by such an obvious hero as General Jackson. The followers of the general were enraged and demanded nothing short of the death of, quote, King Caucus. Their clamor was effective. Under their attacks the caucus came to an ignominious end. In place of it there arose in 1831 a new device, the National Nominating Convention, composed of delegates elected by party voters for the sole purpose of nominating candidates. Senators and representatives were still prominent in the party councils, but they were swamped by hundreds of delegates, quote, fresh from the people, as Jackson was wont to say. In fact each convention was made up mainly of office-holders and office-seekers, and the new institution was soon denounced as vigorously as King Caucus had been, particularly by statesmen who failed to obtain a nomination. Still it grew in strength and by 1840 was firmly established, the end of the old generation. In the election of 1824 the representatives of the, quote, aristocracy made their last successful stand. Until then the leadership by men of, quote, wealth and talents had been undisputed. There had been five presidents, Washington, John Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. Now all eastern men brought up in prosperous families with the advantages of culture which come from leisure and the possession of life's refinements. None of them had ever been compelled to work with his hands for a livelihood. Four of them had been slave-holders. Jefferson was a philosopher, learned in natural science, a master of foreign languages, a gentleman of dignity and grace of manner, notwithstanding his studied simplicity. Madison, it was said, was armed, quote, with all the culture of his century. Monroe was a graduate of William and Mary, a gentleman of the old school. Jefferson and his three successors called themselves Republicans and professed a genuine faith in the people, but they were not, quote, of the people themselves. They were not sons of the soil or the workshop. They were all men of, quote, the grand old order of society, who gave finish and style even to popular government. Monroe was the last of the presidents belonging to the heroic epic of the Revolution. He had served in the war for independence, in the Congress under the Articles of Confederation and in an official capacity after the adoption of the Constitution. In short, he was of the age that had wrought American independence and set the government afloat. With his passing, leadership went to a new generation, but his successor, John Quincy Adams, formed a bridge between the old and the new in that he combined a high degree of culture with democratic sympathies. Washington had died in 1799, preceded but a few months by Patrick Henry, and followed in four years by Samuel Adams. Hamilton had been killed in a duel with Burr in 1804. Thomas Jefferson and John Adams were yet alive in 1824, but they were soon to pass from the scene, reconciled at last, full of years and honors. Madison was indignified retirement, destined to live long enough to protest against the doctrine of nullification proclaimed by South Carolina before death carried him away at the ripe old age of 85. The election of John Quincy Adams, 1824. The campaign of 1824 marked the end of the quote era of good feeling, inaugurated by the collapse of the Federalist Party after the election of 1816. There were four leading candidates, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Henry Clay, and W. H. Crawford. The result of the election was a division of the electoral votes into four parts and no one received a majority. Under the Constitution, therefore, the selection of President passed to the House of Representatives. Clay, who stood at the bottom of the pole, threw his weight to Adams and assured his triumph much to the chagrin of Jackson's friends. They thought, with a certain justification, that in as much as the hero of New Orleans had received the largest electoral vote, the House was morally bound to accept the popular judgment and make him President. Jackson shook hands cordially with Adams on the day of the inauguration, but never forgave him for being elected. While Adams called himself a Republican in politics and often spoke of, quote, the rule of the people, he was regarded by Jackson's followers as, quote, an aristocrat. He was not a son of the soil. Neither was he acquainted at first hand with the labor of farmers and mechanics. He had been educated at Harvard and in Europe. Like his illustrious father, John Adams, he was a stern and reserved man, little given to seeking popularity. Moreover, he was from the East and the frontiersmen of the West regarded him as a man, quote, born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Jackson's supporters especially disliked him because they thought their hero entitled to the presidency. Their anger was deepened when Adams appointed Clay to the office of Secretary of State, and they set up a cry that there had been a, quote, deal by which Clay had helped to elect Adams to get office for himself. Though Adams conducted his administration with great dignity and in a fine spirit of public service, he was unable to overcome the opposition which he encountered on his election to office or to win popularity in the West and South. On the contrary, by advocating government assistance in building roads and canals and public grants in aid of education, arts, and sciences, he ran counter to the current which had set in against appropriations of federal funds for internal improvements. By signing the Tariff Bill of 1828, soon known as the quote, Tariff of Abominations, he made new enemies without adding to his friends in New York, Pennsylvania, and Ohio where he sorely needed them. Handicapped by the false charge that he had been a party to a, quote, corrupt bargain with Clay to secure his first election, attacked for his advocacy of a high protective tariff, charged with favoring a, quote, aristocracy of office holders in Washington on account of his refusal to discharge government clerks by the whole state. In the final sale, Adams was retired from the White House after he had served four years. The triumph of Jackson in 1828. Probably no candidate for the presidency ever had such passionate popular support as Andrew Jackson had in 1828. He was truly a man of the people. Born of poor parents in the upland region of South Carolina, schooled in poverty and adversity, without the advantages of education or the refinements of cultivated leisure, he seemed the embodiment of the spirit of the new American democracy. Early in his youth he had gone into the frontier of Tennessee, where he soon won a name as a fearless and intrepid Indian fighter. On the march and in camp he endeared himself to his men by sharing their hardships, sleeping on the ground with them, and eating parched corn when nothing better could be found for the privates. From local prominence he sprang into national fame by his exploit at the battle of New Orleans. His reputation as a military hero was enhanced by the feeling that he had been a martyr to political treachery in 1824. The farmers of the West and South claimed him as their own. The mechanics of the Eastern cities, newly enfranchised, also looked upon him as their friend. Though his views on the tariff, internal improvements, and other issues before the country were either vague or unknown, he was readily elected president. The returns of the electoral vote in 1828 revealed the sources of Jackson's power. In New England he received but one ballot from Maine. He had a majority of the electors in New York and all of them in Pennsylvania, and he carried every state south of Maryland and beyond the Appalachians. Adams did not get a single electoral vote in the South and West. The prophecy of the Hartford Convention had been fulfilled. When Jackson took the oath of office on March 4, 1829, the government of the United States entered into a new era. Until this time the inauguration of a president, even that of Jefferson, the apostle of simplicity, had brought no rude shock to the course of affairs at the Capitol. Hitherto the installation of a president meant that an old-fashioned gentleman, accompanied by a few servants, had driven to the White House in his coach, taken the oath with quiet dignity, appointed a few new men to the higher posts, continued in office the long list of regular civil employees, and begun his administration with respectable decorum. Jackson changed all this. When he was inaugurated, men and women journeyed hundreds of miles to witness the ceremony. Great throngs pressed into the White House, quote, upset the bowls of punch, broke the glasses, and stood with their muddy boots on the satin-covered chairs to see the people's president, end quote. When Jefferson's inauguration was, as he called it, the quote, great revolution, Jackson's inauguration was a cataclysm. End of Section 3, Recording by Robert Scott Mojo Move 411.com December 2007 Section 4 of History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Katie Gibbony Arkansas December 2007 History of the United States by Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard Part 4, The West and Jacksonian Democracy Chapter 11, Jacksonian Democracy, continued The New Democracy at Washington The Spoils System The staid and respectable society of Washington was disturbed by this influx of farmers and frontiersmen. To speak of politics became bad form among fashionable women. The clerks and civil servants of the government, who had enjoyed long and secure tenure of office, became alarmed at the clamor of new men for their positions. Doubtless the major portion of them had opposed the election of Jackson and looked with feelings akin to contempt upon him and his followers. With a hunter's instinct Jackson sent his prey. Determined to have none but his friends in office, he made a clean sweep, expelling old employees to make room for men fresh from the people. This was a new custom. Other presidents had discharged a few officers for engaging in opposition politics. They had been careful in making appointments not to choose inveterate enemies, but they discharged relatively few men on account of their political views and partisan activities. By wholesale removals and the frank selection of officers on party grounds, a practice already well entrenched in New York, Jackson established the Spoils System at Washington. The famous slogan, to the victor belong the spoils of victory, became the avowed principle of the national government. Statesmen like Calhoun denounced it. Poets like James Russell Lowell ridiculed it. Faithful servants of the government suffered under it. But it held undisturbed sway for half a century thereafter, each succeeding generation outdoing, if possible, its predecessor in the use of public office for political purposes. If anyone remarked that training and experience were necessary qualifications for important public positions, he met Jackson's own profession of faith. The duties of any public office are so simple, or admit of being made so simple, that any man can, in a short time, become master of them. The tariff and nullification. Jackson had not been installed in power very long before he was compelled to choose between states' rights and nationalism. The immediate occasion of the trouble was the tariff, a matter on which Jackson did not have any very decided views. His mind did not run naturally to abstruse economic questions. And owing to the divided opinion of the country, it was good politics to be vague and ambiguous in the controversy. Especially was this true, because the tariff issue was threatening to split the country into parties again. The Development of the Policy of Protection. The War of 1812 and the commercial policies of England which followed it had accentuated the need for American economic independence. During that conflict, the United States, cut off from English manufacturers as during the Revolution, built up home industries to meet the unusual call for iron, steel, cloth, and other military and naval supplies, as well as the demands from ordinary markets. Iron foundries and textile mills sprang up as in the night. Hundreds of businessmen invested fortunes in industrial enterprises so essential to the military needs of the government, and the people at large fell into the habit of buying American-made goods again. As the London Times tersely observed of the Americans, their first war with England made them independent, their second war made them formidable. In recognition of this state of affairs, the tariff of 1816 was designed, first, to prevent England from ruining these infant industries by dumping the accumulated stores of years suddenly upon American markets, and secondly, to enlarge in the manufacturing centers the demand for American agricultural produce. It accomplished the purposes of its framers. It kept in operation the mills and furnaces so recently built. It multiplied the number of industrial workers and enhanced the demand for the produce of the soil. It brought about another very important result. It turned the capital and enterprise of New England from shipping to manufacturing, and converted her statesmen, once friends of low tariffs, into ardent advocates of protection. In the early years of the 19th century the Yankees had bent their energies toward building and operating ships to carry produce from America to Europe and manufacturers from Europe to America. For this reason they had opposed the tariff of 1816, calculated to increase domestic production and cut down the carrying trade. Defeated in their efforts they accepted the inevitable and turned to manufacturing. Soon they were powerful friends of protection for American enterprise. As the money invested and the labor employed in the favored industries increased, the demand for continued and heavier protection grew apace. Even the farmers who furnished raw materials like wool, flax and hemp began to see eye to eye with the manufacturers. So the textile interests of New England, the iron masters of Connecticut, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the wool, hemp and flax growers of Ohio, Kentucky and Tennessee, and the sugar planters of Louisiana developed into a formidable combination in support of a high protective tariff. The planting states opposed the tariff. In the meantime the cotton states on the seaboard had forgotten about the Havoc rot during the Napoleonic wars when their produce rotted because there were no ships to carry it to Europe. The seas were now open. The area devoted to cotton had swiftly expanded as Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana were opened up. Cotton had in fact become king and the planters depended for their prosperity as they thought upon the sale of their staple to English manufacturers whose spinning and weaving mills were the wonder of the world. Manufacturing nothing and having to buy nearly everything except farm produce and even much of that for slaves the planters naturally wanted to purchase manufacturers in the cheapest market, England, where they sold most of their cotton. The tariff they contended raised the price of the goods they had to buy and was thus in fact a tribute laid on them for the benefit of the northern mill owners. The Tariff of Abominations They were overborn however in 1824 and again in 1828 when northern manufacturers and western farmers forced Congress to make an upward revision of the tariff. The act of 1828 known as the Tariff of Abominations though slightly modified in 1832 was the straw which broke the camel's back. Southern leaders turned in rage against the whole system. The legislatures of Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Alabama denounced it. A general convention of delegates held at Augusta issued a protest of defiance against it and South Carolina, weary of verbal battles, decided to prevent its enforcement. South Carolina nullifies the tariff. The legislature of that state, on October 26, 1832 passed a bill calling for a state convention which duly assembled in the following month. In no mood for compromise it adopted the famous Ordinance of Nullification after a few days' debate. Every line of this document was clear and firm. The tariff, it opened, gives bounties to classes and individuals at the expense and to the injury and oppression of other classes and individuals. It is a violation of the Constitution of the United States and therefore null and void. Its enforcement in South Carolina is unlawful. If the federal government attempts to coerce the state into obeying the law, the people of this state will then sporth hold themselves absolved from all further obligations to maintain or preserve their political connection with the people of the other states and will forthwith proceed to organize a separate government and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent states may of right do. Southern states condemn nullification. The answer of the country to this note of defiance couched in the language used in the Kentucky resolutions and by the New England Federalists during the War of 1812 was quick and positive. The legislatures of the southern states, while condemning the tariff, repudiated the step which South Carolina had taken. Georgia responded. We abhor the doctrine of nullification as neither a peaceful nor a constitutional remedy. Alabama found it unsound in theory and dangerous in practice. North Carolina replied that it was revolutionary in character, subversive of the Constitution of the United States. Mississippi answered. It is disunion by force. It is civil war. Virginia spoke more softly, condemning the tariff and sustaining the principle of the Virginia resolutions, but denying that South Carolina could find in them any sanction for her proceedings. Jackson firmly upholds the union. The eyes of the country were turned upon Andrew Jackson. It was known that he looked with no friendly feelings upon nullification. For, at a Jefferson dinner in the spring of 1830, while the subject was in the air, he had with laconic firmness announced a toast. Our Federal Union, it must be preserved. When two years later the opening challenge came from South Carolina, he replied that he would enforce the law saying with his frontier directness. If a single drop of blood shall be shed there in opposition to the laws of the United States, I will hang the first man I can lay my hands on engaged in such conduct upon the first tree that I can reach. He made ready to keep his word by preparing for the use of military and naval forces in sustaining the authority of the federal government. Then in a long and impassioned proclamation to the people of South Carolina, he pointed out the national character of the union and announced his solemn resolve to preserve it by all constitutional means. Nullification he branded as incompatible with the existence of the union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great objects for which it was formed. A compromise. In his messages to Congress, however, Jackson spoke the language of conciliation. A few days before issuing his proclamation he suggested that protection should be limited to the articles of domestic manufacture indispensable to safety in wartime, and shortly afterward he asked for new legislation to aid him in enforcing the laws. With two propositions before it, one to remove the chief grounds for South Carolina's resistance, and the other to apply force if it was continued, Congress bent its efforts to avoid a crisis. On February 12, 1833 Henry Clay laid before the Senate a compromise tariff bill, providing for the gradual reduction of the duties until by 1842 they would reach the level of the law which Calhoun had supported in 1816. About the same time the force bill, designed to give the President ample authority in executing the law in South Carolina, was taken up. After a short but acrimonious debate both measures were passed and signed by President Jackson on the same day. March 2. Looking upon the reduction of the tariff as a complete vindication of her policy and an undoubted victory, South Carolina rescinded her ordinance and enacted another nullifying the force bill. The Webster-Hane debate. Where the actual victory lay in this quarrel, long the subject of high dispute, need not concern us today. Perhaps the chief result of the whole affair was a clarification of the issue between the North and the South. A definite statement of the principles for which men on both sides were years afterwards to lay down their lives. On behalf of nationalism and a perpetual union, the staunch old Democrat from Tennessee had, in his proclamation on nullification, spoken a language that admitted of only one meaning. On behalf of nullification, Senator Hane of South Carolina, a skilled lawyer and courtly orator, had in a great speech delivered in the Senate in January 1830, set forth clearly and cogently the doctrine that the union is a compact among sovereign states from which the parties may lawfully withdraw. It was this address that called into the arena Daniel Webster, Senator from Massachusetts, who, spreading the mantle of Oblivion over the Hartford Convention, delivered a reply to Hane's that has been reckoned among the powerful orations of all time, a plea for the supremacy of the Constitution and the national character of the union. The war on the United States Bank. If events forced the issue of nationalism and nullification upon Jackson, the same could not be said of his attack on the bank. That institution, once denounced by every true Jeffersonian, had been re-established in 1816 under the administration of Jefferson's disciple, James Madison. It had not been in operation very long, however, before it aroused bitter opposition, especially in the South and the West. Its notes drove out of circulation the paper currency of unsound banks, chartered by the States, to the great anger of local financiers. It was accused of favoritism in making loans, of conferring special privileges upon politicians in return for their support at Washington. To all Jackson's followers, it was an insidious money-power. One of them openly denounced it as an institution designed to strengthen the arm of wealth and counter-poise the influence of extended suffrage in the disposition of public affairs. This sentiment President Jackson fully shared. In his first message to Congress he assailed the bank in vigorous language. He declared that its constitutionality was in doubt and alleged that it had failed to establish a sound and uniform currency. If such an institution was necessary, he continued, it should be a public bank, owned and managed by the government, not a private concern endowed with special privileges by it. In his second and third messages Jackson came back to the subject, leaving the decision, however, to an enlightened people and their representatives. Moved by this frank hostility and anxious for the future, the bank applied to Congress for a renewal of its charter in 1832, four years before the expiration of its life. Clay, with his eye upon the presidency and an issue for the campaign, warmly supported the application. Congress, deeply impressed by his leadership, passed the bill granting the new charter and sent the open defiance to Jackson. His response was an instant veto. The battle was on and it raged with fury until the close of his second administration, ending in the destruction of the bank, a disordered currency and a national panic. In his veto message Jackson attacked the bank as unconstitutional and even hinted at corruption. He refused to assent to the proposition that the Supreme Court had settled the question of constitutionality by the decision in the McCulloch case. Each public officer, he argued, who takes an oath to support the Constitution, swears that he will support it as he understands it, not as it is understood by others. Not satisfied with his veto and his declaration against the bank, Jackson ordered the Secretary of the Treasury to withdraw the government deposits which formed a large part of the institution's funds. This action he followed up by an open charge that the bank had used money shamefully to secure the return of its supporters to Congress. The Senate, stung by this charge, solemnly resolved that Jackson had assumed upon himself authority and power not conferred by the Constitution and laws, but in derogation of both. The effects of the destruction of the bank were widespread. When its charter expired in 1836, banking was once more committed to the control of the States. The State Legislatures, under a decision rendered by the Supreme Court after the death of Marshall, began to charter banks under State ownership and control with full power to issue paper money. This in spite of the provision in the Constitution that States shall not issue bills of credit or make anything but gold and silver coin legal tender in the payment of debts. Once more the country was flooded by paper currency of uncertain value. To make matters worse, Jackson adopted the practice of depositing huge amounts of government funds in these banks, not forgetting to render favors to those institutions which supported him in politics, pet banks as they were styled at the time. In 1837, partially, though by no means entirely, as a result of the abolition of the bank, the country was plunged into one of the most disastrous panics which it ever experienced. Internal Improvements Checked The bank had presented to Jackson a very clear problem, one of destruction. Other questions were not so simple, particularly the subject of federal appropriations in aid of roads and other internal improvements. Jefferson had strongly favored government assistance in such matters, but his administration was followed by a reaction. Both Madison and Monroe vetoed acts of Congress appropriating public funds for public roads, advancing is their reason the argument that the Constitution authorized no such laws. Jackson, puzzled by the clamor on both sides, followed their example without making the constitutional bar absolute. Congress, he thought, might lawfully build highways of a national and military value, but he strongly deprecated attacks by local interests on the federal treasury. The Triumph of the Executive Branch Jackson's reelection in 1832 served to confirm his opinion that he was the chosen leader of the people, freed and instructed to ride roughshod over Congress and even the courts. No president before or since ever entertained in times of peace such lofty notions of executive prerogative. The entire body of federal employees he transformed into obedient servants of his wishes, a sign or a nod from him making and undoing the fortunes of the humble and the mighty. His lawful cabinet of advisors, filling all of the high posts in the government, he treated with scant courtesy, preferring rather to secure his counsel and advice from an unofficial body of friends and dependents who, owing to their secret methods and back stairs arrangements, became known as the kitchen cabinet. Under the leadership of a silent, astute and resourceful politician, Amos Kendall, this informal gathering of the faithful both gave and carried out decrees and orders, communicating the president's lightest wish or strictest command to the uppermost part of the country. Resolutely and in the face of bitter opposition, Jackson had removed the deposits from the United States Bank. When the Senate protested against this arbitrary conduct he did not rest until it was forced to expunge the resolution of condemnation. In time one of his lieutenants with his own hands was able to tear the censure from the records. When Chief Justice Marshall issued a decree against Georgia which did not suit him, Jackson, according to tradition, blurted out that Marshall could go ahead and enforce his own orders. To the end he pursued his willful way, finally even choosing his own successor.