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"Our Federal Union: it must be preserved." -- PRESIDENT JACKSON'S toast at Jefferson's birthday banquet in Washington, April 30, 1830.
ANDREW JACKSON (DEMOCRAT)1
259. Jackson's Administration (Seventh
President, Two Terms, 1829-1837); Character of the New
President. Up to this date all the Presidents had been chosen
from Virginia or from Massachusetts, and all were known to the
country as statesmen of a high order. General Jackson 2
"the People's President," came from Tennessee. He had unbounded
popularity in all Western communities. His military services, and
especially his victory over the British at New Orleans (§
233), had made him famous throughout the United States.
1 Reference Books
(Jackson to Buchanan, inclusive). W. Wilson's "Division and
Reunion," ch. 1-8; W. C. Bryant and Gay's "United States" (revised
edition), IV, 291-434; W. Macdonald's "Jacksonian Democracy"; A.
B. Hart's "Slavery and Abolition"; G. P. Garrison's "Westward
Extension"; T. C. Clarke's "Parties and Slavery"; F. E. Chadwick's
"Causes of the Civil War," ch. 1-17; J. B. McMaster's "United
States," V, 523-556, VI; A. B. Hart's "American History by
Contemporaries," III, ch. 24-29; IV, ch. 2-7; A. B. Hart's Source
Book, ch. 15-17; J. Schouler's "United States," III, ch. 13; IV,
V. See also the classified List of Books in the Appendix.
2 Andrew Jackson was of Scotch-Irish
descent (§ 92). He was born in 1767, in the Waxhaw
Settlement, Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, close to the South
Carolina boundary line. In his will and elsewhere he speaks of
himself as a native of the latter state. He died in 1845. He got
his early education rather from the hard, rough, dangerous life of
the backwoods than from books and schools. No one could excel him
in handling a rifle, or in breaking and riding a wild or vicious
horse.
During the Revolution, Jackson, then a lad of
fourteen, was taken prisoner by the British, and was nearly
starved to death by them. Once the commanding officer ordered him
to clean his boots. Young Jackson refused, saying that he was a
prisoner of war, and therefore not obliged to perform such acts of
drudgery for his captors. The officer, in a rage, struck him with
his sword, cutting a gash on the boy's head and another on his
hand. Jackson carried the scars of this brutal treatment to his
grave.
In 1784 he began the study of law in Salisbury,
North Carolina. Four years later he emigrated to Nashville,
Tennessee, where he opened a law office. In 1797 he was
elected
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In character Jackson was headstrong,
absolutely honest, and utterly fearless. When he was
roused, there was a flash in his gray eyes that startled
one like the gleam of a drawn sword. His blunt speech and
decided action made many bitter enemies, but he had also
many devoted friends. They knew him to be a warmhearted,
true-hearted, high-minded man. |
his
Secretary of the Treasury called "a great political
revolution." The President's friends demanded government
offices. In a short time he turned out about 2000 men
from their positions, and gave their places and salaries
to those who had voted for him.|
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[1829-1831 |
he honest? Is he capable? Is he faithful to the Constitution?
If the answer was "Yes," that was enough.
When Jackson became President he began, as we
have seen, by making sweeping dismissals of the men who did not
agree with him in politics. He filled their places with those --
and those only -- who voted as he thought right. In doing this he
intended, as he said, to effect a great "reform"; but his action
established the "spoils system,"1 which Webster, Clay,
Calhoun, Benton, and other eminent statesmen denounced.
262. William Lloyd Garrison; Dr. Channing;
the Anti-Slavery Movement. The question about filling
government offices was pushed out of sight by the greater question
about slavery. On New Year's Day, 1831, William Lloyd Garrison,
then a "poor, unlearned young man," 2 published in
Boston the first number of his paper called the Liberator.
Mr. Garrison was its editor, owner, publisher, printer, and
carrier. The Liberator demanded the "immediate and
unconditional emancipation of every slave held in the United
States." Mr. Garrison was resolved to free the negro, even if he
had to destroy the Union to do it.3
The Southern planters believed the editor of the
new paper had lost his reason; most people at the North agreed
with them.4 Even many warm friends of the negro thought
Mr. Garrison was wholly wrong in his methods. They felt as Dr.
Charming did.
1 "Spoils System": so
called because, in 1832, Senator Marcy of New York declared that
"to the victors belong the spoils"; or, in other words, that the
successful political party in an election has the right to make
all it can out of it in the way of offices and salaries.
2 See James Russell Lowell's poem "To
W. L. Garrison," beginning
Toiled o'er his types one poor, unlearned young man."
3 After laboring
many years in the cause of emancipation, Mr. Garrison finally came
to the conclusion that the Constitution of the United States
upheld slavery, and that the dissolution of the Union, by
depriving the South of the support of the North, would hasten the
liberation of the slaves. In consequence of this conviction, he
violently denounced the Constitution (in words taken from Isaiah
xxviii. 15) as" a covenant with death and an agreement with hell."
These words were then regularly printed at the top of the
Liberator until the outbreak of the Civil War, when they were
dropped.
4 Mr. Garrison said that he found the
prejudice and contempt of Northern men harder to deal with than
that of the slaveholders. In an address to the public in the first
number of the Liberator he used these words: "I am in
earnest -- I will not equivocate -- I will not excuse -- I will
not retreat a single inch -- and I will be heard." See Life of W.
L. Garrison, by his children.
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That eminent man wrote to Daniel Webster, declaring that we
should say to the South, "We consider slavery as your calamity,
not your crime; and we will share with you the burden of putting
an end to it."1
263. Insurrection of Slaves in Virginia; Mr.
Garrison mobbed in Boston. It so happened that in the summer
following the publication of the Liberator, a terrible
negro insurrection broke out in Virginia. The slaves engaged in it
massacred over sixty white men, women, and children. Many Southern
people believed that Mr. Garrison's object was to stir up the
negroes to rise and murder their masters. There was no truth in
the belief, but it powerfully increased the excitement at the
South.
In the North, Mr. Garrison's appeals in behalf
of the freedom of the blacks roused almost equal excitement. Gangs
of "roughs" broke up meetings held to discuss emancipation, and on
one occasion a howling mob dragged the editor of the
Liberator through the streets of Boston with a rope round
his body.
These violent outbreaks were not made out of
hatred to the negro, but out of fear that Mr. Garrison was putting
the country in peril. Many thoughtful men who were opposed to
slavery believed that, on the whole, it was better to save the
Union with slavery than to deliberately destroy it for the sake of
liberating the negro. Daniel Webster held that idea, and so, as we
shall see later, did Abraham Lincoln (§ 319 and note to the
Proclamation of Emancipation, facing page 303).
264. Formation of Abolition Societies;
Petitions to Congress about Slavery; what John Quincy Adams
did. Mr. Garrison believed that he was right, and persisted in
demanding the emancipation of the slaves, Union or no Union. His
influence spread. In a few years nearly 2000 societies had been
formed in the North for the abolition of slavery. Then many people
began to petition Congress to set free all slaves held in the
District of Columbia.
1 See Dr. W. E.
Charming's letter to Daniel Webster (Webster's Works), May
14,1829. Dr. Charming proposed that the United States should
appropriate the money from the sale of the public lands, buy the
slaves from their owners, and set them free. Could that have been
done, it would have saved us four years of civil war. England
bought her West India slaves, and freed them, in 1833, at a cost
of one hundred million dollars.
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Congress finally resolved not to receive such
petitions. Ex-President John Quincy Adams (§ 249), then a
member of the House of Representatives, denounced these
resolutions as "gag rules," which forbade debate and were contrary
to the Constitution.1 He insisted on presenting every
petition that was sent to him, and sometimes offered 200 or more
in a single day, amid cries of, "Treason!" and yells of "Put him
out!" From this period the discussion of slavery never ceased
until the North and the South took up arms to settle it on the
battlefield.
265. President Jackson puts an End to the
Second United States Bank; Removal of the Deposits. While the
great question of emancipation was being hotly debated, Jackson
was attacking the United States Bank (§ 202), which had been
reëstablished (1816). He believed, as did Senator Benton of
Missouri,2 that it was badly managed and unsafe. For
these reasons he refused to sign a bill3 (1832) to
renew the right of the bank to continue business. This refusal put
an end to the bank in 1836.
Next (1833) the President removed nearly
$10,000,000 of the public money which the government had in the
bank. This amount, with about $40,000,000 more, was deposited
later in some ninety so-called "pet banks" in different states.
Speculators borrowed large sums of paper money from these banks,
with others, to buy government land, and many people started wild
schemes for "getting rich quick." Jackson checked this business by
demanding specie4 for land, when specie was hard to
find (§ 276, No. 3).
266. South Carolina resists the Tariff taxing
Imported Goods. The South was at this time strongly opposed to
having heavy duties or taxes imposed on goods brought into the
United States. We have seen (§ 241) that the reason for this
opposition was
1 On the right of the
people to petition the government, see Amendments to the
Constitution, Article I; but compare the right of Congress to make
rules for its proceedings (Constitution, Article I, Section
5).
2 Colonel Thomas H. Benton was one of
the most decided opponents of the bank. He thought paper money was
unsafe, and urged Congress to adopt gold and silver currency
instead of bank bills. His able speeches on this subject of "hard
money" got for him the nickname of "Old Bullion."
3 Bill: a law proposed by Congress;
except in certain cases, it requires the President's signature to
make it complete. When he returns a bill unsigned he is said to
veto it. See the Constitution, Article 1, Section 7.
4 Specie (spe'she): gold or silver
money.
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that the people of the South had never established
manufactories in any number, and therefore had to buy their woolen
and cotton cloth either from the northern states, where large
quantities were made, or from Europe. As labor was cheaper in
Europe than in this country, the wealthy mill owners in England
could afford to make cloth, send it to the United States, and sell
it at a much lower price than it could be made here. Henry Clay, a
member of Congress from Kentucky (§ 243), was particularly
anxious to make the American producers and manufacturers
independent of Europe. He succeeded in establishing high
protective tariffs (1824, 1828, 1832). These tariffs levied a
heavy duty or tax on many imported goods and so protected the
American manufacturer of cotton, woolen, iron, and other goods
against all foreign competitors.1 Finally, South
Carolina resolved to resist these duties.
267. John C. Calhoun; Nullification;
Preparations for War. John C. Calhoun2 of South
Carolina, who was then Vice President, protested against this
"Tariff of Abominations," as he called it. He asserted that it
compelled the South to pay such a price for cloth and other goods
that the people were constantly growing poorer, while the Northern
manufacturers, on the other hand, were getting rich at their
expense. He therefore demanded free trade. To this the North
answered that free trade would ruin the factory
I From the outset a
division of opinion existed in regard to the power of the
government to levy duties. The Democrats generally contended that,
strictly interpreted, the Constitution did not give Congress
authority to impose duties beyond what would be sufficient to
defray the expenses of the government and furnish money for the
payment of the national debt. This party demanded simply a Revenue
Tariff. The Federalists and Whigs generally held that the
Constitution gave Congress the right to levy duties not only for
revenue but also to encourage the production of goods at home, as
opposed to their purchase from foreign producers. These two
parties (and later the Republican party) advocated a Protective
Tariff. Such a tariff was imposed in 1816, 1824, 1828, 1832, and
1842. In 1846, and until the beginning of the Civil War, we
maintained what was practically a Revenue Tariff. During the war
heavy duties became the rule. Later, they were considerably
reduced, but in 1890 and 1897 the Republicans enacted very high
Protective Tariffs.
2 John C. Calhoun, born in Abbeville
district, South Carolina, 1782; died 1850. Like Jackson, he was of
Scotch-Irish descent (§ 92). He entered Congress in 1810. He
was elected Vice President in 1824 and in 1828. In 1832 he
resigned his office, and was chosen United States senator. He was
at first a supporter of a protective tariff, but later became a
strong. advocate of free trade. He was one of the few leading men
who taught that slavery is "a positive good," an advantage alike
to the negro and to his owner. His nature was "as great as it was
pure." Webster, his chief political opponent, said of him that
nothing "low or meanly selfish came near the head or the heart of
Mr. Calhoun."
