Part 13 (2/2)
Estimating the annual average export of domestic produce at fifty- three million dollars, the Exposition attributed to the planting section at least thirty-seven million dollars--over two-thirds of the total exports; the voting power of this section in the House of Representatives was but seventy-six, while the rest of the Union had one hundred and thirty-seven members. Thus, one-third of the political Union exported more than two-thirds of the domestic products. a.s.suming imports to equal exports, and the tariff of 1828 to average forty-five per cent., the south would pay sixteen million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars as its share of contributions to the national treasury. Calhoun then presented the ominous suggestion that, if the staple section had a separate custom-house, it would have for its own use a revenue of sixteen million six hundred and fifty thousand dollars from foreign trade alone, not counting the imports from the north, which would bring in millions more.
”We are mere consumers,” he declared, ”the serfs of the system--out of whose labor is raised, not only the money paid into the Treasury, but the funds out of which are drawn the rich rewards of the manufacturer and his a.s.sociates in interest.”
Taking for granted that the price at which the south could afford to cultivate cotton was determined by the price at which it received its supplies, he argued that, if the crop could be produced at ten cents a pound, the removal of the duty would enable the planter to produce it at five and one-half cents, and thus to drive out compet.i.tion and to add three or four hundred thousand bales annually to the production, with a corresponding increase of profit. The complaints of the south were not yet exhausted, for the Exposition went on to point out that, in the commercial warfare with Europe which protection might be expected to engender, the south would be deprived of its market and might be forced to change its industrial life and compete with the northern states in manufactures. The advantages of the north would probably insure it an easy victory; but if not, then an attack might be expected on the labor system of the south, in behalf of the white workmen of the north.
What, then, was the remedy? Calhoun found this, although in fragmentary form, ready to his hand. The reserved rights of the sovereign states had long been the theoretical basis of southern resistance. In the argumentation of such writers as Taylor, Turnbull, and Judge Roane, not to mention Madison and Jefferson in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, there was material for the system; but as yet no one had stated with entire clearness the two features which Calhoun made prominent in his Exposition. First, he made use of reasoning in sharp contrast to that of the statesmen of the days of the American Revolution, by rejecting the doctrine of the division of sovereignty between the states and the general government. [Footnote: McLaughlin, in Am. Hist. Rev., V., 482, 484.]
Clearly differentiating government from sovereignty, he limited the application of the division to the powers of government, and attributed the sovereignty solely to the people of the several states. This conception of the unity of sovereignty was combined with the designation of the Const.i.tution as articles of compact between sovereign states, each ent.i.tled to determine whether or not the general government had usurped powers not granted by the Const.i.tution, and each ent.i.tled peacefully to prevent the operation of the disputed law within its own limits, pending a decision by the same power that could amend the Const.i.tution--namely, three-fourths of the states.
These doctrines were brought out with definiteness and with the deliberate intention of creating from them a practical governmental machinery to be peacefully applied for the preservation of the rights of the states. In effect, therefore, Calhoun, the logician of nationalism in the legislation that followed the War of 1812, became the real architect of the system of nullification as a plan of action rather than a protest. As it left his hands, the system was essentially a new creation. In the Exposition, the doctrine was sketched only in its larger lines, for it was in later doc.u.ments that he refined and elaborated it. It was intended as a subst.i.tute for revolution and disunion--but it proved to be the basis on which was afterwards developed the theory of peaceable secession. Calhoun did not publicly avow his authors.h.i.+p or his adhesion to nullification until three years later.
The rallying of the party of the Union in South Carolina against this doctrine, the refusal of Georgia, Virginia, and other southern states to accept it as the true exposition of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, the repudiation of it by the planting states of the southwest, all belong to the next volume of this series.
Yet the Exposition marks the culmination of the process of transformation with which this volume has dealt. Beginning with nationalism, the period ends with sectionalism. Beginning with unity of party and with the almost complete ascendancy of republicanism of the type of Monroe, it ends with sharply distinguished rival parties, as yet unnamed, but fully organized, and tending to differ fundamentally on the question of national powers. From the days when South-Carolinians led in legislation for tariff and internal improvements, when Virginians promoted the Colonization Society, and Georgians advocated the policy of mitigating the evils of slavery by scattering the slaves, we have reached the period when a united south protests against ”the American system,” and the lower south a.s.serts that slavery must not be touched--not even discussed.
In various southern states the minority counties of the coast, raising staples by slave labor, had protected their property interests against the free majority of farmers in the interior counties by so apportioning the legislature as to prevent action by the majority. Now the same conditions existed for the nation. The free majority embraced a great zone of states in the north and west; the south, a minority section, was now seeking protection against the majority of the Union by the device of state sovereignty; and Calhoun made himself the political philosopher of the rights of this minority section, applying to the nation the experience of South Carolina. [Footnote: Calhoun. Works, I., 400-405.]
Still the great currents of national growth ran on. New England was achieving unity and national feeling as a manufacturing region, and Webster was developing those powers which were to make him the orator of consolidation. While the leaders of the middle states played the game of personal politics, their people and those of the growing west were rallying around the man who personified their pa.s.sion for democracy and nationalism--the fiery Jackson, who confused sectional opposition to the government with personal hostility to himself. This frontiersman was little likely to allow political metaphysics, or even sectional suffering, to check his will. And on the frontier of the northwest, the young Lincoln sank his axe deep in the opposing forest.
CHAPTER XX
CRITICAL ESSAY ON AUTHORITIES
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL AIDS
The authorities characterized in the Critical Essays of Babc.o.c.k's Rise of American Nationality, MacDonald's Jacksonian Democracy, and Hart's Slavery and Abolition (American Nation, XIII., XV., XVI.), include most of the general authorities, and need not be repeated here in detail. In addition, account should be taken of several indexes to government doc.u.ments: L.C. Ferrell, Tables... and Annotated Index (1902); two by J.G. Ames: Finding List (1893) and Check List (1895); J.M. Baker, Finding List (1900-1901); the Index to the Reports of... Committees of the House (1887); and Index to Reports of... Committees of the Senate (1887); Ben Perley Poore, Descriptive Catalogue of Government Publications (1885); L.P. Lane, Aids in the Use of Government Publications (American Statistical a.s.sociation, Publications, VII. (1900), 40-57); L.C. Ferrell, ”Public Doc.u.ments of the United States” (Library Journal, XXVI., 671); Van Tyne and Leland, Guide to the Archives of the Government of the United States in Was.h.i.+ngton (Carnegie Inst.i.tution, Publications, No. 14, 1904). For bibliography of state official issues, see R.R. Bowker [editor], State Publications: a Provisional List of the Official Publications of the Several States of the United States from their Organization (3 vols., issued 1899-1905); see also J.N. Larned, Literature of American History (1902), 7-13; and I.S. Bradley, in American Historical a.s.sociation, Report, 1896, I., 296-319, a bibliography of doc.u.mentary and newspaper material for the Old Northwest.
GENERAL SECONDARY WORKS
The general histories of the period 1819-1829 almost without exception extend over earlier or later fields, and are described in earlier or later volumes of this series. To the usual list, James Schouler, J.B. McMaster, George Tucker, H.E. Von Hoist, J.P. Gordy, may be added: S. Perkins, Historical Sketches of the United States, from the Peace of 1815 to 1830 (1830), the work of a careful contemporary.
BIOGRAPHIES
The most serviceable biographies in this period can be found through the lists in Channing and Hart, Guide to the Study of American History (1896), p. 25. The volumes of the American Statesmen series are accurate and well written, especially Morse's John Quincy Adams, Schurz's Henry Clay, Adams's John Randolph, Roosevelt's Thomas H.
Benton, McLaughlin's Lewis Ca.s.s, Shepard's Van Buren. SECTIONAL HISTORY
Among the bibliographies useful for attacking the ma.s.s of local and state histories for this period are the following: R.R. Bowker, State Publications (New York, 1899, 1902, 1905); A.P.C. Griffin, Bibliography of Historical Societies of the United States (American Historical a.s.sociation, Reports, 1890, 1892, 1893).
NEW ENGLAND.--The history of this section, since the Revolution, has been neglected, but indications of its importance appear in Justin Winsor, Memorial History of Boston (4 vols., 1880-1882), III., IV., and I.B. Richman, Rhode Island: a Study in Separatism (1905). M.
Louise Greene, The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut (1905), deals with the toleration movement. The various historical societies print doc.u.mentary material; but, for the most part, New England's activity in this decade must be sought in original material, biographies, travels, scattered monographs, and, in fragments, in state histories.
MIDDLE STATES.--The state and local histories of the middle region are more satisfactory on this period, but the political life must be sought chiefly in biographies; and the economic and social conditions in the scattered material elsewhere cited in this bibliography. J.G. Wilson, Memorial History of the City of New York (4 vols., 1891-1893); and Scharf and Westcott, History of Philadelphia (3 vols., 1884), are serviceable accounts of the development of the great cities of the section.
THE SOUTH.--Virginia has been neglected in this period, but the travelers afford interesting material; and a good view of plantation life is T.C. Johnson, Life and Letters of Robert Lewis Dabney (1903). For North Carolina, the literature is cited in S.B. Weeks, Bibliography of the Historical Literature of North Carolina (1895).
Two monographs by J.S. Ba.s.sett, Anti-Slavery Leaders of North Carolina (Johns Hopkins University Studies, XVI., No. 6), and History of Slavery in North Carolina (ibid., XVII., Nos. 7, 8), are especially important for the up-country. W.E. Dodd, Life of Nathaniel Macon (1903), is useful on this period. South Carolina conditions are shown in R. Mills, Statistics of South Carolina (1826); and W.A. Schaper, Sectionalism and Representation in South Carolina (American Historical a.s.sociation, Report, 1900, I.).
Georgia is depicted in U.B. Phillips, Georgia and State Rights (ibid., 1901, II.); [G.R. Gilmer], Sketches of Some of the First Settlers of Upper Georgia (1855); and [A.B. Longstreet], Georgia Scenes (last edition, 1897), the latter made up of rollicking character-sketches. Among the many travelers useful (after criticism) for the South and Southwest may be mentioned, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, Murat, Paulding, Hodgson, and Mrs. Royall.
Correspondence ill.u.s.trating Mississippi conditions is printed in J.F.H. Claiborne, Life and Correspondence of John A. Quitman (2 vols., 1860). Two lists by T.M. Owen, Bibliography of Alabama (American Historical a.s.sociation, Report, 1897); and Bibliography of Mississippi (ibid., 1889, I.), open a wealth of southwestern material. For Louisiana, there are various popular histories of New Orleans; and A. Fortier, History of Louisiana (1904), III.; S.D.
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