Volume Iii Part 8 (2/2)

The Quakers of Pennsylvania were, however, the most aggressive of slavery's foes. So early as 1775 a society, the first in America if not in the world for promoting its abolition, was formed in Pennsylvania. In 1789 it was incorporated, with Franklin for president. Similar organizations soon rose in several northern States, numbering among their members many of the most eminent men in the land. The British Abolition Society, formed in 1787, and the labors of Wilberforce, Clarkson, and Zachary Macaulay against the slave trade in the West Indies, had influence here, as had still more the French a.s.sembly's bold proclamation of the Rights of Man.

The Ordinance of 1787 for the Northwest Territory marked a most decisive point in the history of slavery. By its decree, in Jefferson's language, there was never to be either slavery or involuntary servitude in the said territory otherwise than in punishment for crimes. It is to the everlasting honor of the southern members then in the Continental Congress that they all voted for this inhibition. Virginia, whose a.s.sent as a State was necessary to its validity, she having at this time rights over much of the domain in question, also concurred. Whatever the strictly legal weight of this prohibition over the immense Louisiana purchase, it certainly aided much in confirming freedom as the presupposition and maxim of our law over all our national territory.

Vermont had never recognized slavery save to prohibit it in its first const.i.tution. In New Hamps.h.i.+re it existed but nominally. The Ma.s.sachusetts const.i.tution of 1780 virtually ended it in that State.

Gradual abolition statutes pa.s.sed in Pennsylvania in 1780, in Rhode Island and Connecticut in 1784. The const.i.tution made it possible to forbid the importation of slaves in 1808. A national law to that effect was pa.s.sed in 1807, making the trade illegal and affixing to it heavy penalties. The American Colonization Society was formed in 1816 for the purpose of negro deportation. It did little of this, but rendered some service toward carrying out the act against slave importation. A new law in 1820, which made this traffic piracy, punishable with death, was partly due to its influence. Also many, like Birney, Gerrit Smith and the Tappans, who began as colonizationists, subsequently became abolitionists.

Notwithstanding all these influences slavery increased in strength every year. South Carolina and Georgia were finding it exceedingly profitable for cotton and rice culture, and the income from slave traffic into the vast opening lands of Tennessee and Kentucky const.i.tuted an irresistible temptation. In spite of the law of 1807 and of the indescribable horrors of the business, even the foreign slave trade went on. The inst.i.tution found many defenders in the Federal Convention of 1787, and in the first and subsequent Congresses. The pleas began to be raised, so current later, that the negro was an inferior being, slavery G.o.d's ordinance, a blessing to slaves and masters alike, and emanc.i.p.ation a folly. Now began also that policy of bravado by which, for sixty years, the friends of slavery bullied their opponents into shameful inaction upon that accursed thing politically as well as morally, which was so nearly to cost the nation its life. Thus stood matters when the Missouri Compromise was mooted in the national Legislature.

We hardly need say that this strife ended in a compromise. Missouri was created a slave State, balanced by Maine as a free State, but at the same time slavery was to be excluded forever from all the remainder of the Louisiana purchase north of 36 degrees 30 minutes, the southern line of Virginia and Kentucky as well as of Missouri itself. The land between Missouri and Louisiana had been in 1819 erected into the ”Territory of Arkansaw.”

In the memorable discussion over this issue, involving the country as well as Congress, two sorts of argumentation were heard in favor of the suit of Missouri. The genuine pro-slavery men urged the sacredness of property as such, and the special sacredness of property-right in slaves as tacitly guaranteed by the Const.i.tution. They also made much of the third article of the Louisiana purchase treaty. This read as follows: ”The inhabitants of the ceded territory shall be incorporated in the Union of the United States and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Const.i.tution, to the enjoyment of all the rights, advantages, and immunities of citizens of the United States; and in the meantime they shall be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they profess.”

There were with these, men who acted from mere policy, thinking it best to admit the slave State because of the difficulty and also the danger to the Union of suppressing slavery there. They appealed as well to the sacred compromises in the Const.i.tution, meaning the permission at first to import slaves, the three-fifths rule for slave representation in Congress, and the fugitive slave clause. They spoke much of the necessity of preserving the balance of power within the Union, and of Congress's inaction as to slavery in the Louisiana purchase hitherto, and also in Florida. These arguments won many professed foes of slavery, as Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Quincy Adams. In all Congress Clay was the most earnest pleader for the compromise.

To all these arguments the unbending friends of free soil replied that property right was subordinate to the national good, and that Congress had full power over territorial inst.i.tutions and should never have permitted slavery to curse the domain in question. If it had committed error in the past, that could not excuse continuance in error. The terms of the Louisiana purchase, it was further urged, could not, even if they had been meant to do so, which was not true, detract from this sovereign power. It was pointed out that in every case in which a State had been admitted thus far, Congress had prescribed conditions. It was boldly said, still further, that if slavery threatened disunion unless allowed its way, it ought all the more to be denied its way.

The chief strength of slavery in this crisis lay in the distressing practical difficulty, if the prayer of Missouri were refused, of dealing with slaves and slave proprietors.h.i.+p there, and of quieting a numerous and spirited population bent upon statehood and slavery together. The more decided foes of slavery did not sufficiently consider these complications. Nor did they duly reflect upon the sweeping triumph which freedom had withal secured in the pledge that the vast bulk of the Louisiana purchase should be forever free. The pledge was indeed broken in 1854, but not until such a sense of its sacredness had been impressed upon the country that the breach availed slavery nothing.

CHAPTER IV.

THE GREAT NULLIFICATION

[1816-1828]

The tariff rates of 1816 on cottons and woollens were to be twenty-five per cent. for three years, after that twenty. Instead of this the cotton tariff was in 1824 replaced at twenty-five per cent., the same as that upon woollens costing thirty-three and a third cents or less per square yard; woollens over this price bearing thirty per cent. Wool, which by the tariff of 1816 was free, now bore, some grades fifteen, some twenty, some thirty per cent. Iron duties were put up in 1818 and again in 1824, from which date for ten years they ranged between forty and one hundred per cent. The whole tendency of tariff rates was strongly upward. The duty upon all dutiables averaged between 1816 and 1824 only twenty-four and a half per cent; from 1824 to 1828 the average was thirty-two and a half per cent. Importation remained copious, notwithstanding, which made the cry for protection louder than ever.

[1828]

From Quincy Adams's presidency the tariff question becomes on the one hand political, dividing Whigs from Democrats about exactly, which had never been the case before, and on the other, sectional, the West, the Centre, and now also the East, pitted against the solid South, except Louisiana. The year 1824 heard Webster's last speech for free trade and saw Calhoun's and Jackson's last vote for protection. However, so strong was the protectionist sentiment in the XXth Congress, though democratic, that free-traders could hope to defeat the new tariff bill of 1828 only by rendering it odious to New England. They therefore conspired to make prohibitive its rates for Smyrna wool, and nearly so those on iron, hemp, and cordage for s.h.i.+p-building; also on mola.s.ses, the raw material for rum, whereon no drawback was longer to be allowed if it was exported.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]

John Quincy Adams. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart.

The Whigs had arranged, to be now pa.s.sed, a series of minimum rates on woollens, by which all costing over fifty cents a square yard were to pay as if costing $2.50, and all over this as if costing $4.00. The rate was to be forty per cent. the first year, forty-five the second, and fifty thereafter.

This ill.u.s.trates the famous ”minimum principle,” which has played such a figure in all our tariff history since 1816, its effect being always to make the tariff much higher than it seems. Thus in the case before us, most of the woollens then imported cost about ninety cents. If based on this price, the tariff would be thirty-six per cent., but if based on $2.50 as the price, it would mount up to one hundred and ten per cent.

To prevent this and to render the bill still more unpalatable to the Whigs, the Democrats introduced a dollar ”minimum,” so that the tariff on the bulk of our imported woollens, costing, as just stated, about ninety cents, would come in at forty-four and four-tenths per cent.

But as this was after all more vigorous protection than woollens had before received, amounting, through minima, in some cases to over one hundred per cent., sixteen out of the thirty-nine New England members, led by Webster, accepted this universally odious tariff bill--the Tariff of Abominations, it was called--as the preferable evil, and, aided by a few Democrats in each house, made it a law. The average duty on dutiables was now about forty-three and a third per cent.

No one can question that this high tariff worked injustice to the South.

It forced from her an undue share of the national taxes, as well as extensive tribute to northern manufacturers. But in resenting the evil she exaggerated it, mistakenly referring all the relative decrease in her prosperity to tariff legislation, when a great part of it was due simply to slavery. The South complained that selfishness and political ambition, not patriotism or reason, determined the dominant policy, and there was of course some truth in this. Moreover, as New England now favored it, this policy bade fair to become permanent, and since the tariff bills did not announce protection as their purpose, the const.i.tutionality of them could not be gotten before the courts.

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