Volume Iii Part 9 (1/2)
[1830]
Nearly all the southern Legislatures consequently denounced the tariff as unjust and as hostile to our fundamental law. Most of them were, however, prudent enough to suggest no illegal remedies. Not so with fiery South Carolina, where a large party, inspired by Calhoun, proposed a bold nullification of the tariff act, virtually amounting to secession. At a dinner in this interest at Was.h.i.+ngton, April 13, 1830, Calhoun offered the toast: ”The Union; next to our liberty the most dear; only to be preserved by respecting the rights of the States.”
[1832]
John C. Calhoun was now, except, perhaps, Clay, the ablest and most influential politician in all the South. Born in South Carolina in 1782, of Irish-Presbyterian parentage, though poor and in youth ill-educated like Clay and Jackson, his energy carried him through Yale College, and through a course of legal study at Litchfield, Conn., where stood the only law school then in America. November, 1811, found him a member of Congress, on fire for war with Britain. Monroe's Secretary of War for seven years from 1817, he was in 1825 elected Vice-President, and reelected in 1828. He had meantime turned an ardent free-trader, and seeing the North's predominance in the Union steadily increasing, had built up a nullification theory based upon that of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions and the Hartford Convention, and upon the history of the formation of our Const.i.tution. He had worked out to his own satisfaction the untenable view that each State had the right, not in the way of revolution but under the Const.i.tution itself--as a contract between parties that had no superior referee--to veto national laws upon its own judgment of their unconst.i.tutionality.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
John C. Calhoun From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery.
On this doctrine South Carolina presently proceeded to act. November 24, 1832, the convention of that State pa.s.sed its nullification ordinance, declaring the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 ”null, void, and no law,”
defying Congress to execute them there, and agreeing, upon the first use of force for this purpose, to form a separate government.
This was the quintessence of folly even had good theory been behind it.
The tone of the proceeding was too hasty and peremptory. The decided turn of public opinion and of congressional action in favor of large reduction in duties was ignored. But the theory appealed to was clearly wrong, and along with its advocates was sure to be reprobated by the nation. A precious opportunity effectively to redress the evil complained of was wantonly thrown away. Worst of all, from a tactical point of view, South Carolina had miscalculated the spirit of President Jackson. At the dinner referred to, his toast had been the memorable words: ”Our Federal Union; it must be preserved.” Men now saw that Old Hickory was in earnest. General Scott, with troops and wars.h.i.+ps, was ordered to Charleston.
The nullifiers receded, a course made easier by Clay's ”compromise tariff” of 1833, gradually reducing duties for the next ten years, and enlarging the free list. From all duties of over twenty per cent. by the act of 1832, one-tenth of the excess was to be stricken off on September 30, 1835, and another tenth every other year till 1841. Then one-half the excess remaining was to fall, and in 1842 the rest, so that the end of the last named year should find no duty over twenty per cent.
This episode, threatening as it was for a time, drew in its train results the most happy, revealing with unprecedented vividness to most, both the original nature of the Const.i.tution as not a compact, and also the might which national sentiment had attained since the War of 1812.
The doctrine of state rights was seen to have gradually lost, over the greater part of the country, all its old vitality. Nearly every State Legislature condemned the South Carolina pretensions, Democrats as hearty in this as Whigs. Jackson's proclamation against them--impressive and unanswerable--ran thus: ”The Const.i.tution of the United States forms a government, not a league; and whether it be formed by compact between the States, or in any other manner, its character is the same ... . I consider the power to annul a law of the United States incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Const.i.tution, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed... . Our Const.i.tution does not contain the absurdity of giving power to make laws, and another power to resist them. To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union is to say that the United States are not a nation.”
[Ill.u.s.tration: Small room with a desk, fireplace, and bookshelf.]
Calhoun's Library and Office.
The congressional debates which the nullification question evoked, among the ablest in our parliamentary history, held the like high national tenor. Calhoun's idea, though advocated by him with consummate skill, was shown to be wholly chimerical. The doughty South Carolinian, from this moment a waning force in American politics, was supported by Hayne almost alone, the arguments of both melting into air before Webster's masterful handling of const.i.tutional history and law. Not questioning the right of revolution, admitting the general government to be one of ”strictly limited,” even of ”enumerated, specified, and particularized powers,” the Ma.s.sachusetts orator made it convincingly apparent that the Calhoun programme could lead to nothing but anarchy. It was seen that general and state governments emanate from the people with equal immediacy, and that the language of the clause, ”the Const.i.tution and the laws of the United States made in pursuance thereof” are ”the supreme law of the land, anything in the const.i.tution or laws of any State to the contrary notwithstanding,” means precisely what it says. To this language little attention had apparently been paid till this time.
CHAPTER V.
MINOR PUBLIC QUESTIONS OF JACKSON'S ”REIGN”
[1828]
Andrew Jackson was born March 15, 1767. His parents had come from Carrick-fergus, Ireland, two years before. He was without any education worthy the name. As a boy, he went into the War for Independence, and was for a time a British prisoner. He studied law in North Carolina, moved west, and began legal practice at Nashville. He was one of the framers of the Tennessee const.i.tution in 1796. In 1797 he was a senator from that State, and subsequently he was a judge on its supreme bench.
His exploits in the Creek War, the War of 1812, and the Seminole War are already familiar. They had brought him so prominently and favorably before the country that in 1824 his vote, both popular and electoral, was larger than that of any other candidate. As we have seen, he himself and mult.i.tudes throughout the country thought him wronged by the election over him of John Quincy Adams. This contributed largely to his popularity later, and in 1828 he was elected by a popular vote of 647,231, against 509,097 for Adams. Four years later he was reelected against Clay by a still larger majority. Nor did his popularity to any extent wane during his double administration, notwithstanding his many violent and indiscreet acts as President.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Portrait.]
Andrew Jackson. From a photograph by Brady.
Much of Jackson's arbitrariness sprung from a foolish whim of his, taking his election as equivalent to the enactment of all his peculiar ideas into law. Ours is a government of the people, he said; the people had spoken in his election, and had willed so and so. Woe to any senator or representative who opposed! This was, of course, to mistake entirely the nature of const.i.tutional government.
After all, Jackson was by no means the ignorant and pa.s.sionate old man, controlled in everything by Van Buren, that many people, especially in New England, have been accustomed to think him. Illiterate he certainly was, though Adams exaggerated in calling him ”a barbarian who could not write a sentence of grammar and could hardly spell his own name.” He was never popular in the federalist section of the Union. Yet with all his mistakes and self-will, often inexcusable, he was one of the most patriotic and clear-headed men who ever administered a government. If he resorted to unheard-of methods within the law, very careful was he never to transgress the law.
The most just criticism of Jackson in his time and later related to the civil service. It was during his administration that the cry, ”turn the rascals out,” first arose, and it is well known that, adopting the policy of New York and Pennsylvania politicians in vogue since 1800, he made nearly a clean sweep of his political opponents from the offices at his disposal. This was the more shameful from being so in contrast with the policy of preceding presidents. Was.h.i.+ngton removed but two men from office, one of these a defaulter; Adams ten, one of these also a defaulter; Jefferson but thirty-nine; Madison five, three of them defaulters; and Monroe nine. The younger Adams removed but two, both of them for cause.
[1830]