CHAPTER XX

SECTIONALISM AND POLITICAL PARTIES, 1816-1828

THE CONFLICT OF SECTIONAL INTERESTS

The West was not merely a bone of contention between the older sections; its rapid growth soon made it a third section comparable in population and importance with the groups of states on the Atlantic. By the census of 1790 the population of the country was somewhat less than four millions, and of these only one person in fifteen dwelt west of the mountains. By 1830, however, six out of every fifteen of the inhabitants were west of the Alleghenies, and the population of the new section alone exceeded five millions. As measured by increase in population the West had grown in importance six times as fast as the rest of the country.

The great shift westward caused a radical readjustment of the nation's life. As circumstances connected with the War had impaired the shipping interest and stimulated the growth of manufactures, so now the farming, manufacturing, and planting interests had to adjust themselves to the changing geographical basis. A recent writer has said that the "improvement in the economic condition of the West which set in about the time of the second war with England, and which in a decade or two entirely changed the relation of that region to the rest of the country," is "the most important event in our economic history during the first half of the nineteenth century.'

The West was predominantly agricultural. The abundance of cheap land was the lure which drew to it the great majority of its inhabitants. The first comers had found themselves cut off from the rest of the world by stretches of unpeopled forest and mountain. Their isolation was even greater than that of the back-country folk of the coast states, and the privations and perils of frontier life were intensified. Theirs was the task of

building society from its very foundation stones. Thrown upon their own resources, their first productive efforts were devoted to securing the rudest necessities of existence.

But with astonishing rapidity the clearing about the pioneer's cabin widened, and the huts which clustered here and there upon the river banks grew into towns. The very isolation of the West acted like a duty on imports; the difficulty of intercourse with the remote East was a stimulus and protection to the manufactures which it was compelled to set up for itself. By the beginning of the War of 1812 a few factories were appearing at Pittsburgh, Steubenville, Cincinnati, and Louisville. These led the people to dream of a self-sufficing economic province, à western world, maintained by exchange between town and country, the farmer supplying the wants of the townsman in the way of food and receiving in return the products of the crafts

man's art.

But the local market was not sufficient to absorb all of the surplus yield of the fields. The growth of manufactures did not keep pace with that of agriculture, and it became the chief problem of the farmer to find an adequate market. The quest for a market broke down the provincialism of the West and brought it into closer relations with other sections and countries. From the days of the first settlements in the Ohio Valley some of the grain and meat of Kentucky and Tennessee found an outlet down the Mississippi, in spite of Spanish policy, to the West Indies and Europe. Western grain was also converted into whisky for easy carriage over the mountains to the eastern seaboard. Cattle and hogs, too, were driven in increasing numbers across the mountains as time passed. The expansion of the plantation area in the South enlarged the market for the western farmer.

The difficulties of transportation were a great impediment to all intercourse, and the western states were for a long time too poor to shoulder the financial burden of improving the streams or building roads. They looked to the Federal Government as the only agency by which the country could be provided with the roads and canals which were essential to their progress and to the general welfare.

Unfortunately the period of rapid expansion of western agriculture coincided with years of increasing production in Europe.

The end of the wars allowed soldiers by thousands to resume their normal occupation as tillers of the soil. The supply of farm produce in the world market increased much more rapidly than the demand for it, and prices fell. European governments took pains to protect their own agriculture. For example, England revived her Corn Laws, which had been relaxed during the war period. These forbade the importation of foreign grain except when the price of the domestic crop reached an abnormal height. Under these conditions American agriculture suffered severely from overproduction and low prices during the years around 1820. When the western farmers learned the causes of the hard times, they began to believe that a protective tariff would help them, on the theory that if a larger proportion of the people were encouraged to engage in manufacturing and a smaller part in agriculture, the farmer would find a profitable home market in supplying the needs of the manufacturing population. "Agriculture has been pursued to its acme," runs the comment of a western editor. "The number employed in it is disproportionate to that of the mechanical branch - and the true interest of the whole community will be promoted by producing an equilibrium between them."

The growth of the West was a serious matter for the eastern states. While its population rose by leaps and bounds, that of the old states, except those which, like New York and Pennsylvania, had broad unsettled spaces within their limits, came almost to a standstill. New England, which had formerly felt concern about the West for political reasons, now grew anxious on economic grounds. In 1817 Governor Wolcott, of Connecticut, recommended that the legislature investigate the causes of the "Ohio fever," as by far the most important subject that could engage its attention. Southern legislatures also made investigations, seeking means of counteracting the attractions of the newer regions. Some of them proposed to improve the facilities for marketing the produce of their own inland counties by constructing roads and other means of transportation.

Partly because it would be one way of inducing their people to remain at home several of the old states amended their consti tutions or adopted new ones extending the suffrage. Maryland and South Carolina led in this democratizing movement, en

franchising all adult white male citizens by constitutional changes in 1810. Connecticut took a similar step in the constitution of 1818, which replaced her old colonial charter, and Massachusetts (1821) and New York (1826) followed. Rhode Island framed a constitution to supersede her charter, but it was rejected by the voters (1824). Virginia extended the franchise somewhat in 1830, but did not adopt full white manhood suffrage.

The depression of the commerce and agriculture of the states of the northern seaboard made them more and more dependent for their prosperity upon the new manufacturing industries. These looked hopefully to the West and South for their markets, and demanded a continuance of the protective system to give them the advantage over foreign competitors in the home market. The hard times following 1819 especially were years when the manufacturers were clamorous for additional protection. The demands of the manufacturer and farmer were kindred in the matter of the tariff, and brought the northeastern states into economic alliance with the Northwest. The Southwest, on the contrary, tended towards the plantation system too strongly to be attracted into this combination.

The interests of the eastern factory owners and the western farmers were not entirely in harmony. The westward movement made labor scarce and wages high, and the abundance of land open to settlement was looked upon as a retarding factor in the growth of manufactures. Men whose capital was invested in factories were therefore tempted to seek legislation to restrict sales of public lands, a desire with which the frontier population was not at all in sympathy.

The desire of the West for improved means of transportation was seconded by the seaboard cities of the middle states. New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore foresaw a profitable commerce in handling the export business of the interior, and the policy of federal internal improvements received hearty support in the neighborhood of these cities. The Erie Canal enriched New York, which soon outstripped the other coast towns in population, and Pennsylvania was led, in emulation, to construct a competing route across the Alleghenies, consisting partly of canals and partly of roads. Baltimore agitated the completion of the Cumberland Road and projected a Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.

But New England was indifferent. No transportation route was likely to bring freight to her ports from beyond the Hudson.

Even Norfolk and southeastern Virginia were interested for a time in a James River Canal project, but most of the old South had nothing to gain from internal improvements except of a purely local character. The high Appalachians effectually fenced off the coast of the Carolinas from the great central valley of the continent until the era of the railroads dawned. Charleston then discovered her interest in a rail connection with the cities of the Ohio Valley. During the twenties, however, the states of the southern seaboard were the seat of opposition to federal internal improvements, which would mean the expenditure of public funds on works from which they would derive little or no profit.

The old planting states felt the full force of the competition of the fresh, cheap lands opened up as the area of cotton cultivation expanded across the Gulf plains. The lowering of the cost of producing cotton on the extremely fertile alluvial lands newly opened made the crop unprofitable on the thin soil of many a Carolina plantation, and the owners had no such alternative as the people of the maritime states of the North. The cotton planters devoted their energies more and more to the production of their one crop. All that they produced went to market elsewhere, and all that they consumed came from without in the course of direct or indirect exchange.

Many planters neglected even to raise hay for their animals or grain for their families and slaves, deeming it better economy to supply all of the needs of the plantation from the proceeds of the sale of their staple crop. Their political economy was consequently that of "free trade" and laissez faire. Manufactures came most cheaply from England, where most of the cotton was sold. Any interference with this intercourse, such as a duty for the encouragement of domestic manufactures, increased the price of what the planter got, whether he bought imported or domestic goods. The steady demand for cotton abroad, moreover, left him little motive for creating a home market, such as the farmer needed.

The interests of North, South, and West, or to put it in economic instead of geographical terms, the interests of the manu