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itself impoverished to enrich the North by this system; and certainly an unexpected result had been seen in these two sections. In the colonial state the Southern were the richer part of the colonies, and they expected to do well in a state of independence. But in the first half century after independence this expectation was reversed. The wealth of the North was enormously aggrandized; that of the South had declined. Northern towns had become great cities, Southern cities had decayed or become stationary; and Charleston, the principal port of the South, was less considerable than before the Revolution. The North became a moneylender to the South, and Southern citizens made pilgrimages to Northern cities to raise money upon their patrimonial estates.

The Southern States attributed this result to the action of the Federal Government-its double action of levying revenue upon the industry of one section of the Union and expending it in another-and especially to its protective tariffs."

Again, contrasting the condition of the South then with what it had been at the Revolutionary period, the same Senator remarked: "It is a tradition of the colonies that the South had been the seat of wealth and happiness, of power and opulence; that a rich population covered the land, dispensing a baronial hospitality, and diffusing the felicity which themselves enjoyed; that all was life, and joy, and affluence then. And this tradition was not without similitude to the reality, as this writer can testify; for he was old enough to have seen (after the Revolution) the still surviving state of Southern colonial manners, when no traveller was allowed to go to a tavern, but was handed over from family to family through entire States; when holidays were days of festivity and expectation long prepared for, and celebrated by master and slave with music and feasting, and great concourse of friends and relations; when gold was kept in chests, after the downfall of Continental paper, and weighed in scales, and lent to neighbours for short terms without note, interest, witness, or security; and when petty litigation was at so low an ebb that it required a fine of forty pounds of tobacco to make a man serve as constable. The reverse of all this was now seen and felt-not to the whole extent which fancy or policy painted, but to extent enough to constitute a reverse, and to make a contrast, and to excite the regrets which the memory of past joys never fails to awaken."

The early history of the tariff makes a plain exhibition of the stark outrage perpetrated by it upon the Southern States. The measure of 1816 had originated in the necessities of a public revenue-for the war commenced against England four years before had imposed a debt upon the United States of one hundred and thirty millions of dollars. It was proposed to introduce into this tariff the incidental feature of "protection;" and it was argued that certain home manufactures had sprung up

HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN TARIFFS.

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during the exigencies of the war, which were useful and deserving, and that they were likely to lapse under the sudden return of peace and to sink under foreign competition. A demand so moderate and ingenious the South was not disposed to resist. Indeed, it was recommended by John C. Calhoun himself, who voted for the bill of 1816. But the danger was in the precedent. The principle of protection once admitted maintained its hold and enlarged its demands; it was successively carried farther in the tariffs of 1820, '24, and '28. And in 1831, when it was shown by figures in Congress that the financial exigencies that had first called the tariff into existence had completely passed away, and that the government was, in fact, collecting about twice as much revenue as its usual expenditures required, the North still held to its demands for protection, and strenuously resisted any repeal or reduction of the existing tariff.

The demand of the South at this time, so ably enforced by Calhoun, for the repeal of the tariff, was recommended by the most obvious justice and the plainest prudence. It was shown that the public debt had been so far diminished as to render it certain that, at the existing rate of revenue, in three years the last dollar would be paid, and after three years there would be an annual surplus in the treasury of twelve or thirteen millions. But the North was insensible to these arguments, and brazen in its demands. The result of this celebrated controversy, which shook the Union to its foundations, was a compromise or a modification of the tariff, in which however enough was saved of the protective principle to satisfy for a time the rapacity of the North, and that through the demagogical exertions of Henry Clay of Kentucky, who courted Northern popularity, and enjoyed in Northern cities indecent feasts and triumphs for his infidelity to his section.

But the tariff of 1833 was a deceitful compromise, and its terms were never intended by the North to be a final settlement of the question. In 1842 the settlement was repudiated, and the duties on manufactures again advanced. From that time until the period of Disunion the fiscal system of the United States was persistently protective; the South continued to decline; she had no large manufactures, no great cities, no shipping interests; and although the agricultural productions of the South were the basis of the foreign commerce of the United States, yet Southern cities did not carry it on.

Nor was the tariff the only measure of Northern aggrandizement in the Union. Besides manufactures, the North had another great interest in navigation. A system of high differential duties gave protection to it; and this, of course, bore with peculiar hardship on the Southern States, whose commodities were thus burdened by a new weight put upon them by the hand of the General Government. In tariffs, in pensions, in fishing

bounties, in tonnage duties, in every measure that the ingenuity of avarice could devise, the North exacted from the South a tribute, which it could only pay at the expense and in the character of an inferiour in the Union.

But in opposition to this view of the helplessness of the South and her inability to resist the exactions of the North, it may be said that the South had an important political alliance in the North, that she was aided there by the Democratic party, and that she thus held the reins of government during the greater portion of the time the tariffs alleged to be so injurious to her interests existed. And here we touch a remarkable fact in American politics. It is true that a large portion of the Democratic party resided in the North, and that many of the active politicians there pretended to give in their adhesion to the States Rights school of politics. But this Democratic alliance with the South was one only for party purposes. It was extravagant of professions, but it carefully avoided trials of its fidelity; it was selfish, cunning, and educated in perfidy. It was a deceitful combination for party purposes, and never withstood the test of a practical question. The Northern Democrat was always ready to contend against the Whig, but never against his own pocket, and the peculiar interests of his section. The moment economical questions arose in Congress, the Northern Democrat was on the side of Northern interests, and the Southern ranks, very imposing on party questions, broke into a scene of mutiny and desertion. It was indeed the weak confidence which the South reposed in the Democratic party of the North that more than once betrayed it on the very brink of the greatest issues in the country, and did more perhaps to put it at disadvantage in the Union than the party of open opposition.

It was through such a train of legislation as we have briefly described that the South rapidly declined in the Union. By the force of a numerical majority—a thing opposed to the American system, properly understood-a Union, intended to be one of mutual benefits, was made conduit of wealth and power to the North, while it drained the South of nearly every element of material prosperity.

It is true that the numerical majority of the North the South held long in check by superior and consummate political skill. Party compli cations were thrown around the Sectional Animosity. But it was easy to see that some time or other that animosity would break the web of party; and that whenever on sectional questions the North chose to act in a mass, its power would be irresistible, and that no resource would be left for the South than to remain helpless and at mercy in the Union or to essay a new political destiny. We shall see that in the year 1860 the North did choose to act in a mass, and that the South was thus and then irresistibly impelled to the experiment of Disunion.

CHAPTER IV.

THE SECTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM.-HOW DISTURBED IN 1820.-CONTEST ON THE ADMISSION OF TEXAS.-COMPROMISE MEASURES OF 1850.-DECLARATION OF A "FINALITY."

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PRESIDENT PIERCE'S ADMINISTRATION.—THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL.-REPEAL OF THE
MISSOURI COMPROMISE."-ORIGIN OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY IN THE NORTH.-COM-
POSITION AND CHARACTER OF THIS PARTY.-AMAZING PROGRESS OF THE ANTI-SLAVERY
SENTIMENT IN THE NORTH.-NEW INTERPRETATION OF THE KANSAS-NEBRASKA BILL BY
SENATOR DOUGLAS.-INTENDED TO COURT THE ANTI-SLAVERY SENTIMENT.-DOCTRINE
OF 66
NON-INTERVENTION IN THE TERRITORIES.-THE DRED SCOTT DECISION."-THE
KANSAS CONTROVERSY. THE LECOMPTON CONVENTION.-THE TOPEKA CONSTITUTION.
-PRESIDENT BUCHANAN'S POSITION AND ARGUMENTS.-OPPOSITION OF SENATOR
DOUGLAS.HIS INSINCERITY.-THE NORTHERN DEMOCRATIO PARTY DEMORALIZED
THE SLAVERY QUESTION.-DOUGLAS' DOCTRINE OF POPULAR SOVEREIGNTY."—" A SHORT
CUT TO ALL THE ENDS OF BLACK REPUBLICANISM."-DOUGLAS AS A DEMAGOGUE.—the
TRUE ISSUES IN THE KANSAS CONTROVERSY.-IMPORTANT PASSAGES IN THE CONGRES-
SIONAL DEBATE.—SETTLEMENT OF THE KANSAS QUESTION.—DOUGLAS' FOUNDATION OF
A
NEW PARTY.-HIS DEMAGOGICAL APPEALS.-THE TRUE SITUATION.-LOSS OF THE

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SECTIONAL EQUILIBRIUM.-SERIOUS TEMPER OF THE SOUTH.-THE JOHN BROWN RAID.-IDENTITY OF JOHN BROWN'S "PROVISIONAL CONSTITUTION AND ORDINANCES 99 WITH THE SUBSEQUENT POLICY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY.-CURIOUS FORESHADOW OF SOUTHERN SUBJUGATION. THE DESCENT ON HARPER'S FERRY.-CAPTURE AND EXECUTION OF BROWN. HIS DECLARATION.--NORTHERN SYMPATHY WITH HIM.-ALARMING TENDENCY OF THE REPUBLICAN PARTY TO THE ULTRA ABOLITION SCHOOL.-' THIE HELPER BOOK."—SENTIMENTS OF SIXTY-EIGHT NORTHERN CONGRESSMEN. THE CONCEIT AND INSOLENCE OF THE NORTH.-AFFECTATION OF REPUBLICANS THAT THE UNION WAS A CONCESSION TO THE SOUTH.-HYPOCRISY OF THIS PARTY.-INDICATIONS OF THE COMING CATASTROPHE OF DISUNION. THE PRESIDENTIAL CANVASS OF 1860.-DECLARATIONS OF THE DEMOCRATIO PARTY.—THE CHARLESTON CONVENTION.-SECESSION OF THE SOUTHERN DELEGATES.—THE DIFFERENT PRESIDENTIAL TICKETS.-ELECTION OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN.—ANALYSIS OF THE VOTE.-HOW HIS ELECTION WAS A SECTIONAL TRIUMPH. OMINOUS IMPORTANCE OF IT IN THAT VIEW.-ARGUMENTS FOR SUSTAINING LINCOLN'S ELECTION. SEWARD'S ARGUMENT IN THE SENATE.-LINCOLN'S ELECTION A GEOGRAPHICAL ONE. HOW THERE WAS NO LONGER PROTECTION FOR THE SOUTH IN THE UNION. THE ANTI-SLAVERY POWER COMPACT AND INVINCIBLE.-ANOTHER APOLOGY FOR LINCOLN'S ELECTION.-FALLACY OF REGARDING IT AS A TRANSFER OF THE ADMINISTRATION IN EQUAL CIRCUMSTANCES FROM THE SOUTH TO THE NORTH.-HOW THE SOUTH

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HAD USED ITS LEASE OF POLITICAL POWER.—SENATOR HAMMOND'S TRIBUTE.-POWER IN THE HANDS OF THE NORTH EQUIVALENT TO SECTIONAL DESPOTISM.-THE NORTH

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THE wisest statesmen of America were convinced that the true and intelligent means of continuing the Union was to preserve the sectional equilibrium, and to keep a balance of power between North and South. That equilibrium had been violently disturbed, in 1820, at the time of the Missouri Compromise. The relative representations of the North and South in the United States Senate were then so evenly balanced that it came to be decisive of a continuance of political power in the South whether Missouri should be an addition to her ranks or to those of her adversary. The contest ended, immediately, in favour of the South; but not without involving a measure of proscription against slavery.

Another struggle for political power between the two sections occurred on the admission of Texas. The South gained another State. But the acquisition of Texas brought on the war with Mexico; and an enormous addition to Northern territory became rapidly peopled with a population allured from every quarter of the globe.

On the admission of California into the Union, the South was persuaded to let her come in with an anti-slavery Constitution for the wretched compensation of a reënactment of the fugitive slave law, and some other paltry measures. The cry was raised that the Union was in danger. The appeals urged under this cry had the usual effect of reconciling the South to the sacrifice required of her, and embarrassed anything like resistance on the part of her representatives in Congress to the compromise measures of 1850. South Carolina threatened secession; but the other Southern States were not prepared to respond to the bold and adventurous initiative of Southern independence. But it should be stated that the other States of the South, in agreeing to what was called, in severe irony, the Compromise of 1850, declared that it was the last concession. they would make to the North; that they took it as a "finality," and that the slavery question was thereafter to be excluded from the pale of Federal discussion.

In 1852 Franklin Pierce was elected President of the United States. He was a favourite of the State Rights Democracy of the South; and it was hoped that under his administration the compromise measures of 1850 would indeed be realized as a "finality," and the country be put upon a career of constitutional and peaceful rule. But a new and violent agitation was to spring up in the first session of the first Congress under his administration.

The Territory of Nebraska had applied for admission into the Union. Mr. Stephen A. Douglas, Senator from Illinois, reported from the Com

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