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after the second election of Washington, Jefferson retired from the Cabinet. Hamilton followed his example in 1795. The second Presidential election occurred in 1792, and Washington received all the votes of the electors. Jefferson, just ready to leave the Cabinet and politically opposed to him, urged his election, saying, "North and South will hang together

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if they have him to hang on," and Hamilton, of the opposite party, could use no stronger language, while all patriots shrank from the consequences that they foresaw would ensue if he declined to accept the leadership again. The situation of affairs demanded the exercise of all his wisdom.

At home, party spirit, which in the succeeding

THE TARIFF AND SLAVERY.

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Presidential campaigns was to break out in its fiercest form, was daily increasing in intensity. The tariff divided the North and the South, for the one, relying on its manufactures, shipping and commerce, wished an amount of protection that the other, largely dependent upon agriculture, did not demand. The North also favored the abolition of the slave trade by act of Congress, and the South, though in its State Legislatures moving toward this end, did not approve federal interference with the institution. The subject of the action of Congress regarding slavery in the Territories began to constitute a bone of contention.* Jefferson had proposed the exclusion of slavery from the Northwestern Territory,† and that point had been settled, but while the North claimed that this action formed a precedent to be followed, the South thought otherwise, and when "the Territory south of the Ohio" was organized, in 1790, it was with the agree

* On the twelfth of February, 1793, in order to carry into effect the clauses in Article IV. of the Constitution, Congress passed a law entitled 66 'an act respecting fugitives from justice, and persons escaping from the service of their masters.' This was not the first fugitive slave law of the country, though from the fact that the records of the New England Confederacy lay in manuscript until 1794, when portions were printed by Ebenezer Hazard, it seems not to have been remembered that a similar provision was made in the Articles of Confederation of 1643. This applied, of course, to the New England Colonies only, but by a treaty made by them with Peter Stuyvesant, Governor of the New Netherlands, in 1650, it was extended to that Colony, and it is said that, on application, a slave who had escaped to New England was returned to a master living still further southward. See Mr. Webster's letter of May 15th, 1850, to Edward S. Rand, and other citizens of Newburyport, Mass.

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† Jefferson claimed that “the prohibition of the further importation of slaves was one of the important measures for which his influence was responsible.

ment that Congress should not make any regulations tending to the emancipation of slaves.

An Indian war of great violence broke out in 1790, and was not quelled until five years of bloodshed had wasted the region west of the Ohio. The Indians fought to regain territory which had been ceded to the United States, and at the close of the war Congress seemed to acknowledge that the whites had been the aggressors, for it gave the tribes that were conquered indemnities on their retiring further west, and for the first time, it took steps for the improvement of the Indians, and their protection from unscrupulous traders. Washington said that experiment had not diminished hopes for their elevation, and that the accomplishment of their civilization. would "reflect undecaying lustre on our national character, and administer the most grateful consolation that virtuous minds can know." In this war Colonel Hardin had circumvented the savages, General Harmer had been foiled, and General Saint Clair had been surprised, and his forces utterly routed, before the whites under "mad Anthony" Wayne, had been able to bring the Indians to terms.

If Washington was embarrassed by the state of affairs at home, much more was his task difficult when he came to contemplate the foreign relations of the government. The French revolution broke out at the opening of his administration, and it was natural that the sympathies of the nation should be enlisted by the exciting scenes among a people which had so warmly seconded the efforts against Great Britain, especially when they saw among the leaders of the movement the man who had stood at the side of

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