PERIOD II.

WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY

CONTROVERSY

1814-1840

CHAPTER I.

THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION

THE term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the bloody conflict of the Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic Party.

The republican predominance after 1800, so complete, bidding so fair to be permanent, drew all the more fickle Federalists speedily to that side. Since it was evident that the new party was

quite as national in spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives, including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era of good feeling.'

But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly homogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal improvements régime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay, Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported him.

But to drive home fatally the wedge between "democratic" and "national" Republicans, required Jackson's quarrel with Adams and Clay in 1825, when, the election being thrown into the House, although Jackson had ninety-nine electoral votes to Adams's eighty-four, Crawford's fortyone, and Clay's thirty-seven, Clay's supporters,

by a "corrupt bargain," as Old Hickory alleged, voted for Adams and made him President. Hickory's idea-an untenable one-was that the House was bound to elect according to the tenor of the popular and the electoral vote. After all this, however, so potent the charm of the old party, the avowal of a purpose to build up a new one did not work well, Clay polling in 1832 hardly half the electoral vote of Adams in 1828. This democratic gain was partly owing, it is true, to Jackson's popularity, to the belief that he had been wronged in 1825, and to the widening of the franchise which had long been going on in the nation. Calhoun's election as Vice-President in 1828, by a large majority, shows that party crystallization was then far from complete. From about 1834, the new political body thus gradually evolved was regularly called the Whigs, though the name had been heard ever since 1825.

The doctrines characteristic of Whiggism were chiefly five:

I. Broad Construction of the Constitution. This has been sufficiently explained in the chapter on Federalism and Anti-Federalism, and need not be dwelt upon. The whig attitude upon it appears in all that follows.

II. The Bank. The First United States Bank had perished by the expiration of its charter in 1811. It had been very useful, indeed almost indispensable, in managing the national finances, and its decease, with the consequent financial disorder, was a most terrible drawback in the war. Re-charter was, however, by a very small majority,

refused. The evils flowing from this perverse step manifesting themselves day by day, a new Bank of the United States, modelled closely after the first, was chartered on April 10, 1816, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster being its chief champions. Republican opponents, Madison among them, were brought around by the plea that war had proved a national bank a necessary and hence a constitutional helper of the Government in its appointed work.

In the management of this second bank there were disorder and dishonesty, which greatly limited its usefulness. This, notwithstanding, was considerable. The credit of the nation was restored and its treasury resumed specie payments. But confidence in the institution was shaken. We shall see how it met with President Jackson's 'opposition on every possible occasion. In 1832 he vetoed a bill for the renewal of its charter, to expire in 1836, and in 1833 caused all the Government's deposits in it, amounting to ten million dollars, to be removed. These blows were fatal to the bank, though it secured a charter from Pennsylvania and existed, languishing, till 1839.

III. The Tariff. Until the war of 1812 the main purpose of our tariff policy had been revenue, with protection only as an incident. During the war manufacturing became largely developed, partly through our own embargo, partly through the armed hostilities. Manufacture had grown to be an extensive interest, comparing in importance with agriculture and commerce. Therefore, in the new tariff of 1816, the old relation was reversed, protection being made the main aim and revenue

the incident. It is curious to note that this first protective tariff was championed and passed by the Republicans and bitterly opposed by the Federalists and incipient Whigs. Webster argued and inveighed vehemently against it, appealing to the curse of commercial restriction and of governmental interference with trade, and to the low character of manufacturing populations.

But very soon the tables were turned: the Whigs became the high-tariff party, the Democrats more and more opposing this policy in favor of a low or a revenue tariff. It should be marked that even now the idea of protection in its modern form was not the only one which went to make a high tariff popular. There were, besides, the wish to be prepared for war by the home production of war material, and also the spirit of commercial retortion, paying back in her own coin England's burdensome tax upon our exports to her shores.

IV. Land. What may not improperly be styled the whig land policy sprung from the whig sentiment for large customs duties. Cheap public lands, offering each poor man a home for the taking, constantly tended to neutralize the effect of duties, by raising wages in the manufacturing sections, people needing a goodly bribe to enter mills in the East when an abundant living was theirs without money and without price on removing west. As a rule, therefore, though this question did not divide the two parties so crisply as the others, the Whigs opposed the free sale of government land, while the Democrats favored that policy. In spite of this, however, eastern people who moved