The tariff underwent in fact ten or twelve changes Chap. I. during the forty years preceding 1860, not in one uniform direction, the planting and maritime States fighting against the protective system with varying success, and not with uniform consistency. In 1832 the total revenue from import duties had risen to nearly 50 per cent. of the aggregate value of the goods subject to duty; and it was in that year that South Carolina broke into open resistance, which was partly overcome by the resolute firmness of President Jackson, partly bought off by the large prospective reductions made in the Compromise Tariff of Mr. Clay. The scale had been raised in 1842; lowered, on the whole, in 1846, when the ad valorem principle was made general; and lowered again considerably in 1857. The duties, however, on iron, woollen, and manufactured cotton goods, though not so high as formerly, were still protective. Sugar was protected for the benefit of Louisiana, as iron was for that of Pennsylvania, lead for Missouri, and hemp for Kentucky. Tea and coffee had long been admitted. duty free. Of the changes made by the Morrill Tariff I do not speak; they did not become law until after the Secession, and have therefore no place among its causes or its apologies.1

1 In the foregoing account of the grievances of the South, and of the state of feeling there, I have relied on speeches delivered by prominent Southerners in Congress and elsewhere before the Secession, and on the manifestoes published afterwards.

CHAPTER II.

Parties in the United States.-The Disorganizing Influence of the Slavery Question. Elections to the Presidency from 1848 to 1860 -Election of President Lincoln.-Constitutional and Moral Aspects of sion."

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IN America, as in England, that lower form of public spirit which we call the spirit of party-low sometimes to the verge of baseness, but useful as an antidote to mere selfishness, laziness, and indecision, and as an engine for working out great political aimshas never been wanting; and there, as here, the need for the stimulant has been strengthened by habit. The general cleavage, if I may so say, of party organization has been determined by the structure of the Republic itself, which in its earlier form was a mere federation or perpetual league of independent communities, and still has imbedded in it a substantial element of federalism. Under such a Constitution, wherever it exists, there will always be persons inclined to strengthen the General Government, and side with it against the Local Governments as often as the limits of its authority are in question, and other persons whom feeling or opinion lead the opposite way. Two parties, therefore, have always divided the American commonwealth; they were in existence, indeed, before the Constitution was framed, and it was shaped by their opposing influences. The great States of Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Massachusetts, with the Carolinas and Georgia, then formed the Union party, which was kept in check by a minority possessing less than half their population and not a

fourth of their area, and composed of New York, New Chap. II. Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware. They have at different times borne various names, more or less arbitrarily chosen, and only expressing, as it seems, the pretensions of each to be the true representatives of the founders of the commonwealth; the Democrats were once Republicans; the Republicans of to-day are successors of the Whigs, who had originally called themselves Federalists. But these parties, each carefully disciplined, and exercised, by the recurrence of elections of all kinds at very short intervals, in frequent trials of strength, have not in reality had much to fight about beyond the disposal of offices and emoluments; for the Constitution, working with a smoothness which does honour to the sagacity of its framers, has given rise in practice to few questions on which they could directly disagree. They have thrown their strength, therefore, into other questions, often local and temporary; and they have been themselves split and traversed irregularly by subdivisions, which perplex the observer by their number and apparent capriciousness. To these circumstances to a political activity which, healthy and bracing as it is, may be called excessive compared with the objects on which it spends itself-and to the vastness of the field over which every great canvass must extend, the reproach of shiftiness, which Americans themselves are apt to level at their foremost politicians, is probably due. At every election to the President's chair many different interests have to be gained, and jarring opinions harmonized by judicious management; new "platforms," or confessions of faith, have to be constructed; and the "planking" of these fabrics-that is, the choice and arrangement of the party tenets to be insisted on-is often a pattern of ingenuity and skill.

The Democratic party, which soon came to have its chief seat in the Southern States, but had a large organization everywhere and was especially strong in

D

Chap. II. New York, has usually been the more powerful of the two. Its creed was the more popular; in the foreign politics of the Union it took the more forward part; and it has been the constant champion of annexations, which are always popular. It had sided on the whole steadily enough with the South, had opposed the claim advanced on behalf of Congress to prohibit slavery in the Territories, and been warmly hostile to Abolitionism, following in these respects the bias impressed on it by its cardinal tenet, but yielding also to its party attachments and its anxiety to secure the Southern vote for party ends.

As for the Whigs, they had undergone frequent and severe reverses. More than once they had been utterly disorganized. They had resisted the extension of slavery, but not with unwavering firmness, disliking it as a body, but caring above all things for the strength and stability of the Union. Their greatest orator, Daniel Webster, had late in life employed his splendid eloquence in advocating the Compromise of 1850, and had strenuously urged the duty of enforcing with alacrity the Fugitive Slave Law. Although the strength of the party lay in the North and West, it had many adherents in the South. Their aid had carried the election of Harrison and Tyler in 1840, and of General Taylor in 1848; and Harrison, a Virginian born though resident in the North, had, as Governor of the Indiana Territory, supported the petition of the earlier settlers to be allowed to import slaves into that region. Taylor, a Louisiana man and himself a slaveholder, had earned his popularity by driving the Mexicans out of Texas and winning a new dominion for slavery.

Long before 1860, the advance of the slavery question, its growing magnitude and trenchant edge, had begun to threaten the demolition of both the great parties. At the election of 1848, a considerable body of Whigs and Democrats deserted their respective flags and appeared in the field under the name of Free-soilers,

with candidates of their own. At Mr. Pierce's election Chap. II. in 1852, the Free-soil vote sunk from 291,342 to 155,825; most of the seceding Democrats had been induced to return to their standard, and among the managers of the Whig party the predominant feeling was anxiety for peace. But in 1856 a great change had come. It had been discovered that the Compromise measures of 1850, the maintenance of which had formed a "plank" in the Whig platform of 1852, were regarded by the Slave States as having cancelled the older Compromise of 1820. The struggle for Kansas and Nebraska had begun; and in the spring of the year an insulting speech, as it was thought, delivered by a prominent Free-soiler, Mr. Sumner, had been resented by a violent assault within the walls of the Senate. The Whig party broke and disappeared; a large fragment joined the Free-soilers and chose the title of Republicans; the remainder clung still to a middle course, endeavoured to put the question of slavery aside, and called themselves "Americans," to denote that they had no political creed beyond the duty of upholding the laws and Constitution of the Union. This insured the success of the Democrat, but it did not escape observation that the votes recorded for the Republican and American candidates exceeded in the aggregate those given to Buchanan. During his term of office, several circumstances contributed to quicken the movement of opinion. The judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of Dred Scott was delivered immediately after the accession of the new President. It ruled, first, that Congress had no power to prohibit slavery in the Territories; secondly, that no coloured person of slave descent was or ever could be an American citizen, or entitled to sue as such in the Courts of the United States. The Constitution seemed to require amendment, if this was indeed a true interpretation of the Constitution. The petty civil war waged in Kansas betweeen the Free-soil settlers and the pioneers of slavery from Missouri did