...

Feb'y 9th. May the blessing of God rest upon the event of this day! the second Wednesday in February, when the election of a President of the United States for the term of four years, from the 4th of March next, was consummated. . . . The House of Representatives immediately proceeded to the vote by ballot from the three highest candidates, when John Quincy Adams received the votes of thirteen, Andrew Jackson of seven, and William H. Crawford of four states. The election was thus completed, very unexpectedly, by a single ballot. ... After dinner, the Russian Minister, Baron Tuyl, called to congratulate me on the issue of the election. I attended, with Mrs. Adams, the drawing-room at the President's. It was crowded to overflowing. General Jackson was there, and we shook hands. He was altogether placid and courteous. I received numerous friendly salutations. . . . I enclosed Mr. R. King's note, with a letter of three lines to my father, asking for his blessing and prayers on the event of this day, the most important day of my life, and which I would close as it began, with supplications to the Father of all mercies that its consequences may redound to His glory and to the welfare of my country. After I returned from the drawing-room, a band of musicians came and serenaded me at my house. It was past midnight when I retired. . . .

The elder Adams replied to his son's communication in the following touching letter:

Quincy, Mass., 18th February, 1825

I have received your letter of the 9th. Never did I feel so much solemnity as on this occasion. The multitude of my thoughts and the intensity of my feelings are too much for a mind like mine, in its ninetieth year. May the blessing of God Almighty continue to protect you to the end of your life, as it has heretofore protected you in so remarkable a manner from your cradle! I offer the same prayer for your lady and your family and am

Your affectionate father,

John Adams

AN ERA OF HARD FEELING

The most persistent advocate of westward expansion 65. Benton's in the first half of the nineteenth century was Senator plea for the occupation of Thomas H. Benton of Missouri. In aggressive, almost Oregon, 1825 truculent, language he maintained that neither Spain had [218] any fair claim to Texas nor Great Britain to Oregon. In 1825, when the period of joint occupation provided by the treaty of 1818 was drawing to a close, Benton brought a bill into the Senate, empowering the President to take possession of the Columbia valley and hold it as exclusive American territory. In defense of the bill (which received only fourteen votes) Benton said :

It is now, Mr. President, precisely two and twenty years since a contest for the Columbia has been going on between the United States and Great Britain. The contest originated with the discovery of the river itself. The moment that we discovered it she claimed it; and without a color of title in her hand, she has labored ever since to overreach us in the arts of negotiation, or to bully us out of our discovery by menaces of war.

In the year 1790 [1792] a citizen of the United States, Capt. Gray of Boston, discovered the Columbia at its entrance into the sea; and in 1803 Lewis and Clark were sent by the government of the United States to complete the discovery of the whole river from its source downward, and to take formal possession in the name of their government.1 In 1793 Sir Alexander McKenzie had been sent from Canada by the British Government to effect the same object; but he missed the sources of the river,. and struck the Pacific about five hundred miles

to the north of the mouth of the Columbia. . . .

The truth is, Mr. President, Great Britain has no color of title to the country in question. She sets up none. There is not a paper on the face of the earth in which a British minister

1 In Jefferson's instructions to Lewis, June 20, 1803, there is nothing about taking formal possession in the name of our government. See No. 55, p. 218.

has stated a claim. I speak of the King's ministers and not of the agents employed by them. The claims we have been examining are thrown out in the conversations and notes of diplomatic agents. No English minister has ever put his name to them, and no one will ever risk his character as a statesman by venturing to do so. The claim of Great Britain is nothing but a naked pretension founded on the double prospect of benefiting herself and injuring the United States. The fur trader, Sir Alexander McKenzie, is at the bottom of this policy. Failing in his attempt to explore the Columbia River in 1793, he, nevertheless, urged upon the British Government the advantages of taking it to herself, and of expelling the Americans from the whole region west of the Rocky Mountains. The advice accorded too well with the passions and policy of that government to be disregarded. It is a government which has lost no opportunity, since the peace of '83, of aggrandizing itself at the expense of the United States. It is a government which listens to the suggestions of its experienced subjects, and thus an individual, in the humble station of a fur trader, has pointed out the policy which has been pursued by every Minister of Great Britain from Pitt to Canning, and for the maintenance of which a war is now menaced.

I do not argue the question of title on the part of the United States, but only state it as founded upon 1. Discovery of the Columbia River by Capt. Gray in 1790 [1792]; 2. Purchase of Louisiana in 1803; 3. Discovery of the Columbia from its head to its mouth by Lewis and Clark in 1803 [1805]; 4. Settlement of Astoria in 1811; 5. Treaty with Spain in 1819; 6. Contiguity and continuity of settlement and possession. Nor do I argue the question of the advantages of retaining the Columbia, and refusing to divide or alienate our territory upon it. I merely state them...: 1. To keep out a foreign power; 2. To gain a seaport with a military and naval station on the coast of the Pacific; 3. To save the fur trade in that region, and prevent our Indians from being tampered with by British traders; 4. To open a communication for commercial purposes between the Mississippi and the Pacific; 5. To send the light of science and of religion into eastern Asia.

test of South

The passage of the Tariff of Abominations of May, 66. The pro1828, brought from the legislature of South Carolina the following resolutions:

Resolved: That it is expedient to protest against the unconstitutionality and oppressive operation of the system of protecting duties, and to have such protest entered on the Journals of the Senate of the United States Also, to make a public exposition of our wrongs and of the remedies within our power, to be communicated to our sister States, with a request that they will coöperate with this State in procuring a repeal of the Tariff for protection, and an abandonment of the principle; and if the repeal be not procured, that they will coöperate in such measures as may be necessary for arresting the evil.

Resolved: That a committee of seven be raised to carry foregoing resolution into effect.

the

The special committee reported the famous "Exposi tion and Protest" from the pen of John C. Calhoun, vice president of the United States. The following extracts are taken from that part of the Exposition dealing with the economic evil of the tariff for the South: 1

The committee have bestowed on the subjects referred to them the deliberate attention which their importance demands; and the result, on full investigation, is a unanimous opinion that the act of Congress of the last session, with the whole system of legislation imposing duties on imports, not for revenue, but

1 This economic danger had already been realized by leaders in the South. President Thomas Cooper of the College of South Carolina had written five years earlier (even before the tariff of 1824) to the Congressmen from his state: "Let the Southern States look to it! They are not threatened with a system of unjust and burthensome taxation merely this is a trifle in the plan. They are threatened with the annihilation of their staple commodity not with taxation but destruction!" - Thomas Cooper, Two Tracts on the Proposed Alteration of the Tariff, p. 27.

Carolina

against high tariff, 1828

[224]

the protection of one branch of industry at the expense of others - is unconstitutional, unequal, and oppressive, and calculated to corrupt the public virtue and destroy the liberty of the country. .

The committee do not propose to enter into an elaborate or refined argument on the question of the constitutionality of the Tariff system. The General Government is one of specific powers, and it can rightfully exercise only the powers expressly granted. . . . It results, necessarily, that those who claim to exercise power under the Constitution, are bound to show that it is expressly granted, or that it is necessary and proper as a means to some of the granted powers. The advocates of the Tariff have offered no such proof. It is true that the third section of the first article of the Constitution authorizes Congress to lay and collect an impost duty, but it is granted as a tax power for the sole purpose of revenue, a power in its nature essentially different from that of imposing protective or prohibitory duties.... The Constitution may be as grossly violated by acting against its meaning as against its letter. ... The facts are few and simple. The Constitution grants to Congress the power of imposing a duty on imports for revenue, which power is abused by being converted into an instrument of rearing up the industry of one section of the country on the ruins of another. It is, in a word, a violation by perversion, - the most dangerous of all because the most insidious and difficult to resist....

On entering this branch of the subject, the committee feel the painful character of the duty which they must perform. They would desire never to speak of our country, as far as the action of the General Government is concerned, but as one great whole, having a common interest, which all the parts ought zealously to promote. Previously to the adoption of the Tariff system, such was the unanimous feeling of this State; but in speaking of its operation, it will be impossible to avoid the discussion of sectional interest, and the use of sectional language. On its authors, and not on us, who are compelled to adopt this course in self-defence, by injustice and oppression, be the censure.