New England was reluctantly and slowly coming to the conclusion that John Quincy Adams was the only available northern candidate. Adams did not fully represent the characteristics of his section, for he neither sprang from the democracy of the interior of New England nor did he remain loyal to the Federalist ideas that controlled the commercial interests of the coast. Moreover, of all the statesmen whom the nation produced, he had had the largest opportunity to make a comparative study of government. As an eleven-year-old boy, he went with his father to Paris in 1778, and from then until 1817, when he became Monroe's secretary of state, nearly half his time was spent at European courts. He served in France, Holland, Sweden, Russia, Prussia, and England, and had been senator of the United States from Massachusetts.

Thus Adams entered on the middle period of his career, a man of learning and broad culture, rich in experience of national affairs, familiar with the centers of Old-World civilization and with methods of European administration. He had touched life too broadly, in too many countries, to be provincial in his policy. In the minds of a large and influential body of his fellow-citizens, the Federalists, he was an apostate, for in the days of the embargo he had warned Jefferson of the temper of his section, had resigned, and had been read out of the party. The unpopularity, as well as the fame, of his father, was the heritage of the son. Perhaps the most decisive indication of the weakening of sectional bias by his foreign training is afforded by his diplomatic policy. An expansionist by nature, he had been confirmed in the faith by his training in foreign courts. "If we are not taken for Romans we shall be taken for Jews," he exclaimed to one who questioned the wisdom of the bold utterances of his diplomatic correspondence.

In one important respect Adams was the personification of his section. He was a Puritan, and his whole career was deeply affected by the fact. A man of method and regularity, tireless in his work (for he rose before the dawn and worked till midnight), he never had a childhood and never tried to achieve self-forgetfulness. His diary, printed in twelve volumes, is a unique document for the study of the Puritan in politics. Not that it was an entirely unreserved expression of his soul, for he wrote with a consciousness that posterity would read the record, and its pages are a compound of apparently spontaneous revelation of his inmost thought and of silence upon subjects of which we would gladly know more. He had the Puritan's restraint, self-scrutiny, and self-condemnation. "I am," he writes, "a man of reserved, cold, austere, and forbidding manners." Nor can this estimate be pronounced unjust. He was a lonely man, communing with his soul in his diary more than with a circle of admiring friends. It was not easy for men to love John Quincy Adams. The world may respect the man who regulates his course by a daily dead-reckoning, but it finds it easier to make friends with him who stumbles towards rectitude by the momentum of his own nature. Popularity, in any deep sense, was denied him. This deprivation he repaid by harsh, vindictive, and censorious judgments upon his contemporaries, and by indifference to popular prejudices. With the less lovely qualities of the Puritan aggravated by his own critical nature, Adams found himself in a struggle for the presidency against some of the most engaging personalities in American history. He must win over his enemies in New England and attach that section to his fortunes; he must find friends in the middle states, conciliate the south, and procure a following in the west, where Clay, the Hotspur of debate, with all the power of the speakership behind him, and Jackson, "Old Hickory," the hero of New Orleans, contested the field. And all the time he must satisfy his conscience, and reach his goal by the craft and strength of his intellect rather than by the arts of popular management. No statesman ever handled the problems of his public career with a keener understanding of the conditions of success.

The middle region was too much divided by the game of politics played by her multitude of minor leaders to unite upon a favorite son in this campaign; but De Witt Clinton, finding elements of strength in the prestige which his successful advocacy of the Erie Canal had brought to him throughout the region where internal improvements were popular, and relying upon his old connections with the Federalists, watched events with eager eye, waiting for an opportunity which never came. Although the south saw in Rufus King's advocacy of the exclusion of slavery from Missouri a deep design to win the presidency by an antislavery combination of the northern states, there was little ground for this belief. In truth, the middle region was merely the fighting-ground for leaders in the other sections.

In the south, Calhoun and Crawford were already contending for the mastery. Each of them represented fundamental tendencies in the section. Born in Virginia in 1772, Crawford had migrated with his father in early childhood to South Carolina, and soon after to Georgia. [Footnote: Phillips, "Georgia and State Rights," in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report 1901, II., 95; Cobb, Leisure Labors; Miller, Bench and Bar of Georgia; West, "Life and Times of William H. Crawford," in National Portrait Gallery, IV.; Adams, Life of Gallatin. 598.] Here he became the leader of the Virginia element against the interior democracy. But in his coarse strength and adaptability the burly Georgian showed the impress which frontier influences had given to his state. His career in national politics brought him strange alliances. This Georgia candidate had been no mere subject of the Virginia dynasty, for he supported John Adams in his resistance to France in 1798; challenged the administration of Jefferson by voting with the Federalists in the United States Senate against the embargo; and ridiculed the ambiguous message of Madison when the issue of peace or war with Great Britain was under consideration. A fearless supporter of the recharter of the national bank, he had championed the doctrine of implied powers and denied the right of a state to resist the laws of Congress except by changing its representation or appealing to the sword under the right of revolution.

Nevertheless, in the period of this volume, Crawford joined the ranks of the southerners who demanded a return to strict construction and insistence on state rights. In the congressional caucus of 1816, he obtained 54 votes for the presidency against 65 for Monroe. Had not the influence of Madison been thrown for the latter, it seems probable that Crawford would have obtained the nomination; but his strength in building up a following in Congress was much greater than his popularity with the people at large. Controlling the patronage of the treasury department, he enlarged his political influence. As the author of the four-years'-tenure-of- office act, in 1820, he has been vehemently criticized as a founder of the spoils system. But there are reasons for thinking that Crawford's advocacy of this measure was based upon considerations of efficiency at least as much as those of politics, [Footnote: Fish, Civil Service and Patronage, 66 et seq.] and the conduct of his department was marked by sagacity. The administration of such a man would probably have been characterized by an accommodating spirit which would have carried on the traditions of Monroe.

In the career of Calhoun are strikingly exhibited the changing characteristics of the south in this era. His grandfather was a Scotch-Irishman who came to Pennsylvania with the emigration of that people in the first half of the eighteenth century, and thence followed the stream of settlement that passed up the Great Valley and into South Carolina to the frontier, from which men like Daniel Boone crossed the mountains to the conquest of Kentucky and Tennessee. [Footnote: Cf. Howard, Preliminaries of the Revolution (Am. Nation, VIII.), chap. xiii.] The Calhoun family were frontier Indian fighters, but, instead of crossing the mountains as did Andrew Jackson, Calhoun remained to grow up with his section and to share its changes from a community essentially western to a cotton- planting and slave-holding region. This is the clew to his career.

In his speech in the House of Representatives in 1817, on internal improvements, Calhoun warned his colleagues against "a low, sordid, selfish, and sectional spirit," and declared that "in a country so extensive, and so various in its interests, what is necessary for the common good, may apparently be opposed to the interests of particular sections. It must be submitted to as the condition of our greatness." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 14 Cong., 2 Sess., 854, 855.] This was the voice of the nationalistic west, as well as that of South Carolina in Calhoun's young manhood.

In view of his later career, it is significant that many of those who described him in these youthful years of his nationalistic policy found in him a noticeable tendency to rash speculation and novelty. "As a politician," said Senator Mills, of Massachusetts, about 1823, he is "too theorizing, speculative, and metaphysical,— magnificent in his views of the powers and capacities of the government, and of the virtue, intelligence, and wisdom of the PEOPLE. He is in favor of elevating, cherishing, and increasing all the institutions of the government, and of a vigorous and energetic administration of it. From his rapidity of thought, he is often wrong in his conclusions, and his theories are sometimes wild, extravagant, and impractical. He has always claimed to be, and is, of the Democratic party, but of a very different class from that of Crawford; more like Adams, and his schemes are sometimes denounced by his party as ultra-fanatical." [Footnote: Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings, XIX., 37 (1881-1882).]

Another contemporary, writing prior to 1824, declared: "He wants, I think, consistency and perseverance of mind, and seems incapable of long-continued and patient investigation. What he does not see at the first examination, he seldom takes pains to search for; but still the lightning glance of his mind, and the rapidity with which he analyzes, never fail to furnish him with all that may be necessary for his immediate purposes. In his legislative career, which, though short, was uncommonly luminous, his love of novelty, and his apparent solicitude to astonish were so great, that he has occasionally been known to go beyond even the dreams of political visionaries, and to propose schemes which were in their nature impracticable or injurious, and which he seemed to offer merely for the purpose of displaying the affluence of his mind, and the fertility of his ingenuity." [Footnote: Quoted by Hodgson, Letters from North Am., I., 81.] "Calhoun," said William Wirt, in 1824, "advised me the other day to study less and trust more to genius; and I believe the advice is sound. He has certainly practiced on his own precepts, and has become, justly, a distinguished man. It may do very well in politics, where a proposition has only to be compared with general principles with which the politician is familiar." [Footnote: Kennedy, William Wirt, II., 143; other views of Calhoun in MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, v., ix.; Hart, Slavery and Abolition, chap. xix.; Garrison, Westward Extension (Am. Nation, XV., XVI., XVII.).]

At the beginning of the campaign, Calhoun was the confidant and friend of Adams, apparently considering the alternative of throwing his influence in the latter's favor, if it proved impossible to realize his own aspirations.

From beyond the Alleghenies came two candidates who personified the forces of their section. We can see the very essence of the west in Henry Clay and Andrew Jackson. Clay was a Kentuckian, with the characteristics of his state; but, in a larger sense, he represented the stream of migration which had occupied the Ohio Valley during the preceding half-century. This society was one which, in its composition, embraced elements of the middle region as well as of the south. It tended towards freedom, but had slaves in its midst, and had been accustomed, through experience, to adjust relations between slavery and free labor by a system of compromise. Economically, it was in need of internal improvements and the development of manufactures to afford a home market. It had the ideal of American expansion, and in earlier days vehemently demanded the control of the Mississippi and the expulsion of the Spaniard from the coasts of the Gulf. In the War of 1812 it sent its sons to destroy English influence about the Great Lakes and had been ambitious to conquer Canada.

It is an evidence of the rapidity with which the west stamped itself upon its colonists, that although Clay was born, and bred to the law, in Virginia, he soon became the mouth-piece of these western forces. In his personality, also, he reflected many of the traits of this region. Kentucky, ardent in its spirit, not ashamed of a strain of sporting blood, fond of the horse-race, partial to its whiskey, ready to "bluff" in politics as in poker, but sensitive to honor, was the true home of Henry Clay. To a Puritan like John Quincy Adams, Clay was, "in politics, as in private life, essentially a gamester."[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 59.] But if the Puritan mind did not approve of Henry Clay, multitudes of his fellow- countrymen in other sections did. There was a charm about him that fastened men to him. He was "Harry of the West," an impetuous, willful, high-spirited, daring, jealous, but, withal, a lovable man. He had the qualities of leadership; was ambitious, impulsive, often guided by his intuitions and his sensibilities, but, at the same time, an adroit and bold champion of constructive legislation. He knew, too, the time for compromise and for concession. Perhaps he knew it too well; for, although no statesman of this era possessed more courageous initiative and constructive power, his tact and his powers of management were such that his place in history is quite as much that of the "great compromiser" as it is that of the author of the "American system."

It is not too much to say that Clay made the speakership one of the important American institutions. He was the master of the House of Representatives, shaping its measures by the appointment of his committees and his parliamentary management.[Footnote: Follett, Speaker of the House, pp. 41-46.] By the period of our survey, with the power of this office behind him, Clay had fashioned a set of American political issues reflective of western and middle-state ideas, and had made himself a formidable rival in the presidential struggle. He had caught the self-confidence, the continental aspirations, the dash and impetuosity of the west. But he was also, as a writer of the time declared, "able to captivate high and low, l'homme du salon and the 'squatter' in the Western wilderness." He was a mediator between east and west, between north and south—the "great conciliator." [Footnote: Grund, Aristocracy in America, II., 213. For other views of Clay, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap. xii.; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chap. xi.; Garrison, Westward Extension, chap. iii. (Am. Nation, XIII., XV., XVII.).]

If Henry Clay was one of the favorites of the west, Andrew Jackson was the west itself. While Clay was able to voice, with statesman- like ability, the demand for economic legislation to promote her interests, and while he exercised an extraordinary fascination by his personal magnetism and his eloquence, he never became the hero of the great masses of the west; he appealed rather to the more intelligent—to the men of business and of property. Andrew Jackson was the very personification of the contentious, nationalistic democracy of the interior. He was born, in 1767, of Scotch-Irish parents, who had settled near the boundary-line between North and South Carolina, not far from the similar settlements from which, within a few years of Jackson's birth, Daniel Boone and Robertson went forth to be the founders of Kentucky and Tennessee. In 1788, with a caravan of emigrants, Jackson crossed the Alleghenies to Nashville, Tennessee, then an outpost of settlement still exposed to the incursions of Indians. During the first seven or eight years of his residence he was public prosecutor—an office that called for nerve and decision, rather than legal acumen, in that turbulent country.

The appearance of this frontiersman on the floor of Congress was an omen full of significance. He reached Philadelphia at the close of Washington's administration, having ridden on horseback nearly eight hundred miles to his destination. Gallatin (himself a western Pennsylvanian) afterwards graphically described Jackson, as he entered the halls of Congress, as "a tall, lank, uncouth-looking personage, with long locks of hair hanging over his face, and a cue down his back tied in an eel-skin; his dress singular, his manners and deportment those of a rough backwoodsman."[Footnote: Hildreth, United States, iv., 692.] Jefferson afterwards testified to Webster: "His passions are terrible. When I was President of the Senate, he was a Senator, and he could never speak, on account of the rashness of his feelings. I have seen him attempt it repeatedly, and as often choke with rage."[Footnote: Webster, Writings (National ed.), XVII., 371.] At length the frontier, in the person of its leader, had found a place in the government. This six-foot backwoodsman, angular, lantern-jawed, and thin, with blue eyes that blazed on occasion; this choleric, impetuous, Scotch-Irish leader of men; this expert duelist and ready fighter; this embodiment of the contentious, vehement, personal west, was in politics to stay.[Footnote: For other appreciations, see Babcock, Am. Nationality, chap, xvii.; MacDonald, Jacksonian Democracy, chaps, ii., xviii.(Am. Nation, XIII., XV.).] In the War of 1812, by the defeat of the Indians of the Gulf plains, he made himself the conqueror of a new province for western settlement, and when he led his frontier riflemen to the victory of New Orleans he became the national hero, the self-made man, the incarnation of the popular ideal of democracy. The very rashness and arbitrariness which his Seminole campaign displayed appealed to the west, for he went to his object with the relentless directness of a frontiersman. This episode gave to Adams the opportunity to write his masterly state paper defending the actions of the general. But Henry Clay, seeing, perhaps, in the rising star of the frontier military hero a baneful omen to his own career, and hoping to break the administration forces by holding the government responsible for Jackson's actions, led an assault upon him in the Seminole debates on the floor of the House of Representatives.[Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] Leaving Tennessee when he heard of the attack which was meditated against him, the general rushed (1819) to this new field of battle, and had the satisfaction of winning what he regarded as "the greatest victory he ever obtained"—a triumph on every count of Clay's indictment. This contest Jackson considered "the Touchstone of the election of the next president."[Footnote: N. Y. Publ. Library, Bulletin, IV., 160, 161; Parton, Jackson, II., chap. xl.] From this time the personality of the "Old Hero" was as weighty a factor in

American politics as the tariff or internal improvements. He had now outgrown the uncouthness of his earlier days and had become stately and dignified in his manner. Around this unique personality there began to gather all those democratic forces which we have noted as characteristic of the interior of the country, reinforced by the democracy of the cities, growing into self-consciousness and power. A new force was coming into American life. This fiery Tennesseean was becoming the political idol of a popular movement which swept across all sections, with but slight regard to their separate economic interests. The rude, strong, turbulent democracy of the west and of the country found in him its natural leader.

All these candidates and the dominant element in every section professed the doctrines of republicanism; but what were the orthodox tenets of republicanism at the end of the rule of the Virginia dynasty? To this question different candidates and different sections gave conflicting answers. Out of their differences there was already the beginning of a new division of parties.

The progress of events gave ample opportunity for collision between the various factions. The crisis of 1819 and the depression of the succeeding years worked, on the whole, in the interests of Jackson, inclining the common people to demand a leader and a new dispensation. Not, perhaps, without a malicious joy did John Quincy Adams write in his diary at that time that "Crawford has labors and perils enough before him in the management of the finances for the three succeeding years."[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 391.] From the negotiation of the Florida treaty in 1819, and especially from the relinquishment by Spain of her claims to the Pacific coast north of the forty-second parallel, the secretary of state expected to reap a harvest of political advantage.[Footnote: Ibid., IV., 238, 273, 451, V., 53, 109, 290; Monroe, Writings, VI., 127.] But Clay, as well as Benton and the west in general, balked his hopes by denouncing the treaty as an abandonment of American rights; and, although Adams won friends in the south by the acquisition of Florida, Spain's delay of two years in the ratification of the treaty so far neutralized the credit that the treaty was, after all, but a feast of Tantalus. In these intervening years, when the United States was several times on the verge of forcibly occupying Florida, the possibility of a war with Spain, into which European powers might be drawn, increased the importance of General Jackson as a figure in the eyes of the public.

Next the Missouri controversy, like "a flaming sword," [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 91.]cut in every direction and affected the future of all the presidential candidates. The hope of Crawford to reap the reward of his renunciation in 1816 was based, not only upon his moderation in his earlier career, which had brought him friends among the Federalists, but also upon the prospect of attracting a following in Pennsylvania, with the aid of the influence of Gallatin, and in New York as the regular candidate of the party. These hopes of northern support demanded that Crawford should trim his sails with care, attacking the policies of his rivals rather than framing issues of his own. But for a time the Missouri controversy alienated both Pennsylvania and New York from the south, and it brought about a bitterness of feeling fatal to his success in those two states. To Clay, too, the slavery struggle brought embarrassments, for his attitude as a compromiser failed to strengthen him in the south, while it diminished his following in the north. Calhoun suffered from the same difficulty, although his position in the cabinet enabled him to keep in the background in this heated contest. Jackson stood in a different situation. At the time he was remote from the controversy, having his own troubles as governor of Florida, and, as a slave-holding planter he was not suspected by the south, while at the same time his popularity as the representative of the new democracy was steadily winning him friends in the antislavery state of Pennsylvania.

To Adams all the agitation was a distinct gain, since it broke the concert between Virginia and New York and increased his chances as the only important northern candidate. He saw—none more clearly— the possibility of this issue as a basis for a new party organization,[Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, IV., 529.] but he saw also that it menaced a dissolution of the Union.[Footnote: Ibid., V., 12, 13, 53.] He was not disposed to alienate the south, and he contented himself with confiding his denunciation of slavery to the secret pages of his diary, while publicly he took his stand on the doctrine that the proposed restriction upon Missouri was against the Constitution.[Footnote: Ibid., IV., 529.] As early as 1821 he recognized that the number of candidates in the field made it almost certain that the election would be decided by the vote of states in the House of Representatives, where the vote of the single member from Illinois would count as much as that of the whole delegation of New York or Pennsylvania. What Adams needed, therefore, was to combine New England in his support, obtain, if possible, a majority in New York, and add the votes of a sufficient number of smaller states to win the election.

The seventeenth Congress, which met in December, 1821, and lasted until the spring of 1823, was one of the most ineffective legislative bodies in the country's history. Henry Clay had returned to Kentucky to resume the practice of the law as a means of restoring his financial fortunes, and the importance of his leadership was emphasized by his absence. Without mastery, and in the absence of party discipline, Congress degenerated into a. mere arena for the conflicts of rival personal factions, each anxious to destroy the reputation of the candidate favored by the other.

In December, 1821, Barbour, of Virginia, was chosen speaker, by a close vote, over Taylor, the favorite of Adams, thus transferring the control of the congressional committees again to the south, aided by its New York allies. The advantage to Crawford arising from this election was partly neutralized by the fact that in this year his partisans in Georgia were defeated by the choice of his bitterest enemy for the governorship. It may have been this circumstance which aroused the hope of Crawford's southern rivals and led to the calling of a legislative caucus in South Carolina, which, on December 18, 1821, by a close vote, nominated William Lowndes instead of Calhoun for the presidency. Many of Calhoun's partisans refused to attend this caucus, and the vote was a close one (57 to 53). [Footnote: Ravenel, William Lowndes, chap, x.; Adams, Memoirs, V., 468, 470; National Intelligencer, January 19, 1822.] Lowndes was a wealthy South Carolina planter, judicious and dispassionate, with a reputation for fair-mindedness and wisdom that gained him the respect of his foes as well as his friends. According to tradition, Clay once declared that among the many men he had known he found it difficult to decide who was the greatest, but added, "I think the wisest man I ever knew was William Lowndes."[Footnote: Ravenel, William Lowndes, 238.] His death, in less than a year, removed from the presidential contest an important figure, and from the south one of the most gifted of her sons.

As soon as the news of the nomination of Lowndes reached Washington, a delegation of members of Congress, from various sections, secured Calhoun's consent to avow his candidacy. His career as a tariff man and as a friend of internal improvements had won him northern supporters, especially in Pennsylvania, although, as South Carolina's action showed, he was not able to control his state. The announcement of Calhoun's candidacy turned against him all the batteries of his rivals. Pleading the depleted condition of the treasury, Crawford's partisans in Congress attacked the measures of Calhoun as secretary of war. Retrenchment in the expenditures for the army was demanded, and finally, under the leadership of Crawford's friends, the Senate refused to ratify certain nominations of military officers made by the president on the recommendation of the secretary of war, giving as a reason that they were not in accordance with the law for the reduction of the army. In the cabinet discussion, Crawford openly supported this opposition, and his relations with the president became so strained that, in the spring of 1822, reports were rife that his resignation would be demanded. [Footnote: Cf. Adams, Memoirs, V., 525.] Crawford himself wrote to Gallatin that it would not be to his disadvantage to be removed from office. [Footnote: Gallatin, Writings, 31., 241.]

In the summer the matter was brought to a head by a correspondence in which Monroe indignantly intimated that Crawford had given countenance to the allegation that the president's principles and policy were not in sympathy with the early Jeffersonian system of economy and state rights. Believing that Crawford was aiming at the creation of a new party (a thing which distressed Monroe, who regarded parties as an evil),[Footnote: Monroe, Writings, VI., 286- 291.] he made it clear that it was the duty of a cabinet officer, when once the policy of the executive had been determined, to give that policy co-operation and support.[Footnote: Monroe to Crawford, August 22, 1822, MS. in N.Y. Pub. Library.] In his reply Crawford denied that he had personally antagonized the measures of the administration; [Footnote: Crawford to Monroe, September 3, 1822, MS. in N.Y. Pub. Library; cf. Adams, Memoirs, VI., 390.] but he took the ground that a cabinet officer should not attempt to influence his friends in Congress either for or against the policy of the government.

His assurances of loyalty satisfied Monroe and averted the breach. It is easy to see, however, that Crawford's attitude strengthened the feeling on the part of his rivals that he was intriguing against the administration. They believed, whether he instigated his partisans to oppose measures favored by the president or was unable to restrain them, in either case he should be forced into open opposition. [Footnote: Cf. Poinsett to Monroe, May 10, 1822, Monroe MSS., in Library of Cong.; Adams, Memoirs, V., 315, VI., 57.] The truth is that the government was so divided within itself that it was difficult to determine with certainty what its policy was. Monroe's greatest weakness was revealed at this time in his inability to create and insist upon a definite policy. The situation was aggravated by the president's determination to remain neutral between the rival members of his official family, and by the loss of influence which he suffered through the knowledge that he was soon to lay down the presidential power.

Meanwhile, John Quincy Adams watched these intrigues with bitterness of soul. Debarred by his Puritan principles from the open solicitation of votes which his rivals practiced, he yet knew every move in the game and gauged the political tendencies with the astuteness of the politician, albeit a Puritan politician. Nor did he disdain to make such use of his position as would win friends or remove enemies. He proposed to Calhoun a foreign mission, suggested the same to Clay, favored an ambassadorship for Clinton, and urged the appointment of Jackson to Mexico. These overtures were politely declined by the candidates, and Adams was forced to fight for the presidency against the men whom he would so gladly have sent to honor their country abroad.



CHAPTER XII

THE MONROE DOCTRINE (1821-1823)

The place of slavery in the westward expansion of the nation was not the only burning question which the American people had to face in the presidency of Monroe. Within a few years after that contest, the problem of the independence of the New World and of the destiny of the United States in the sisterhood of new American republics confronted the administration. Should the political rivalries and wars of Europe to acquire territory be excluded from the western hemisphere? Should the acquisition of new colonies by European states in the vast unsettled spaces of the two Americas be terminated? These weighty questions were put to the mild Virginian statesman; history has named his answer the Monroe Doctrine.

From the beginning of our national existence, the United States had been pushing back Europe from her borders, and asserting neutrality and the right to remain outside of the political System of the Old World. Washington's farewell address of 1796, with its appeal to his fellow-citizens against "interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe," sank deep into the popular consciousness. It did not interfere with the process by which, piece by piece, the United States added to its domains fragments from the disintegrating Spanish empire; for so long as European states held the strategic positions on our flanks, as they did in Washington's day, the policy of separation from the nations of the Old World was one difficult to maintain; and France and England watched the enlargement of the United States with jealous eye. Each nation, in turn, considered the plans of Miranda, a Venezuelan revolutionist, for the freeing of Spanish America. In 1790 the Nootka Sound affair threatened to place England in possession of the whole Mississippi valley and to give her the leadership in Spanish America. [Footnote: Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 704, VIII., 78; Manning, Nootka Sound Controversy, in Am. Hist. Assoc., Report, 1904, p. 281; cf. Bassett, Federalist System (Am. Nation, XI), chap. vi.] Two years later, France urged England to join her in freeing the colonies of Spain in the New World;[Footnote: Sorel, L'Europe et la Revolution Francaise, II., 384, 418, III., 17.] and when Pitt rejected these overtures, France sent Genet to spread the fires of her revolution in Louisiana and Florida.[Footnote: Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., III., 650, X. 259.] When this design failed, France turned to diplomacy, and between 1795 and 1800 tried to persuade Spain to relinquish Florida and Louisiana to herself, as a means of checking the expansion of the United States and of rendering her subservient to France. The growing preponderance of France over Spain, and the fear that she would secure control of Spanish America, led England again in 1798 to listen to Miranda's dream of freeing his countrymen, and to sound the United States on a plan for joint action against Spain in the New World. [Footnote: Turner, in Am. Hist. Rev., X., 249 et seq., 276.] The elder Adams turned a deaf ear to these suggestions, and when at last Napoleon achieved the possession of Louisiana, it was only to turn it over to the United States. [Footnote: Sloane, in Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 439.] Jefferson's threat that the possession of Louisiana by France would seal the union between England and the United States and "make the first cannon which shall be fired in Europe the signal for the tearing up of any settlement she may have made, and for holding the two continents of America in sequestration for the common purposes of the united British and American nations," [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), VIII., 145.] showed how unstable must be the American policy of isolation so long as Europe had a lodgment on our borders. [Footnote: Cf. Channing, Jeffersonian System (Am. Nation, XII.), chap. v.]

The acquisition of Louisiana by the United States was followed by the annexation of West Florida; and the Seminole campaign frightened Spain into the abandonment of East Florida. [Footnote: Babcock, American Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] While the United States was thus crowding Europe back from its borders and strengthening its leadership in the New World, Spanish America was revolting from the mother-country. When Napoleon made himself master of Spain in 1807, English merchants, alarmed at the prospect of losing the lucrative trade which they had built up in the lands which Spain had so long monopolized, supported the revolutionists with money, while various expeditions led by English officers aided the revolt. [Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, chap, iii.; Am. Hist. Rev., IV., 449, VI., 508.] At first, failure met the efforts of the loosely compacted provinces, made up of sharply marked social classes, separated by race antagonisms, and untrained in self-government. Only in Buenos Ayres (later the Argentine Confederation), where representatives of the United Provinces of the Rio de la Plata declared their independence in 1816, were the colonists able to hold their ground.

A new era in the revolt began, however, in 1817, when General San Martin surprised the Spaniards by his march, from a frontier province of La Plata, over a pass thirteen thousand feet above the sea across the Andes to Chili. In the course of four years, with the co-operation of Lord Cochrane (who relinquished the British service in order to command the fleet of the insurgents on the Pacific), he effected the liberation of Chili and of Peru. Meanwhile, in the northern provinces the other great South American revolutionist, Bolivar, aided by a legion of Irish and English veterans, won the independence of Venezuela and Colombia. In July, 1822, these two successful generals met in Ecuador; and San Martin, yielding the leadership to the more ambitious Bolivar, withdrew from the New World. By this date, America was clearly lost to the Latin states of Europe, for Mexico became an independent empire in 1821, and the next year Brazil, while it chose for its ruler a prince of the younger line of the royal house of Portugal, proclaimed its independence.[Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, chap. i.]

Although the relations between these revolutionary states and England, both on the military and on the commercial side, were much closer than with the United States, this nation followed the course of events with keen interest. Agents were sent, in 1817 and 1820, to various South American states, to report upon the conditions there; and the vessels of the revolutionary governments were accorded belligerent rights, and admitted to the ports of the United States.[Footnote: Ibid., 121; Am. State Papers, Foreign, IV., 217, 818.] The occupation of Amelia Island and Galveston, in 1817, by revolutionists, claiming the protection of the flags of Colombia and Mexico respectively, gave opportunity for piratical forays upon commerce, which the United States was unable to tolerate, and these establishments were broken up by the government.[Footnote: McMaster, United States, IV., chap. xxxiv.; Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXIII., Nos. 9, 10.]

President Monroe seems to have been inclined to recognize the independence of these states on the earliest evidence of their ability to sustain it; but the secretary of state, John Quincy Adams, favored a policy of delay. He had slight confidence in the turbulent, untrained republics of Latin-America, and little patience with the idea that their revolution had anything in common with that of the United States. At the close of 1817 he believed it inexpedient and unjust for the United States to favor their cause, and he urged a friend to publish inquiries into the political morality and the right of the United States to take sides with a people who trampled upon civil rights, disgraced their revolution by buccaneering and piracy, and who lacked both unity of cause and of effort. [Footnote: Letter to A. H. Everett, in Am. Hist. Rev., XI., 112.] His own system was based on the theory that the United States. should move in harmony with England, and, if possible, with the other European powers in the matter of recognition; [Footnote: Paxson, Independence of the So. Am. Republics, 149 (citing MSS. in State Dept.)] and he perceived that Spain would be more likely to yield Florida to the United States if the president did not acknowledge the independence of her other provinces.

Henry Clay now came forward as the advocate of immediate recognition of the revolutionary republics. In this he was undoubtedly swayed by a real sympathy with the cause of freedom and by the natural instincts of a man of the west, where antagonism to Spain was bred in the bone. But his insistence upon immediate action was also stimulated by his opposition to Monroe and the secretary of state. Clay's great speech on recognition was made May 24 and 25, 1818. His imagination kindled at the vastness of South America: "The loftiest mountains; the most majestic rivers in the world; the richest mines of the precious metals; and the choicest productions of the earth." "We behold there," said he, "a spectacle still more interesting and sublime—the glorious spectacle of eighteen millions of people struggling to burst their chains and be free." He appealed to Congress to support an American system by recognizing these sister republics, and argued that, both in diplomacy and in commerce they would be guided by an American policy and aid the United States to free itself from dependence on Europe. His motion was lost by an overwhelming majority, but the speech made a deep impression. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 1474.]

In the two years which elapsed between the negotiation and the ratification of the Florida treaty, the president was several times on the point of recommending the forcible occupation of Florida, but he withheld the blow, hoping that the liberal Spanish government established under the constitution of 1820 might be brought to give its consent to the cession. The impetuous Clay chafed under this delay, and on May 10, 1820, he broke forth in another speech, in support of a resolution declaring the expediency of sending ministers to the South American states. Charging the administration, and especially John Quincy Adams, with subserviency to Great Britain, he demanded that the United States should become the center of a system against the despotism of the Old World and should act on its own responsibility. "We look too much abroad," said he. "Let us break these commercial and political fetters; let us no longer watch the nod of any European politician; let us become real and true Americans, and place ourselves at the head of the American system." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 16 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 2727.]

Clay was steadily gaining support in his efforts to force the hands of the administration: his resolutions won by a fair majority, and again, in February, 1821, he secured the almost unanimous assent of the House to a resolution of sympathy with South America. Another resolution, expressing the readiness of that body to support the president whenever he should think it expedient to recognize the republics, passed by a vote of 86 to 68, and the triumphant Clay was placed at the head of a committee to wait on the president with this resolution.[Footnote: Ibid., 2229, and 2 Sess., 1081, 1091; Adams, Memoirs, V., 268]

Although the victory was without immediate effect on the administration, which refused to act while the Florida treaty was still unratified, Adams perceived that the popular current was growing too strong to be much longer stemmed; the charge of dependence upon England was one not easy to be borne, and Clay's vision of an independent American system guided by the United States had its influence on his mind. Five months after Clay's speech, in 1820, extolling such a system, Adams set forth similar general ideas in a discussion between himself and the British minister over the regulation, of the slave-trade. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 182] By 1822, Florida was in our possession. The success of the arms of the revolutionists was unmistakable; several governments, of sufficient stability to warrant recognition had been erected; and it was patent to the world that Spain had lost her colonies. Acting on these considerations, Monroe sent a message to Congress, March 8, 1822, announcing that the time for recognition had come, and asking for appropriations for ministers to South America. [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 116]

In the mean time, the secretary of state was confronted with important diplomatic questions which, complicated the South American problem. As Spanish America broke away from the mother-country, its possessions in North America on the Pacific were exposed to seizure by the rival powers. In 1821, when Stratford Canning, the British minister to the United States, protested against a motion, in the House of Representatives, that the United States should form an establishment on the Columbia, Adams challenged any claim of England to the shores of the Pacific. "I do not know," said he, "what you claim nor what you do not claim. You claim India; you claim Africa; you claim—" "Perhaps," said Canning, "a piece of the moon." "No," said Adams, "I have not heard that you claim exclusively any part of the moon; but there is not a spot on THIS habitable globe that I could affirm you do not claim; and there is none which you may not claim with as much color of right as you can have to Columbia River or its mouth." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, V., 252.]

The time had arrived when Adams's familiarity with foreign diplomacy, his belief that a new nation must assert its rights with vigor if it expected to maintain them, his very testiness and irascibility, his "bull-dog fighting qualities"—in short, the characteristics that were sources of weakness to him in domestic politics—proved to be elements of strength in his conduct of foreign relations. The individualism, the uncompromising nature, the aggressiveness, and the natural love of expansion, which were traits of John Quincy Adams, became of highest service to his country in the diplomatic relations of the next few years.

Hardly a year elapsed after this defiance to England when Adams met the claims of Russia likewise with a similar challenge. On September 4, 1821, the Russian czar issued a ukase announcing the claim of Russia on the Pacific coast north of the fifty-first degree, and interdicting to the commercial vessels of other powers the approach on the high seas within one hundred Italian miles of this claim. [Footnote: U. S. Foreign Relations (1890), 439.] This assertion of Russian monopoly, which would, in effect, have closed Bering Sea, met with peremptory refusal by Adams, and on July 17, 1823, having in mind Russia's posts in California, he informed the minister, Baron Tuyl, "that we should contest the right of Russia to any territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should assume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for any new European colonial establishments." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 163.] After negotiations, Russia concluded the treaty of April 17, 1824, by which she agreed to form no establishments on the northwest coast south of latitude 54 degrees 40', and the United States reciprocally agreed to make no establishments north of that line. At the same time Russia abandoned her extreme claim of maritime jurisdiction.

While the Russian claims were under consideration, the question of the future of Cuba was also giving great concern. The Pearl of the Antilles remained in the possession of Spain when she lost her main- land colonies. By its position, commanding both the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean Sea, it was of the highest importance to the United States as well as to the West Indian powers, England and France. From a party in Cuba itself, in September, 1822, advances were made to the United States for annexation, and Monroe sent an agent to investigate, meanwhile refraining from encouraging the movement. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 69, 72.]

George Canning, who became premier of England in September, 1822, was convinced that no questions relating to continental Europe could be more immediately and vitally important to Great Britain than those which related to America. [Footnote: Stapleton, Official Corresp. of George Canning, I., 48.] Alarmed lest the United States should occupy Cuba, Canning, in a memorandum to the cabinet in November, questioned whether any blow that could be struck by any foreign power in any part of the world would more affect the interests of England. [Footnote: Ibid., 52; Royal Hist. Soc., Transactions (new series), XVIII., 89] He contented himself, however, with sending a naval force to the waters of Cuba and Puerto Rico, with the double purpose of checking American aggressions and protecting English commerce. This action created suspicion on the part of the United States, and Adams issued instructions (April 28, 1823) to the American minister at Madrid, declaring that, within a half-century, the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be indispensable to the continuance and integrity of the Union itself. The laws of political gravitation would, in his opinion, ultimately bring Cuba to this country, if, in the mean time, it were not acquired by some other power. Adams's immediate policy, therefore, favored the retention of Cuba and Puerto Rico by Spain, but he refused to commit the United States to a guarantee of the independence of Cuba against all the world except that power. [Footnote: Wharton, Digest of Am. Int. Law, I., 361-366; Latane, Diplomatic Relations with Lat. Am., chap. iii.]

The mutual jealousies of the nations with respect to the destiny of Cuba became, at this time, entangled with the greater question of the intervention of the Holy Alliance in the New World. At the Congress of Verona, in November, 1822, Austria, France, Russia, and Prussia signed a revision of the treaty of the Holy Alliance, [Footnote: Snow, Treaties and Topics; Seignobos, Pol. Hist. of Europe since 1814, 762.] which had for its objects the promotion of the doctrine of legitimacy in support of the divine right of rulers, and the doctrine of intervention, for the purpose of restoring to their thrones those monarchs who had been deposed by popular uprisings, and of rehabilitating those who had been limited by written constitutions. At Verona, the allies agreed to use their efforts to put an end to the system of representative government in Europe, and to prevent its further introduction. Having already suppressed uprisings in Naples and Piedmont, the Alliance empowered France to send troops into the Spanish peninsula to restore the authority of the king of Spain and to put down the revolutionary constitution of 1820. Chateaubriand, the French representative, desired the congress to go further and intervene in Spanish America, but this question was postponed.

Alarmed by the prospect of French power in Spain and by the proposed extension of the system of the allies to the New World, Canning protested against the doctrine of intervention, and determined that, if France was to become the mistress of Spain, she should at least not control the old Spanish empire. In the spring of 1823 he made an unsuccessful effort to secure a pledge from France not to acquire any Spanish-American possessions, either by conquest or by cession from Spain. But the French government maintained its reserve, even after England disclaimed for herself the intention of acquiring Spanish-American territory. [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, I., 19.]

Having broken with the concert of the European powers, it was natural that England should turn to the United States, and it is very likely that the next step of Canning was influenced by the dispatches of the British minister to the United States, who reported a conversation with Adams, in June, 1823, in which the secretary strongly set forth his belief that, in view of the virtual dissolution of the European alliance, England and the United States had much in common in their policy. "With respect to the vast continent of the West," said he, "the United States must necessarily take a warm and decided interest in whatever determined the fate or affected the welfare of its component members." But he disclaimed any wish on the part of this country to obtain exclusive advantages there. He urged that England ought to recognize the independence of the revolted provinces, and he deprecated the conquest or cession of any part of them. [Footnote: Stratford Canning to George Canning, June 6, 1823, MSS. Foreign Office, America, CLXXVI; Adams, Memoirs, VI., 151; cf. Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 83.]

The first impression of the British minister, on hearing Adams's emphasis on the community of interests between the two nations, was that the secretary was suggesting an alliance; and it may well have been that Canning was encouraged by the American attitude to make overtures to Rush, the American minister, shortly after these dispatches must have reached him. On August 16, 1823, and three times thereafter, Canning proposed a joint declaration by England and the United States against any project by a European power of "a forcible enterprise for reducing the colonies to subjugation, on the behalf or in the name of Spain; or which meditates the acquisition of any part of them to itself, by cession or by conquest." [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, II., 24; W. C. Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 415.] Canning was willing to make public announcement that the recovery of the colonies by Spain was hopeless; that the matter of recognition was only a question of time; and that Great Britain did not aim at the possession of any portion of them, but that it "could not see any part of them transferred to any other power with indifference." These professions Canning desired that the United States and England should mutually confide to each other and declare "in the face of the world."

Confronted with Canning's important proposition, Rush, who doubted the disinterestedness of England, prudently attempted to exact a preliminary recognition of the Spanish-American republics; if Canning would agree to take this action, he would accept the responsibility of engaging in such a declaration. [Footnote: Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 420, 423.] Having failed in four successive efforts to persuade Rush to join in an immediate declaration, irrespective of prior recognition by England, Canning proceeded alone, and, in an interview with Polignac, the French minister in London, on October 9, 1823, he announced substantially the principles which he had expressed to the American minister. [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, II., 26.] Polignac thereupon disclaimed for France any intention to appropriate Spanish possessions in America, and abjured any design, on the part of his country, of acting against the colonies by force; but he significantly added that the future relations between Spain and her colonies ought to form a subject of discussion between the European powers. Acting on this idea, and in opposition to England's wishes, an invitation was sent to Russia, Prussia, and Austria to confer at Paris on the relations of Spain and her revolted provinces.

Rush's despatches relating the overtures of Canning reached President Monroe [Footnote: Ford, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 684.] October 9, 1823, on the same day that Canning was interviewing Polignac. Adams was absent from Washington at the time, and Monroe, returning to Virginia, consulted ex-Presidents Jefferson and Madison. He clearly intimated his own belief that the present case might be an exception to the general maxim against entanglement in European politics, and was evidently willing to accept the proposal of the British government. [Footnote: Monroe, Writings, VI., 323.]

To Jefferson [Footnote: Ibid., VI., 394.] the question seemed the most momentous since the Declaration of Independence. One nation, most of all, he thought, could disturb America in its efforts to have an independent system, and that nation, England, now offered "to lead, aid, and accompany us in it." He believed that by acceding to her proposition her mighty weight would be brought into the scale of free government, and "emancipate a continent at one stroke." Construing the English proposition to be a maintenance of our own principle of "keeping out of our land all foreign-powers," he was ready to accept Canning's invitation. He was even ready to yield his desire for the annexation or independence of Cuba, in order to obtain England's co-operation. Madison, [Footnote: Madison, Writings (ed. of 1865), III., 339-341.] also, was prepared to accept the English proposal, and to invite that government to join in disapproval of the campaign of France in Spain and in a declaration in behalf of the Greeks.

Thus, by a strange operation of fate, members of the "Virginia dynasty," the traditional antagonists of England, were now willing to accept her leadership in American affairs, and were inclined to mingle in European concerns in opposition to the Holy Alliance. By an equally strange chance, it was a statesman from New England, the section traditionally friendly to British leadership, who prevented the United States from casting itself into the arms of England at this crisis, and who summoned his country to stand forth independently as the protector of an American system.

When John Quincy Adams learned of Canning's proposals, he had just been engaged in a discussion with the representative of the czar, who informed him of the refusal of Russia to recognize the Spanish- American republics, and expressed the hope that America would continue her policy of neutrality.

While the cabinet had Rush's dispatches under consideration, Adams received a second communication from the Russian minister, expounding the reactionary ideas of the Holy Alliance. [Footnote: Ford, in Mass. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 378, 395, 402-408.] To the secretary of state this was a challenge to defend the American ideas of liberty. Convinces that his Country ought to decline the overture of Great Britain and avow its principles explicitly to Russia and France, "rather than to come in as a cock- boat in the wake of the British man-of-war," Adams informed the president that the reply to Russia and the instructions to Rush in England must be part of a combined system of policy. "The ground that I wish to take," he said, "is that of earnest remonstrance against the interference of European powers by force with South America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe; to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 178, 194, 197, 199-212.]

In the cabinet he stood firmly against giving guarantees to England with respect to Cuba. He heartened up his colleagues, who were alarmed at the possibility of the spread of war to the United States; but at the same time that he dismissed this danger as remote he pictured to the cabinet the alarming alternatives in case the allies subjugated Spanish America: California, Peru, and Chili might fall to Russia; Cuba, to England; and Mexico, to France. The danger was even at our doors, he declared, for within a few days the minister of France had openly threatened to recover Louisiana. [Footnote: Ibid., VI., 207; cf. Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXIII, Nos. 9, 10.] Such suggestions exhibit the real significance of the problem, which in truth involved the question of whether America should lie open to seizure by rival European nations, each fearful lest the other gain an undue advantage. It was time for the United States to take its stand against intervention in this hemisphere.

Monroe was persuaded by Adams to change the first draught of his message, in which the president criticized the invasion of Spain by France and recommended the acknowledgment of the independence of the Greeks, in terms which seemed to threaten war with Europe on European questions. Even Webster and Clay, in fervent orations, showed themselves ready to go far towards committing the United States to an unwise support of the cause of the Greeks, which at this time was deeply stirring the sympathy of the United States. On the other hand, Adams stood firmly on the well-established doctrine of isolation from Europe, and of an independent utterance, by the United States, as the leader in the New World, of the principles of a purely American system. In the final draught, these ideas were all accepted, as well as the principles affirmed by Adams in his conferences with the Russian minister.

When sent to Congress, on December 2, 1823, Monroe's message asserted "as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers." This was in effect the proclamation of the end of a process that began with Columbus, Cabot, and Cartier—the rivalry of the nations of the Old World in the discovery, occupation, and political control of the wild lands of the western hemisphere. The interpretation by the next administration left the enforcement of this general principle to the various American states according to their interests. [Footnote: See chap. xvi. below]

The message further dealt with the determination of the United States not to meddle with European affairs. "It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced," said Monroe, "that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America." This declaration expressed the consciousness that there was a real American system contrasted with that of Europe and capable of separate existence.

Finally, the message met the immediate crisis by a bold assertion of the policy of the United States: "We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that we should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 207-218; cf. Hart, Foundations of Am. Foreign Policy, chap. vii.] Herein was the assertion of the well- established opposition of the United States to the doctrine of intervention as violating the equality of nations. It was the affirmation also of the equality of the Old and the New World in diplomatic relations, and the announcement of the paramount interest of the United States in American affairs. [Footnote: Moore, "Non- Intervention and the Monroe Doctrine," in Harper's Mag., CIX., 857.]

This classic statement of the position of the United States in the New World, therefore, applied an old tendency on the part of this country to a particular exigency. Its authorship can hardly be attributed to any single individual, but its peculiar significance at this juncture lay in the fact that the United States came forward, unconnected with Europe, as the champion of the autonomy and freedom of America, and declared that the era of European colonization in the New World had passed away. The idea of an American system, under the leadership of the United States, unhampered by dependence upon European diplomacy, had been eloquently and clearly voiced by Henry Clay in 1820. But John Quincy Adams also reached the conception of an independent American system, and to him belongs the credit for the doctrine that the two Americas were closed to future political colonization. His office of secretary of state placed him where he was able to insist upon a consistent, clear-cut, and independent expression of the doctrine of an American system. Monroe's was the honor of taking the responsibility for these utterances. [Footnote: Cf. Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, chap, v.; and Ford, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 676, VIII., 28.]

Canning afterwards boasted, "I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III., 227.] Unquestionably his determination that "if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies," materially contributed to make effective the protest of the United States, and he recognized the value of the president's message in putting an end to the proposal of a European congress. "It was broken," said he, "in all its limbs before, but the president's message gives it the coup de grace." [Footnote: Stapleton, George Canning and His Times, 395.]

Nevertheless, the assertion by the United States of an American system independent of Europe, and the proposed exclusion of Europe from further colonization were, in truth, as obnoxious to England as they were to France. [Footnote: Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 98.] "The great danger of the time," declared Canning in 1825, shortly after the British recognition of Mexico, "—a danger which the policy of the European system would have fostered—was a division of the world into European and American, republican and monarchical; a league of worn-out governments on the one hand and of youthful and stirring nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. WE slip in between, and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have gotten the start of us in vain, and we link once more America to Europe." On December 17, 1824, Canning wrote: "Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our matters sadly, she is English, and novus saeclorum nascitur ordo." [Footnote: Festing, J.H. Frere and His Friends, 267, quoted by E.M. Lloyd, in Royal Hist. Soc. Transactions (new series), XVIII., 77, 93.]

Later events were to reveal how unsubstantial were the hopes of the British minister. For the present, his hands were tied by the fact that England and the United States had a common interest in safeguarding Spanish America; and the form of Monroe's declaration seemed less important than its effectiveness in promoting this result. In the United States the message was received with approbation. Although Clay, from considerations of policy, withdrew a resolution which he presented to Congress (January 20,1824), giving legislative endorsement to the doctrine, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1104, II., 2763.] there was no doubt of the sympathy of the American people with its fundamental principles. Together with the attitude of England, it put an end to the menace of the Holy Alliance on this side of the ocean, and it began a new chapter, yet unfinished, in the history of the predominance of the United States in the New World.



CHAPTER XIII

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS (1818-1824)

The transformation by which the slender line of the Indian trail became the trader's trace, and then a road, superseded by the turnpike and canal, and again replaced by the railroad, is typical of the economic development of the United States. As the population of the west increased, its surplus products sought outlets. Improved means of communication became essential, and when these were furnished the new lines of internal trade knitted the nation into organic unity and replaced the former colonial dependence upon Europe, in the matter of commerce, by an extensive domestic trade between the various sections. From these changes flowed important political results. [Footnote: For the earlier phase of internal improvements, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.]

Many natural obstacles checked this process. The Appalachian mountain system cut off the seaboard of the United States from the interior. From the beginning, the Alleghenies profoundly influenced the course of American history, and at one time even endangered the permanency of the Union. In our own day the railroad has so reduced the importance of these mountains that it is difficult for us to realize the part which they once played in our development. Although Webster boasted that there were no Alleghenies in his politics, we have already seen [Footnote: See chaps, iii., vi., above.] that in the twenties they exercised a dominant influence on the lines of internal commerce, and compelled the pioneer farmers to ship their surplus down the Mississippi to New Orleans and around the coast, and thence abroad and to the cities of the north. The difficult and expensive process of wagoning goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore across the mountains to the Ohio Valley raised the price of manufactured goods to the western farmer; while, on the other hand, the cost of transportation for his crops left him little profit and reduced the value of his lands. [Footnote: Journ. of Polit. Econ., VIII., 36-41.]

Under these circumstances, it was inevitable that the natural opportunities furnished by the water system of the Great Lakes and the widely ramifying tributaries of the Mississippi should appeal to statesmen who considered the short distances that intervened between these navigable waters and the rivers that sought the Atlantic. Turnpikes and canals had already shown themselves practicable and profitable in England, so a natural effort arose to use them in aid of that movement for connecting east and west by ties of interest which Washington had so much at heart. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all subdivided by the mountains into eastern and western sections, fostered roads and chartered turnpike and canal companies. Pennsylvania was pre-eminent in this movement even before the close of the eighteenth century, subscribing large amounts to the stock of turnpike companies in order to promote the trade between Philadelphia and the growing population in the region of Pittsburgh. So numerous were the projects and beginnings of roads and canals in the nation, that as early as 1808 the far-sighted Gallatin made his famous report for a complete national system of roads and canals. [Footnote: Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am. Nation, XVI.), chap. iii.]

When New York undertook the Erie Canal in 1817 as a state enterprise, and pushed it to such a triumphant conclusion that before a decade after its completion its tolls repaid the cost of construction, a revolution was effected in transportation. The cheapness of water carriage not only compelled the freighters on the turnpike roads to lower their charges, but also soon made it probable that canals would supersede land transportation for heavy freights, and even for passengers. For a time the power of Pittsburgh and the activity of Philadelphia merchants sustained the importance of the Pennsylvania turnpike. Until Great Lake steam navigation developed and population spread along the shore of Lake Erie and canals joined the Ohio and the lakes, the Erie Canal did not reap its harvest of trade in the west. But already Pennsylvania was alarmed at the prospect of losing her commercial ascendancy. While New York and Philadelphia were developing canals and turnpikes to reach the west, Baltimore was placed in an awkward position. The attempts to improve the waters of the upper Potomac engaged the interests of Maryland and Virginia from the days of Washington. But the success of the Potomac Company, chartered jointly by these two states in an effort to reach the Ohio trade, would have turned traffic towards the city of Washington and its outlying suburbs instead of towards Baltimore, which was already connected by a turnpike with the Cumberland Road, so as to share with Philadelphia in the wagon trade to the Ohio. On the other hand, Baltimore was interested in the development of the Susquehanna's navigation, for this river had its outlet in Chesapeake Bay, near enough to Baltimore to make that city its entrepot; and it tapped the great valley of Pennsylvania as well as the growing agricultural area of south-central New York, which was not tributary to the Erie Canal. But it was not possible to expect New York, Pennsylvania, or even that part of Maryland interested in the Potomac to aid these ambitions of Baltimore; and that city found itself at a disadvantage and Maryland's interests were divided. [Footnote: Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIII., 69 et seq.; Mills, Treatise on Inland Navig.; see chap, xvii., below.]

Meantime, Virginia, anxious to check the western exodus from the interior of her state, established a state fund and a board of public works for the improvement of her rivers, including the project of connecting the James and Kanawha. [Footnote: Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Adams, United States, IX., 164.] North Carolina was agitating similar plans; [Footnote: Murphy, Memorial on Internal Improvements; Weaver, Internal Improvements in N. C., in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXI, 113.] and South Carolina made appropriations for extensive improvements.

New England devoted her attention to canals along the seaboard and up the Connecticut Valley, to give the products of the interior of that section an outlet on the coast. Boston was feeling the isolation from the western trade that was enriching New York, and some voices were raised in favor of a canal to reach the Hudson; but the undertaking was too difficult, and the metropolis of New England devoted its energies to the ocean commerce.

Meantime, the west was urging the federal government to construct those interstate roads and canals which were essential to the prosperity of that section and which could not be undertaken by jealous and conflicting states. The veto by Madison of Calhoun's bonus bill, in 1817, [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] was followed nine months later by Monroe's first annual message, [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 18.] in which he stated his belief that the Constitution did not empower Congress to establish a system of internal improvements, and recommended an amendment to convey the power. To Clay and the friends of internal improvements, these constitutional scruples of the Virginia dynasty, although accompanied by approval of the plan of a system of internal improvements at federal expense, came as a challenge. In an important debate on the constitutionality of national internal improvements, in 1818, the House of Representatives, voting on four resolutions submitted by Lowndes, of South Carolina, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1249] declared that Congress had power to appropriate money for the construction of military roads, and of other roads, and of canals, and for the improvement of watercourses (89 ayes to 75 nays). [Footnote: By count of names; the Journal gives ayes 90.] But after a debate which turned on the significance of the word "establish" in the Constitution, the House decided against the power to construct post-roads and military roads (81 to 84); against the power to construct roads and canals necessary to commerce between the states (71 to 95); and against the power to construct canals for military purposes (81 to 83).

It was clear after this debate that there was not a sufficient majority to override the veto which might be expected from the president. On the other hand, the majority were unwilling to hazard the rights which they claimed to possess, by appealing to the states for a constitutional amendment. The next year Calhoun, the secretary of war, responding to an invitation of Congress, submitted a report outlining a comprehensive system of internal improvements requisite for the defense of the United States. While avoiding an opinion on the question of constitutionality, he declared that a judicious system of roads and canals, constructed for commerce and the mail, would be "itself among the most efficient means for the more complete defense of the United States"; [Footnote: Am. State Papers, Miscellaneous, 534.] and he favored the use of the engineering corps for surveying the routes and of federal troops for the actual work of construction.

By 1818 the National Road [Footnote: Cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Young, Cumberland Road, 15; Hulbert, Historic Highways, X., chap. i.] had been constructed from Cumberland, on the Potomac, across the mountains to Wheeling, on the Ohio, and two years later Congress made appropriations for a survey of the road westward to the Mississippi River. The panic of 1819, however, left the treasury in such a condition that it was not until 1822 that the preservation and construction of this highway was again taken up with vigor. In that year a bill was introduced authorizing the president to cause toll-houses, gates, and turnpikes to be erected on the Cumberland Road, and to appoint toll-gatherers, with power to enforce the collection of tolls to be used for the preservation of the road. The bill further provided for a system of fines for violation of the laws of the road. It therefore involved the question of the right of jurisdiction as well as of construction.

The measure passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 87 to 68. The districts along the line of the Potomac and the Ohio, and the regions tributary to the road in Pennsylvania and western Virginia, were almost a unit in favor of the bill. Indeed, the whole vote of the western states, with the exception of two members from Tennessee, was given in the affirmative. But Pittsburgh, which feared the diversion of her western trade to Baltimore, opposed the bill. The area along the Susquehanna which looked to Baltimore also voted in the negative, as did the majority of the delegation from New York, who were apprehensive of the effect of the National Road as a rival to the Erie Canal. The Senate passed the bill by the decisive vote of 29 to 7.

Monroe vetoed this measure, on the ground that it implied a power to execute a complete system of internal improvements, with the right of jurisdiction and sovereignty. Accompanying his veto (May 4, 1822), he submitted "Views on the Subject of Internal Improvements." [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 142-183; Monroe, Writings, VI., 216; Mason, Veto Power, 85; Nelson presidential Influence on Int. Imp. (Iowa Journal of Hist, and Politics), IV., 29, 30.] In this elaborate disquisition, he rehearsed the constitutional history of internal improvements, and expounded his conception of the construction of the Constitution, and of the relation of the states and the nation under the theory of divided sovereignty. Although he denied to the federal government the right of jurisdiction and construction, he asserted that Congress had unlimited power to raise money, and that "in its appropriation, they have a discretionary power, restricted only by their duty to appropriate it to purposes of common defense and of general, not local, national, not state, benefit." Nevertheless, he strongly recommended a system of internal improvements, if it could be established by means of a constitutional amendment. Both houses sustained the president's veto.

Acting upon Monroe's intimation of the power to appropriate money, and following the line of least resistance, the next year an act was passed making appropriations for repairs of the Cumberland Road. On March 3, 1823, also, was signed the first of the national acts for the improvement of harbors. [Footnote: U. S. Statutes at Large, III., 780.] The irresistible demand for better internal communications and the development of a multitude of local projects, chief among them a new plan for uniting Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio by a canal along the Potomac, resulted, in 1824, in the introduction of the general survey bill, authorizing the president to cause surveys to be made for such roads and canals as he deemed of national importance for commercial, military, or postal purposes. The evident intention of the bill was to prepare a programme for appropriations for internal improvements on a national scale, and for subscription to the stock of companies engaged in these enterprises. The discussion of the general survey bill brought out the significance of the problem of transportation, and revealed the sectional divisions of the nation in clear light.

Henry Clay made an earnest effort to commit Congress to the exercise of the power of construction of interstate highways and canals which could not be undertaken by individual states or by combinations of states, and which, if built at all, must be by the nation. He recounted the attention given by Congress to the construction of public buildings and light-houses, coast surveys, erection of sea- walls in the Atlantic states—"everything on the margin of the ocean, but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1035.] "Not one stone," he said, "had yet been broken, not one spade of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted as fully the power to construct roads and canals for the benefit of circulation and trade in the interior as it did the power to promote coastwise traffic. His speech was a strong assertion of the right of the west to equality of treatment with the old sections of the country. "A new world," said he, "has come into being since the Constitution was adopted. Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen states, of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen states, as they existed at the formation of the present Constitution, forever to remain the rule of its interpretation?" [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1315; Colton, Private Corresp. of Clay, 81.]

In contrast with the united attitude of the west upon internal improvements, which Henry Clay voiced with such lofty accent, the south showed divisions which reflected opposing economic interests in the section. Not only were the representatives of Maryland almost a unit in support of the bill, but also the western districts of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as a considerable fraction of the representatives from South Carolina and Georgia, supported the cause of the west on this occasion.

The opposition in the south found, perhaps, its most inflexible expression in the speech of John Randolph, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1296-1311.] who, with characteristic recklessness and irresponsibility, dragged from its closet the family skeleton of the south, and warned his fellow slaveholders that, if Congress possessed power to do what was proposed by the bill, they might emancipate every slave in the United States, "and with stronger color of reason than they can exercise the power now contended for." He closed by threatening the formation of associations and "every other means short of actual insurrection." "We shall keep on the windward side of treason," said he. [Footnote: Cf. Macon's identical views in 1818 and 1824, Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 47, 72.]

On the other hand, McDuffie, of South Carolina, the friend and protege of Calhoun and a later leader of the nullification forces, supported the measure and spoke as earnestly in favor of a liberal construction of the Constitution as any of the most enthusiastic supporters of the bill. He declared that the constitutional convention "did not regard the state governments as sentinels upon the watch-towers of freedom, or in any respect more worthy of confidence than the general government."

When the bill came to the final vote in the House of Representatives, New England gave 12 votes in favor and 26 against; the middle states, 37 to 26 (New York, 7 to 24); the south, 23 to 34; the west, 43 to 0. Thus the bill carried by 115 to 86. As the map shows, the opposition was chiefly located in New England and New York and in a fragment of the old south. The entire west, including the southwestern slave states, with Pennsylvania and the Potomac Valley, acted together. In the Senate, the vote stood 24 to 18. Here New England gave an almost solid vote against the bill.

Thus by the close of Monroe's administration the forces of nationalism seemed to have triumphed in the important field of internal improvements. It was the line of least resistance then, as it had been in the days of the Annapolis Convention. [Footnote: McLaughlin, Confederation and Constitution (Am. Nation, X.), chap, xi.]



CHAPTER XIV

THE TARIFF OF 1824 (1820-1824)

As has been shown in the last chapter, the attitude of portions of the south towards strict construction was not inveterate upon measures which promised advantages to that section. But the tariff struggle revealed the spirit which arose when powers were asserted unfavorable to any section. The failure of the tariff bill of 1820 [Footnote: See above, chap. ix.] was followed by other unsuccessful attempts to induce a majority of Congress to revive the subject. The messages of Monroe favored a moderate increase of duties; but it was not until 1824, after the return of Henry Clay and his triumphant election to the speakership, that Congress showed a protectionist majority ably disciplined and led. [Footnote: For previous tariff history, cf. Babcock, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xiv.]

The tariff bill of 1824 was supported, not as a revenue, but as a protective measure. It proposed an increase of the duty upon iron, hemp, cotton bagging, woolens, and cottons. Upon woolen goods, the friends of protection desired to apply the minimum principle which the tariff of 1816 had provided for cotton goods. But the cheap woolens were mostly used for the clothing of southern slaves, and the proposition for an increase of duty met with so strenuous a resistance that in the outcome the cheap foreign goods bore a lower rate of duty than did the high-priced products. Although the act somewhat increased the protection upon woolen fabrics as a whole, this was more than offset by the increased duty which was levied upon raw wool in response to the demand of the wool-raising interests of the country. [Footnote: Taussig, Tariff Hist., 75.]

Another struggle occurred over the protection of hemp. This product was used both for the manufacture of the ropes essential to New England shipping and for the cotton bagging used in the south. Thus the shipping and the slave-holding sections were brought into union in opposition to the provision. Nevertheless, this important Kentucky interest received a substantial protection. The attempt to secure a marked increase of the duty on iron bars resulted in a compromise proposition which satisfied neither party and had little effect upon domestic manufacture, while it increased the cost to the consumer. The Senate amendments reduced the proposed rates on the most important articles, so that, on the whole, the extreme protectionists failed to carry their programme, although the bill increased the duties upon the articles most essential to the shipping and planting sections sufficiently to leave great discontent. [Footnote: Stanwood, Amer. Tariff Controversies, I., chap. vii.]

In the debates upon this tariff, Henry Clay led the protectionist forces, basing his arguments upon the general distress of the country, which he explained by the loss of the foreign market for agricultural products, and which he would remedy by building up a home market by means of the support of manufactures—the creation of an "American system." "We must naturalize the arts in our country," said he. Not the least significant portion of his plea for protection was that in which he called attention to the great diversity of interests—"agricultural, planting, farming, commercial, navigating, fishing, manufacturing"—within the United States. Some of these interests were, as he said, peculiar to particular sections. "The inquiry should be in reference to the great interests of every section of the Union (I speak not of minute subdivisions); what would be done for those interests if that section stood alone and separated from the residue of the Republic? If they come into absolute collision with the interests of another section, a reconciliation, if possible, should be attempted, by mutual concession, so as to avoid a sacrifice of the prosperity of either to that of the other." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., II., 1997; cf. Clay's letter to Brooke, August 28, 1823, Clay, Private Corresp., 81.]

Perhaps the ablest speech on the other side was that of Webster, [Footnote: Webster, Writings (National ed.), V., 94-149.] who ridiculed Clay's discovery. "This favorite American policy," said he, "is what America has never tried, and this odious foreign policy is what, as we are told, foreign states have never pursued." He denied the existence of general depression, although he admitted that profits were lower and prices considerably depressed. Webster's argument included an analysis of the theory of protection as against free-trade, in which he made a classical statement of the opposition to protection. In short, he represented the attitude of the commercial classes, particularly those of New England, whose interests were injured by any restraint of the freedom of exchange. As yet these classes exercised a dominant influence in Massachusetts.

Senator Hayne, of South Carolina, also argued the case against the tariff with a grasp and power of presentation that was hardly second to that of Webster. In particular he protested against compelling the planting regions to pay the cost of a protective system. Two- thirds of the whole amount of the domestic exports of the United States, he argued, were composed of cotton, rice, and tobacco, and from this trade arose the imports of manufactured goods which paid the revenues of the United States, and which the protective system rendered expensive and burdensome to his section. He warned the manufacturers that the south would repeal the system at the first opportunity, regardless of interests that might accrue under the proposed measure. [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 618.]

In the speeches of some of the representatives of the south was a note of revolt not to be found in Webster's argument. For the first time in the discussion of the tariff, the constitutional objection was made prominent. It was argued that the power to impose taxes and duties was given for the purpose of raising revenue, not for the purpose of protection. If not the letter, at least the spirit, of the Constitution was violated, so it was charged, by this distortion of the power of taxation. The proceedings of the constitutional convention were recited to show that a proposition conferring the alleged power was voted down. To this, Clay gave the reply that the clause on which the protectionists relied was the power to regulate commerce with foreign nations.

Even the south, however, laid less stress upon the constitutional argument than upon the injustice to the section. McDuffie, for example, replying to Clay, [Footnote: Ibid., II., 2400 et seq.] argued that no one of the great sections of the country, if it were a separate nation, could advantageously apply the system of protection. He warned the western states that the system would make them tributary to the Atlantic states, [Footnote: Ibid., II., 2423.] and that they had more to lose by alienating the friendship of the south for a system of internal improvements which should facilitate the sale of their meat products to the south than by a union with the manufacturing interests. With respect to the south itself, he declared that cotton, which alone constituted one-third of the whole export of the Union, was in danger of losing the market of England if we ceased to take the manufactures of that country. Protesting that the protective system would strike at the root of their prosperity, by enhancing the cost of the clothing of their slaves and the bagging used to cover their cotton-bales, while at the same time it put to hazard the sale of their great staple in the English market, he yet declared that, if the bill should pass, "even with a majority of a single vote, I shall, as bound by my allegiance, submit to it as one of the laws of my country."

But if this South Carolina leader represented the attitude of his state in showing moderation at this time, [Footnote: See Ames, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, p. 6.] not so did the free-lance John Randolph, of Virginia. "I do not stop here, sir," said he, "to argue about the constitutionality of this bill; I consider the Constitution a dead letter; I consider it to consist, at this time, of the power of the General Government and the power of the States— that is the Constitution." "I have no faith in parchment, sir; ... I have faith in the power of the commonwealth of which I am an unworthy son." "If, under a power to regulate trade, you prevent exportation; if, with the most approved spring lancets, you draw the last drop of blood from our veins; if, secundum artem, you draw the last shilling from our pockets, what are the checks of the Constitution to us? A fig for the Constitution! When the scorpion's sting is probing to the quick, shall we stop to chop logic? ... There is no magic in this word union." While he threatened forcible resistance, he rejoiced in the combination of the shipping and commercial classes of New England with the south in opposition to the measure. "The merchants and manufacturers of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, the province of Maine and Sagadahock," said he, "repel this bill, whilst men in hunting-shirts, with deer-skin leggings and moccasins on their feet, want protection for manufactures."

The bill passed the House of Representatives on April 16, 1824, by the close vote of 107 to 102, and subsequently passed the Senate by a small majority:

New England Middle Region South M N V M R C T N N P D T M V N S G T e H t a I o o Y J a e o d a C C a o s n t l t t s n a a a l l l

Ayes . . .1 1 5 1 2 5 15 26 6 24 1 57 3 1 0 0 0 4 Nays . . .6 5 0 11 0 1 23 8 0 1 0 9 6 21 13 9 7 56

Northwest and Kentucky Southwest O I I M K T T A M L T h n l o y o e l i a o i d t n a s t Total o a n s a l l

Ayes . . .14 2 1 1 11 29 2 0 0 0 2 107 Nays . . . 0 0 0 0 0 0 7 3 1 3 14 102

By this analysis and the map, it is clear that the navigating states were in opposition, while the manufacturing states were generally in favor of the bill. The most important textile manufacturers of Massachusetts, however, were not advocates of protection at this time. The grain and wool producing states gave an overwhelming vote (91 to 9) in favor of the attempt to provide a home market. The planting states gave but 3 votes in favor to 64 against. [Footnote: See the analysis in Niles' Register, XXVI., 113.] By comparison with the map of the general survey bill, it is seen that the southern half of the west was in a state of unstable equilibrium on these sectional issues. It joined the Ohio Valley and the middle states in supporting a system of internal improvements, while it transferred its support to the old south on the question of the tariff. New England, on the other hand, although divided, tended to unite its strength with that of the south on both these measures. In general, the map reveals the process of forming a northern section in opposition to the south—the union of the Ohio Valley with the middle states against the alliance of the south Atlantic seaboard with the Gulf states. The division of forces exhibited in the Missouri struggle was strikingly like the division now revealed on the tariff question.

On the whole, the tariff of 1824 was distinctly a compromise measure. Although the ad valorem duties on cotton and woolen goods were raised, this was balanced by the doubled duty on raw wool. Nevertheless, it aroused the opposition of the entire planting section, at the same time that the manufacturers of woolen goods felt that their interests had been sacrificed. The tariff question was, in fact, only postponed. In the history of party development, however, Clay's system of internal improvements and tariff, as shown in this session of Congress, had a significance not easily missed; and state sovereignty sentiment in the south grew steadily after these measures. [Footnote: See chapter xviii, below; cf. Antes, State Docs, on Federal Relations, No. 4, pp. 4-13.]



CHAPTER XV

THE ELECTION OF 1824 (1822-1825)

As we have seen, [Footnote: See above, chap. x.] the dissensions in Monroe's cabinet approached the point of rupture by the spring and summer of 1822, when the spectacle was presented of the friends of the secretary of the treasury making war upon the measures of the secretary of war, and even antagonizing the president himself. Crawford's followers gained the name of the "radicals," and declared as their principles, democracy, economy, and reform. [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 56; Mass. Hist. Soc., Proceedings, XIX., 40.] Professing to represent the pure Jeffersonian republicanism of the "Revolution of 1800," they appealed to the adherents of the Virginia school of politics for support. [Footnote: Edwards, Illinois, 489.] Jefferson, although refusing to come out openly, was clearly in sympathy with Crawford's candidacy: he believed that the old parties still continued, although under different names, and that the issue would finally be reduced to a contest between a northern and a southern candidate.

"You see," said he, in a letter to Gallatin, "many calling themselves Republicans and preaching the rankest doctrine of the old Federalists. One of the prominent candidates [Adams] is presumed to be of this party; the other [Crawford] a Republican of the old school, and a friend to the barrier of state rights, as provided by the Constitution against the danger of consolidation." [Footnote: Jefferson, Writings (Ford's ed.), X., 235; cf. 225-227, 237, 261, 264, 280.] Pennsylvania and New York, he thought, would decide the question, and the issue would depend upon whether or not the "Missouri principle" became involved.