II

FEDERALISM AND REPUBLICANISM AS OPPONENTS

Fortunately for the American nation the unionists, who wrought the Constitution, were substantially the same body of men as the Federalist party who organized under its provisions an efficient national government. The work of Washington, Hamilton, and their associates during the first two administrations was characterized by the same admirable qualities as the work of the makers of the Constitution, and it is of similar importance. A vigorous, positive, constructive national policy was outlined and carried substantially into effect,—a policy that implied a faith in the powers of an efficient government to advance the national interest, and which justified the faith by actually meeting the critical problems of the time with a series of wise legislative measures. Hamilton's part in this constructive legislation was, of course, more important than it had been in the framing of the Constitution. During Washington's two administrations the United States was governed practically by his ideas, if not by his will; and the sound and unsound parts of his political creed can consequently be more definitely disentangled than they can be during the years when the Constitution was being wrought. The Constitution was in many respects a compromise, whereas the ensuing constructive legislation was a tolerably pure example of Hamiltonian Federalism. It will be instructive, consequently, to examine the trend of this Hamiltonian policy, and seek to discover wherein it started the country on the right path, and wherein it sought to commit the national government to a more dubious line of action.

Hamilton's great object as Secretary of the Treasury was that of making the organization of the national finances serve the cause of a constructive national policy. He wished to strengthen the Federal government by a striking exhibition of its serviceability, and by creating both a strong sentiment and an influential interest in its favor. To this end he committed the nation to a policy of scrupulous financial honesty, which has helped to make it ever since the mainstay of sound American finance. He secured the consent of Congress to the recognition at their face value of the debts incurred during the war both by the Confederacy and by the individual states. He created in the National Bank an efficient fiscal agent for the Treasury Department and a means whereby it could give stability to the banking system of the country. Finally he sought by means of his proposed fiscal and commercial policy to make the central government the effective promoter of a wholesome and many-sided national development. He detected the danger to political stability and self-control which would result from the continued growth of the United States as a merely agricultural and trading community, and he saw that it was necessary to cultivate manufacturing industries and technical knowledge and training, because diversified activity and a well-rounded social and economic life brings with it national balance and security.

Underlying the several aspects of Hamilton's policy can be discerned a definite theory of governmental functions. The central government is to be used, not merely to maintain the Constitution, but to promote the national interest and to consolidate the national organization. Hamilton saw clearly that the American Union was far from being achieved when the Constitution was accepted by the states and the machinery of the Federal government set in motion. A good start had been made, but the way in which to keep what had been gained was to seek for more. Unionism must be converted into a positive policy which labored to strengthen the national interest and organization, discredit possible or actual disunionist ideas and forces, and increase the national spirit. All this implied an active interference with the natural course of American economic and political business and its regulation and guidance in the national direction. It implied a conscious and indefatigable attempt on the part of the national leaders to promote the national welfare. It implied the predominance in American political life of the men who had the energy and the insight to discriminate between those ideas and tendencies which promoted the national welfare, and those ideas and tendencies whereby it was imperiled. It implied, in fine, the perpetuation of the same kind of leadership which had guided the country safely through the dangers of the critical period, and the perpetuation of the purposes which inspired that leadership.

So far I, at least, have no fault to find with implications of Hamilton's Federalism, but unfortunately his policy was in certain other respects tainted with a more doubtful tendency. On the persistent vitality of Hamilton's national principle depends the safety of the American republic and the fertility of the American idea, but he did not seek a sufficiently broad, popular basis for the realization of those ideas. He was betrayed by his fears and by his lack of faith. Believing as he did, and far more than he had any right to believe, that he was still fighting for the cause of social stability and political order against the seven devils of anarchy and dissolution, he thought it necessary to bestow upon the central government the support of a strong special interest. During the Constitutional Convention he had failed to secure the adoption of certain institutions which in his opinion would have established as the guardian of the Constitution an aristocracy of ability; and he now insisted all the more upon the plan of attaching to the Federal government the support of well-to-do people. As we have seen, the Constitution had been framed and its adoption secured chiefly by citizens of education and means; and the way had been prepared, consequently, for the attempt of Hamilton to rally this class as a class more than ever to the support of the Federal government. They were the people who had most to lose by political instability or inefficiency, and they must be brought to lend their influence to the perpetuation of a centralized political authority. Hence he believed a considerable national debt to be a good thing for the Federal national interest, and he insisted strenuously upon the assumption by the Federal government of the state war-debts. He conceived the Constitution and the Union as a valley of peace and plenty which had to be fortified against the marauders by the heavy ramparts of borrowed money and the big guns of a propertied interest.

In so doing Hamilton believed that he was (to vary the metaphor) loading the ship of state with a necessary ballast, whereas in truth he was disturbing its balance and preventing it from sailing free. He succeeded in imbuing both men of property and the mass of the "plain people" with the idea that the well-to-do were the peculiar beneficiaries of the American Federal organization, the result being that the rising democracy came more than ever to distrust the national government. Instead of seeking to base the perpetuation of the Union upon the interested motives of a minority of well-to-do citizens, he would have been far wiser to have frankly intrusted its welfare to the good-will of the whole people. But unfortunately he was prevented from so doing by the limitation both of his sympathies and ideas. He was possessed by the English conception of a national state, based on the domination of special privileged orders and interests; and he failed to understand that the permanent support of the American national organization could not be found in anything less than the whole American democracy. The American Union was a novel and a promising political creation, not because it was a democracy, for there had been plenty of previous democracies, and not because it was a nation, for there had been plenty of previous nations, but precisely and entirely because it was a democratic nation,—a nation committed by its institutions and aspirations to realize the democratic idea.

Much, consequently, as we may value Hamilton's work and for the most part his ideas, it must be admitted that the popular disfavor with which he came to be regarded had its measure of justice. This disfavor was indeed partly the result of his resolute adherence to a wise but an unpopular foreign policy; and the way in which this policy was carried through by Washington, Hamilton, and their followers, in spite of the general dislike which it inspired, deserves the warmest praise. But Hamilton's unpopularity was fundamentally due to deeper causes. He and his fellow-Federalists did not understand their fellow-countrymen and sympathize with their purposes, and naturally they were repaid with misunderstanding and suspicion. He ceased, after Washington's retirement, to be a national leader, and became the leader of a faction; and before his death his party ceased to be the national party, and came to represent only a section and a class. In this way it irretrievably lost public support, and not even the miserable failure of Jefferson's policy of embargo could persuade the American people to restore the Federalists to power. As a party organization they disappeared entirely after the second English war, and unfortunately much that was good in Hamilton's political point of view disappeared with the bad. But by its failure one good result was finally established. For better or worse the United States had become a democracy as well as a nation, and its national task was not that of escaping the dangers of democracy, but of realizing its responsibilities and opportunities.

It did not take Hamilton's opponents long to discover that his ideas and plans were in some respects inimical to democracy; and the consequence was that Hamilton was soon confronted by one of the most implacable and unscrupulous oppositions which ever abused a faithful and useful public servant. This opposition was led by Jefferson, and while it most unfortunately lacked Hamilton's statesmanship and sound constructive ideas, it possessed the one saving quality which Hamilton himself lacked: Jefferson was filled with a sincere, indiscriminate, and unlimited faith in the American people. He was according to his own lights a radical and unqualified democrat, and as a democrat he fought most bitterly what he considered to be the aristocratic or even monarchic tendency of Hamilton's policy. Much of the denunciation which he and his followers lavished upon Hamilton was unjust, and much of the fight which they put up against his measures was contrary to the public welfare. They absolutely failed to give him credit for the patriotism of his intentions or for the merit of his achievements, and their unscrupulous and unfair tactics established a baleful tradition in American party warfare. But Jefferson was wholly right in believing that his country was nothing, if not a democracy, and that any tendency to impair the integrity of the democratic idea could be productive only of disaster.

Unfortunately Jefferson's conception of democracy was meager, narrow, and self-contradictory; and just because his ideas prevailed, while Hamilton toward the end of his life lost his influence, the consequences of Jefferson's imperfect conception of democracy have been much more serious than the consequences of Hamilton's inadequate conception of American nationality. In Jefferson's mind democracy was tantamount to extreme individualism. He conceived a democratic society to be composed of a collection of individuals, fundamentally alike in their abilities and deserts; and in organizing such a society, politically, the prime object was to provide for the greatest satisfaction of its individual members. The good things of life which had formerly been monopolized by the privileged few, were now to be distributed among all the people. It was unnecessary, moreover, to make any very artful arrangements, in order to effect an equitable distribution. Such distribution would take care of itself, provided nobody enjoyed any special privileges and everybody had equal opportunities. Once these conditions were secured, the motto of a democratic government should simply be "Hands Off." There should be as little government as possible, because persistent governmental interference implied distrust in popular efficiency and good-will; and what government there was, should be so far as possible confided to local authorities. The vitality of a democracy resided in its extremities, and it would be diminished rather than increased by specialized or centralized guidance. Its individual members needed merely to be protected against privileges and to be let alone, whereafter the native goodness of human nature would accomplish the perfect consummation.

Thus Jefferson sought an essentially equalitarian and even socialistic result by means of an essentially individualistic machinery. His theory implied a complete harmony both in logic and in effect between the idea of liberty and the idea of equality; and just in so far as there is any antagonism between those ideas, his whole political system becomes unsound and impracticable. Neither is there any doubt as to which of these ideas Jefferson and his followers really attached the more importance. Their mouths have always been full of the praise of liberty; and unquestionably they have really believed it to be the corner-stone of their political and social structure. None the less, however, is it true that in so far as any antagonism has developed in American life between liberty and equality, the Jeffersonian Democrats have been found on the side of equality. Representing as they did the democratic principle, it is perfectly natural and desirable that they should fight the battle of equality in a democratic state; and their error has been, not their devotion to equality, but their inability to discern wherein any antagonism existed between liberty and equality, and the extent to which they were sacrificing a desirable liberty to an undesirable equality.

On this, as on so many other points, Hamilton's political philosophy was much more clearly thought out than that of Jefferson. He has been accused by his opponents of being the enemy of liberty; whereas in point of fact, he wished, like the Englishman he was, to protect and encourage liberty, just as far as such encouragement was compatible with good order, because he realized that genuine liberty would inevitably issue in fruitful social and economic inequalities. But he also realized that genuine liberty was not merely a matter of a constitutional declaration of rights. It could be protected only by an energetic and clear-sighted central government, and it could be fertilized only by the efficient national organization of American activities. For national organization demands in relation to individuals a certain amount of selection, and a certain classification of these individuals according to their abilities and deserts. It is just this kind or effect of liberty which Jefferson and his followers have always disliked and discouraged. They have been loud in their praise of legally constituted rights; but they have shown an instinctive and an implacable distrust of intellectual and moral independence, and have always sought to suppress it in favor of intellectual and moral conformity. They have, that is, stood for the sacrifice of liberty—in so far as liberty meant positive intellectual and moral achievement—to a certain kind of equality.

I do not mean to imply by the preceding statement that either Jefferson or his followers were the conscious enemies of moral and intellectual achievement. On the contrary, they appeared to themselves in their amiable credulity to be the friends and guardians of everything admirable in human life; but their good intentions did not prevent them from actively or passively opposing positive intellectual and moral achievement, directed either towards social or individual ends. The effect of their whole state of mind was negative and fatalistic. They approved in general of everything approvable; but the things of which they actively approved were the things which everybody in general was doing. Their point of view implied that society and individuals could be made better without actually planning the improvement or building up an organization for the purpose; and this assertion brings me to the deepest-lying difference between Hamilton and Jefferson. Jefferson's policy was at bottom the old fatal policy of drift, whose distorted body was concealed by fair-seeming clothes, and whose ugly face was covered by a mask of good intentions. Hamilton's policy was one of energetic and intelligent assertion of the national good. He knew that the only method whereby the good could prevail either in individual or social life was by persistently willing that it should prevail and by the adoption of intelligent means to that end. His vision of the national good was limited; but he was absolutely right about the way in which it was to be achieved.

Hamilton was not afraid to exhibit in his own life moral and intellectual independence. He was not afraid to incur unpopularity for pursuing what he believed to be a wise public policy, and the general disapprobation under which he suffered during the last years of his life, while it was chiefly due, as we have seen, to his distrust of the American democracy, was also partly due to his high conception of the duties of leadership. Jefferson, on the other hand, afforded an equally impressive example of the statesman who assiduously and intentionally courted popular favor. It was, of course, easy for him to court popular favor, because he understood the American people extremely well and really sympathized with them; but he never used the influence which he thereby obtained for the realization of any positive or formative purpose, which might be unpopular. His policy, while in office, was one of fine phrases and temporary expedients, some of which necessarily incurred odium, but none of which were pursued by him or his followers with any persistence. Whatever the people demanded, their leaders should perform, including, if necessary, a declaration of war against England. It was to be a government of and by the people, not a government for the people by popular but responsible leaders; and the leaders to whom the people delegated their authority had in theory no right to pursue an unpopular policy. The people were to guide their leaders, not their leaders the people; and any intellectual or moral independence and initiative on the part of the leaders in a democracy was to be condemned as undemocratic. The representatives of a Sovereign people were in the same position as the courtiers of an absolute monarch. It was their business to flatter and obey.

III

FEDERALISM AND REPUBLICANISM AS ALLIES

It is not surprising, consequently, that Jefferson, who had been a lion in opposition, was transformed by the assumption of power into a lamb. Inasmuch as he had been denouncing every act of the Federalists since the consummation of the Union as dangerous to American liberties or as inimical to the public welfare, it was to be anticipated, when he and his party assumed office, that they would seek both to tear down the Federalist structure and rear in its place a temple of the true Republican faith. Not only did nothing of the kind follow, but nothing of the kind was even attempted. Considering the fulminations of the Republicans during the last ten years of Federalist domination, Jefferson's first Inaugural is a bewildering document. The recent past, which had but lately been so full of dangers, was ignored; and the future, the dangers of which were much more real, was not for the moment considered. Jefferson was sworn in with his head encircled by a halo of beautiful phrases; and he and his followers were so well satisfied with this beatific vision that they entirely overlooked the desirability of redeeming their own past or of providing for their country's future. Sufficient unto the day was the popularity thereof. The Federalists themselves must be conciliated, and the national organization achieved by them is by implication accepted. The Federalist structure, so recently the prison of the free American spirit, becomes itself a large part of the temple of democracy. The Union is no longer inimical to liberty. For the first time we begin to hear from good Republican mouths, some sacred words about the necessary connection of liberty and union. Jefferson celebrated his triumph by adopting the work, if not the creed, of his adversaries.

The adoption by Jefferson and the Republicans of the political structure of their opponents is of an importance hardly inferior to that of the adoption of the Constitution by the states. It was the first practical indication that democracy and Federalism were not as radically antagonistic as their extreme partisans had believed; and it was also the first indication that the interests which were concealed behind the phrases of the two parties were not irreconcilable. When the democracy rallied to the national organization, the American state began to be a democratic nation. The alliance was as yet both fragile and superficial. It was founded on a sacrifice by the two parties, not merely of certain errors and misconceptions, but also of certain convictions, which had been considered essential. The Republicans tacitly admitted the substantial falsity of their attacks upon the Federal organization. The many Federalists who joined their opponents abandoned without scruple the whole spirit and purpose of the Hamiltonian national policy. But at any rate the reconciliation was accomplished. The newly founded American state was for the time being saved from the danger of being torn asunder by two rival factions, each representing irreconcilable ideas and interests. The Union, which had been celebrated in 1789, was consummated in 1801. Its fertility was still to be proved.

When Jefferson and the Republicans rallied to the Union and to the existing Federalist organization, the fabric of traditional American democracy was almost completely woven. Thereafter the American people had only to wear it and keep it in repair. The policy announced in Jefferson's first Inaugural was in all important respects merely a policy of conservatism. The American people were possessed of a set of political institutions, which deprived them of any legitimate grievances and supplied them with every reasonable opportunity; and their political duty was confined to the administration of these institutions in a faithful spirit and their preservation from harm. The future contained only one serious danger. Such liberties were always open to attack, and there would always be designing men whose interest it was to attack them. The great political responsibility of the American democracy was to guard itself against such assaults; and should they succeed in this task they need have no further concern about their future. Their political salvation was secure. They had placed it, as it were, in a good sound bank. It would be sure to draw interest provided the bank were conservatively managed—that is, provided it were managed by loyal Republicans. There was no room or need for any increase in the fund, because it already satisfied every reasonable purpose. But it must not be diminished; and it must not be exposed to any risk of diminution by hazardous speculative investments.

During the next fifty years, the American democracy accepted almost literally this Jeffersonian tradition. Until the question of slavery became acute, they ceased to think seriously about political problems. The lawyers were preoccupied with certain important questions of constitutional interpretation, which had their political implications; but the purpose of these expositions of our fundamental law was the affirmation, the consolidation, and towards the end, the partial restriction of the existing Federalist organization. In this as in other respects the Americans of the second and third generations were merely preserving what their fathers had wrought. Their political institutions were good, in so far as they were not disturbed. They might become bad, only in case they were perverted. The way to guard against such perversion was, of course, to secure the election of righteous democrats. From the traditional American point of view, it was far more important to get the safe candidates elected than it was to use the power so obtained for any useful political achievement. In the hands of unsafe men,—that is, one's political opponents,—the government might be perverted to dangerous uses, whereas in the hands of safe men, it could at best merely be preserved in safety. Misgovernment was a greater danger than good government was a benefit, because good government, particularly on the part of Federal officials, consisted, apart from routine business, in letting things alone. Thus the furious interest, which the good American took in getting himself and his associates elected, could be justified by reasons founded on the essential nature of the traditional political system.

The good American democrat had, of course, another political duty besides that of securing the election of himself and his friends. His political system was designed, not merely to deprive him of grievances, but to offer him superlative opportunities. In taking the utmost advantage of those opportunities, he was not only fulfilling his duty to himself, but he was helping to realize the substantial purpose of democracy. Just as it was the function of the national organization to keep itself undefiled and not to interfere, so it was his personal function to make hay while the sun was shining. The triumph of Jefferson and the defeat of Hamilton enabled the natural individualism of the American people free play. The democratic political system was considered tantamount in practice to a species of vigorous, licensed, and purified selfishness. The responsibilities of the government were negative; those of the individual were positive. And it is no wonder that in the course of time his positive responsibilities began to look larger and larger. This licensed selfishness became more domineering in proportion as it became more successful. If a political question arose, which in any way interfered with his opportunities, the good American began to believe that his democratic political machine was out of gear. Did Abolitionism create a condition of political unrest, and interfere with good business, then Abolitionists were wicked men, who were tampering with the ark of the Constitution; and in much the same way the modern reformer, who proposes policies looking toward a restriction in the activity of corporations and stands in the way of the immediate transaction of the largest possible volume of business, is denounced as un-American. These were merely crude ways of expressing the spirit of traditional American democracy,—which was that of a rampant individualism, checked only by a system of legally constituted rights. The test of American national success was the comfort and prosperity of the individual; and the means to that end,—a system of unrestricted individual aggrandizement and collective irresponsibility.

The alliance between Federalism and democracy on which this traditional system was based, was excellent in many of its effects; but unfortunately it implied on the part of both the allies a sacrifice of political sincerity and conviction. And this sacrifice was more demoralizing to the Republicans than to the Federalists, because they were the victorious party. A central government, constructed on the basis of their democratic creed, would have been a government whose powers were smaller, more rigid, and more inefficiently distributed than those granted under our Federal Constitution—as may be seen from the various state constitutions subsequently written under Jeffersonian influence. When they obtained power either they should have been faithful to their convictions and tried to modify the Federal machinery in accordance therewith, or they should have modified their ideas in order to make them square with their behavior. But instead of seriously and candidly considering the meaning of their own actions, they opened their mouths wide enough to swallow their own past and then deliberately shut their eyes. They accepted the national organization as a fact and as a condition of national safety; but they rejected it as a lesson in political wisdom, and as an implicit principle of political action. By so doing they began that career of intellectual lethargy, superficiality, and insincerity which ever since has been characteristic of official American political thought.

This lack of intellectual integrity on the part of the American democracy both falsified the spirit in which our institutions had originated, and seriously compromised their future success. The Union had been wrought by virtue of vigorous, responsible, and enterprising leadership, and of sound and consistent political thinking. It was to be perpetuated by a company of men, who disbelieved in enterprising and responsible leadership, and who had abandoned and tended to disparage anything but the most routine political ideas. The American people, after passing through a period of positive achievement, distinguished in all history for the powerful application of brains to the solution of an organic political problem—the American people, after this almost unprecedented exhibition of good-will and good judgment, proceeded to put a wholly false interpretation on their remarkable triumph. They proceeded, also, to cultivate a state of mind which has kept them peculiarly liable to intellectual ineptitude and conformity. The mixture of optimism, conservatism, and superficiality, which has until recently characterized their political point of view, has made them almost blind to the true lessons of their own national experience.

The best that can be said on behalf of this traditional American system of political ideas is that it contained the germ of better things. The combination of Federalism and Republicanism which formed the substance of the system, did not constitute a progressive and formative political principle, but it pointed in the direction of a constructive formula. The political leaders of the "era of good feeling" who began to use with some degree of conviction certain comely phrases about the eternal and inseparable alliance between "liberty and union" were looking towards the promised land of American democratic fulfillment. As we shall see, the kind of liberty and the kind of union which they had in mind were by no means indissolubly and inseparably united; and both of these words had to be transformed from a negative and legal into a positive moral and social meaning before the boasted alliance could be anything but precarious and sterile. But if for liberty we substitute the word democracy, which means something more than liberty, and if for union, we substitute the phrase American nationality, which means so much more than a legal union, we shall be looking in the direction of a fruitful alliance between two supplementary principles. It can, I believe, be stated without qualification that wherever the nationalist idea and tendency has been divided from democracy, its achievements have been limited and partially sterilized. It can also be stated that the separation of the democratic idea from the national principle and organization has issued not merely in sterility, but in moral and political mischief. All this must remain mere assertion for the present; but I shall hope gradually to justify these assertions by an examination of the subsequent course of American political development.



CHAPTER III

I

THE DEMOCRATS AND THE WHIGS

The first phase of American political history was characterized by the conflict between the Federalists and the Republicans, and it resulted in the complete triumph of the latter. The second period was characterized by an almost equally bitter contest between the Democrats and the Whigs in which the Democrats represented a new version of the earlier Republican tradition and the Whigs a resurrected Federalism. The Democracy of Jackson differed in many important respects from the Republicanism of Jefferson, and the Whig doctrine of Henry Clay was far removed from the Federalism of Alexander Hamilton. Nevertheless, from 1825 to 1850, the most important fact in American political development continued to be a fight between an inadequate conception of democracy, represented by Jackson and his followers, and a feeble conception of American nationality, represented best by Henry Clay and Daniel Webster; and in this second fight the victory still rested, on the whole, with the Democrats. The Whigs were not annihilated as the Federalists had been. In the end they perished as a party, but not because of the assaults of their opponents, but because of their impotence in the face of a grave national crisis. Nevertheless, they were on all essential issues beaten by the Democrats; and on the few occasions on which they were victorious, their victories were both meaningless and fruitless.

The years between 1800 and 1825 were distinguished, so far as our domestic development was concerned, by the growth of the Western pioneer Democracy in power and self-consciousness. It was one of the gravest errors of Hamilton and the Federalists that they misunderstood and suspected the pioneer Democracy, just as it was one of the greatest merits of Jefferson that he early appreciated its importance and used his influence and power to advance its interests. The consequence was that the pioneers became enthusiastic and radical supporters of the Republican party. They repeated and celebrated the Jeffersonian catchwords with the utmost conviction. They became imbued with the spirit of the true Jeffersonian faith. They were, indeed, in many respects more Jeffersonian than Jefferson himself, and sought to realize some of his ideas with more energy and consistency. These ideas expressed and served their practical needs marvelously well, and if the formulas had not already been provided by Jefferson, they would most assuredly have been crystallized by the pioneer politicians of the day. The Jeffersonian creed has exercised a profound influence upon the thought of the American people, not because Jefferson was an original and profound thinker, but because of his ability to formulate popular opinions, prejudices, and interests.

It is none the less true that the pioneer Democracy soon came to differ with Jefferson about some important questions of public policy. They early showed, for instance, a lively disapproval of Jefferson's management of the crisis in foreign affairs, which preceded the War of 1812. Jefferson's policy of commercial embargo seemed pusillanimous to Jackson and the other Western Democrats. They did not believe in peaceful warfare; and their different conception of the effective way of fighting a foreign enemy was symptomatic of a profound difference of opinion and temper. The Western Democracy did not share Jefferson's amiable cosmopolitanism. It was, on the contrary, aggressively resolved to assert the rights and the interests of the United States against any suspicion of European aggrandizement. However much it preferred a let-alone policy in respect to the domestic affairs, all its instincts revolted against a weak foreign policy; and its instincts were outraged by the administration's policy of peaceful warfare, which injured ourselves so much more than it injured England, not only because the pioneers were fighting men by conviction and habit, but because they were much more genuinely national in their feelings than were Jefferson and Madison.

The Western Democrats finally forced Madison and the official Republican leaders to declare war against England, because Madison preferred even a foreign war to the loss of popularity; but Madison, although he accepted the necessity of war, was wholly incompetent to conduct it efficiently. The inadequacy of our national organization and our lack of national cohesion was immediately and painfully exhibited. The Republican superstition about militarism had prevented the formation of a regular army at all adequate to the demands of our national policy, and the American navy, while efficient so far as it went, was very much too small to constitute an effective engine of naval warfare. Moreover, the very Congress that clearly announced an intention of declaring war on Great Britain failed to make any sufficient provision for its energetic prosecution. The consequence of this short-sighted view of our national responsibilities is that the history of the War of 1812 makes painful reading for a patriotic American. The little American navy earned distinction, but it was so small that its successes did not prevent it from being shut off eventually from the high seas. The military operations were a succession of blunders both in strategy and in performance. On the northern frontier a series of incompetent generals led little armies of half-hearted soldiers to unnecessary defeats or at best to ineffectual victories; and the most conspicuous military success was won at New Orleans by the Western pioneers, who had no constitutional scruples about fighting outside of their own states, and who were animated by lively patriotic feelings. On the whole, however, the story makes humiliating reading, not because the national Capital was captured almost without resistance, or because we were so frequently beaten, but because our disorganization, the incompetence of the national government, and the disloyalty of so many Americans made us deserve both a less successful war and a more humiliating peace.

The chief interest of the second English war for the purpose of this book is, however, its clear indication of the abiding-place at that time of the American national spirit. That spirit was not found along the Atlantic coast, whose inhabitants were embittered and blinded by party and sectional prejudices. It was resident in the newer states of the West and the Southwest. A genuine American national democracy was coming into existence in that part of the country—a democracy which was as democratic as it knew how to be, while at the same time loyal and devoted to the national government. The pioneers had in a measure outgrown the colonialism of the thirteen original commonwealths. They occupied a territory which had in the beginning been part of the national domain. Their local commonwealths had not antedated the Federal Union, but were in a way children of the central government; and they felt that they belonged to the Union in a way that was rarely shared by an inhabitant of Massachusetts or South Carolina. Their national feeling did not prevent them from being in some respects extremely local and provincial in their point of view. It did not prevent them from resenting with the utmost energy any interference of the Federal government in what they believed to be their local affairs. But they were none the less, first and foremost, loyal citizens of the American Federal state.

II

THE NEW NATIONAL DEMOCRACY

We must consider carefully this earliest combination of the national with the democratic idea. The Western Democracy is important, not only because it played the leading part in our political history down to 1850, but precisely because it does offer, in a primitive but significant form, a combination of the two ideas, which, when united, constitute the formative principle in American political and social development. The way had been prepared for this combination by the Republican acceptance of the Federal organization, after that party had assumed power; but the Western Democrats took this alliance much more innocently than the older Republican leaders. They insisted, as we have seen, on a declaration of war against Great Britain; and humiliating as were the results of that war, this vigorous assertion of the national point of view, both exposed in clear relief the sectional disloyalty of the Federalists of New England and resulted later in an attempted revival of a national constructive policy. It is true that the regeneration of the Hamiltonian spirit belongs rather to the history of the Whigs than to the history of the Democrats. It is true, also, that the attempted revival at once brought out the inadequacy of the pioneer's conceptions both of the national and the democratic ideas. Nevertheless, it was their assertion of the national interest against a foreign enemy which provoked its renewed vitality in relation to our domestic affairs. Whatever the alliance between nationality and democracy, represented by the pioneers, lacked in fruitful understanding of the correlative ideas, at least it was solid alliance. The Western Democrats were suspicious of any increase of the national organization in power and scope, but they were even more determined that it should be neither shattered nor vitally injured. Although they were unable to grasp the meaning of their own convictions, the Federal Union really meant to them something more than an indissoluble legal contract. It was rooted in their life. It was one of those things for which they were willing to fight; and their readiness to fight for the national idea was the great salutary fact. Our country was thereby saved from the consequences of its distracting individualistic conception of democracy, and its merely legal conception of nationality. It was because the followers of Jackson and Douglas did fight for it, that the Union was preserved.

Be it immediately remarked, however, that the pioneer Democrats were obliged to fight for the Union, just because they were not interested in its progressive consummation. They willed at one and the same time that the Union should be preserved, but that it should not be increased and strengthened. They were national in feeling, but local and individualistic in their ideas; and these limited ideas were associated with a false and inadequate conception of democracy. Jefferson had taught them to believe that any increase of the national organization was inimical to democracy. The limitations of their own economic and social experience and of their practical needs confirmed them in this belief. Their manner of life made them at once thoroughly loyal and extremely insubordinate. They combined the sincerest patriotism with an energetic and selfish individualism; and they failed wholly to realize any discrepancy between these two dominant elements in their life. They were to love their country, but they were to work for themselves; and nothing wrong could happen to their country, provided they preserved its institutions and continued to enjoy its opportunities. Their failure to grasp the idea that the Federal Union would not take care of itself, prevented them from taking disunionist ideas seriously, and encouraged them to provoke a crisis, which, subsequently, their fundamental loyalty to the Union prevented from becoming disastrous. They expected their country to drift to a safe harbor in the Promised Land, whereas the inexorable end of a drifting ship is either the rocks or the shoals.

In their opposition to the consolidation of the national organization, the pioneers believed that they were defending the citadel of their democratic creed. Democracy meant to them, not only equal opportunities secured by law, but an approximately equal standing among individual citizens, and an approximately equal division of the social and economic fruits. They realized vaguely that national consolidation brought with it organization, and organization depended for its efficiency upon a classification of individual citizens according to ability, knowledge, and competence. In a nationalized state, it is the man of exceptional position, power, responsibility, and training who is most likely to be representative and efficient, whereas in a thoroughly democratic state, as they conceived it, the average man was the representative citizen and the fruitful type. Nationalization looked towards the introduction and perpetuation of a political, social, and financial hierarchy. They opposed it consequently, on behalf of the "plain people"; and they even reached the conclusion that the contemporary political system was to some extent organized for the benefit of special interests. They discovered in the fiscal and administrative organization the presence of discrimination against the average man. The National Bank was an example of special economic privileges. The office-holding clique was an example of special political privileges. Jackson and his followers declared war on these sacrilegious anomalies in the temple of democracy. Thus the only innovations which the pioneers sought to impose on our national political system were by way of being destructive. They uprooted a national institution which had existed, with but one brief interruption, for more than forty years; and they entirely altered the tradition of appointment in the American civil service. Both of these destructive achievements throw a great deal of light upon their unconscious tendencies and upon their explicit convictions, and will help us to understand the value and the limitation of the positive contribution which the pioneers made to the fullness of the American democratic idea.

The National Bank was the institution by virtue of which Hamilton sought to secure a stable national currency and an efficient national fiscal agent; and the Bank, particularly under its second charter, had undoubtedly been a useful and economical piece of financial machinery. The Republicans had protested against it in the beginning, but they had later come to believe in its necessity; and at the time Benton and Jackson declared war upon it, the Bank was, on the whole, and in spite of certain minor and local grievances, a popular institution. If the question of the re-charter of the National Bank had been submitted to popular vote in 1832, a popular majority would probably have declared in its favor. Jackson's victory was due partly to his personal popularity, partly to the unwise manner in which the Bank was defended, but chiefly to his success in convincing public opinion that the Bank was an institution whose legal privileges were used to the detriment of the American people. As a matter of fact, such was not the case. The Bank was a semi-public corporation, upon which certain exceptional privileges had been conferred, because the enjoyment of such privileges was inseparable from the services it performed and the responsibilities it assumed. When we consider how important those services were, and how difficult it has since been to substitute any arrangement, which provides as well both a flexible and a stable currency and for the articulation of the financial operations of the Federal Treasury with those of the business of the country, it does not look as if the emoluments and privileges of the Bank were disproportionate to its services. But Jackson and his followers never even considered whether its services and responsibilities were proportionate to its legal privileges. The fact that any such privilege existed, the fact that any legal association of individuals should enjoy such exceptional opportunities, was to their minds a violation of democratic principles. It must consequently be destroyed, no matter how much the country needed its services, and no matter how difficult it was to establish in its place any equally efficient institution.

The important point is, however, that the campaign against the National Bank uncovered a latent socialism, which lay concealed behind the rampant individualism of the pioneer Democracy. The ostensible grievance against the Bank was the possession by a semi-public corporation of special economic privileges; but the anti-Bank literature of the time was filled half unconsciously with a far more fundamental complaint. What the Western Democrats disliked and feared most of all was the possession of any special power by men of wealth. Their crusade against the "Money Power" meant that in their opinion money must not become a power in a democratic state. They had no objection, of course, to certain inequalities in the distribution of wealth; but they fiercely resented the idea that such inequalities should give a group of men any special advantages which were inaccessible to their fellow-countrymen. The full meaning of their complaint against the Bank was left vague and ambiguous, because the Bank itself possessed special legal privileges; and the inference was that when these privileges were withdrawn, the "Money Power" would disappear with them. The Western Democrat devoutly believed that an approximately equal division of the good things of life would result from the possession by all American citizens of equal legal rights and similar economic opportunities. But the importance of this result in their whole point of view was concealed by the fact that they expected to reach it by wholly negative means—that is, by leaving the individual alone. The substantially equal distribution of wealth, which was characteristic of the American society of their own day, was far more fundamental in their system of political and social ideas than was the machinery of liberty whereby it was to be secured. And just as soon as it becomes apparent that the proposed machinery does as a matter of fact accomplish a radically unequal result, their whole political and economic creed cries loudly for revision.

The introduction of the spoils system was due to the perverted application of kindred ideas. The emoluments of office loomed large among the good things of life to the pioneer Democrat; and such emoluments differed from other economic rewards, in that they were necessarily at the disposal of the political organization. The public offices constituted the tangible political patrimony of the American people. It was not enough that they were open to everybody. They must actually be shared by almost everybody. The terms of all elected officials must be short, so that as many good democrats as possible could occupy an easy chair in the house of government; and officials must for similar reasons be appointed for only short terms. Traditional practice at Washington disregarded these obvious inferences from the principles of true democracy. Until the beginning of Jackson's first administration the offices in the government departments had been appropriated by a few bureaucrats who had grown old at their posts; and how could such a permanent appropriation be justified? The pioneer Democrat believed that he was as competent to do the work as any member of an office-holding clique, so that when he came into power, he corrected what seemed to him to be a genuine abuse in the traditional way of distributing the American political patrimony. He could not understand that training, special ability, or long experience constituted any special claim upon a public office, or upon any other particular opportunity or salary. One democrat was as good as another, and deserved his share of the rewards of public service. The state could not undertake to secure a good living to all good democrats, but, when properly administered, it could prevent any appropriation by a few people of the public pay-roll.

In the long run the effect of the spoils system was, of course, just the opposite of that anticipated by the early Jacksonian Democrats. It merely substituted one kind of office-holding privilege for another. It helped to build up a group of professional politicians who became in their turn an office-holding clique—the only difference being that one man in his political life held, not one, but many offices. Yet the Jacksonian Democrat undoubtedly believed, when he introduced the system into the Federal civil service, that he was carrying out a desirable reform along strictly democratic lines. He was betrayed into such an error by the narrowness of his own experience and of his intellectual outlook. His experience had been chiefly that of frontier life, in which the utmost freedom of economic and social movement was necessary; and he attempted to apply the results of this limited experience to the government of a complicated social organism whose different parts had very different needs. The direct results of the attempt were very mischievous. He fastened upon the American public service a system of appointment which turned political office into the reward of partisan service, which made it unnecessary for the public officials to be competent and impossible for them to be properly experienced, and which contributed finally to the creation of a class of office-holding politicians. But the introduction of the spoils system had a meaning superior to its results. It was, after all, an attempt to realize an ideal, and the ideal was based on a genuine experience. The "Virginian Oligarchy," although it was the work of Jefferson and his followers, was an anachronism in a state governed in the spirit of Jeffersonian Democratic principles. It was better for the Jacksonian Democrats to sacrifice what they believed to be an obnoxious precedent to their principles than to sacrifice their principles to mere precedent. If in so doing they were making a mistake, that was because their principles were wrong. The benefit which they were temporarily conferring on themselves, as a class in the community, was sanctioned by the letter and the spirit of their creed.

Closely connected with their perverted ideas and their narrow view of life, we may discern a leaven of new and useful democratic experience. The new and useful experience which they contributed to our national stock was that of homogeneous social intercourse. I have already remarked that the Western pioneers were the first large body of Americans who were genuinely national in feeling. They were also the first large body of Americans who were genuinely democratic in feeling. Consequently they imparted a certain emotional consistency to the American democracy, and they thereby performed a social service which was in its way quite as valuable as their political service. Democracy has always been stronger as a political than it has as a social force. When adopted as a political ideal of the American people, it was very far from possessing any effective social vitality; and until the present day it has been a much more active force in political than in social life. But whatever traditional social force it has obtained, can be traced directly to the Western pioneer Democrat. His democracy was based on genuine good-fellowship. Unlike the French Fraternity, it was the product neither of abstract theories nor of a disembodied humanitarianism. It was the natural issue of their interests, their occupations, and their manner of life. They felt kindly towards one another and communicated freely with one another because they were not divided by radical differences in class, standards, point of view, and wealth. The social aspect of their democracy may, in fact, be compared to the sense of good-fellowship which pervades the rooms of a properly constituted club.

Their community of feeling and their ease of communication had come about as the result of pioneer life in a self-governing community. The Western Americans were confronted by a gigantic task of overwhelming practical importance,—the task of subduing to the needs of complicated and civilized society a rich but virgin wilderness. This task was one which united a desirable social purpose with a profitable individual interest. The country was undeveloped, and its inhabitants were poor. They were to enrich themselves by the development of the country, and the two different aspects of their task were scarcely distinguished. They felt themselves authorized by social necessity to pursue their own interests energetically and unscrupulously, and they were not either hampered or helped in so doing by the interference of the local or the national authorities. While the only people the pioneer was obliged to consult were his neighbors, all his surroundings tended to make his neighbors like himself—to bind them together by common interests, feelings, and ideas. These surroundings called for practical, able, flexible, alert, energetic, and resolute men, and men of a different type had no opportunity of coming to the surface. The successful pioneer Democrat was not a pleasant type in many respects, but he was saved from many of the worst aspects of his limited experience and ideas by a certain innocence, generosity, and kindliness of spirit. With all his willful aggressiveness he was a companionable person who meant much better towards his fellows than he himself knew.

We need to guard scrupulously against the under-valuation of the advance which the pioneers made towards a genuine social democracy. The freedom of intercourse and the consistency of feeling which they succeeded in attaining is an indispensable characteristic of a democratic society. The unity of such a state must lie deeper than any bond established by obedience to a single political authority, or by the acceptance of common precedents and ideas. It must be based in some measure upon an instinctive familiarity of association, upon a quick communicability of sympathy, upon the easy and effortless sense of companionship. Such familiar intercourse is impossible, not only in a society with aristocratic institutions, but it can with difficulty be attained in a society that has once had aristocratic institutions. A century more or less of political democracy has not introduced it into France, and in 1830 it did not exist along the Atlantic seaboard at all to the same extent that it did in the newer states of the West. In those states the people, in a sense, really lived together. They were divided by fewer barriers than have been any similarly numerous body of people in the history of the world; and it was this characteristic which made them so efficient and so easily directed by their natural leaders. No doubt it would be neither possible nor desirable to reproduce a precisely similar consistency of feeling over a social area in which there was a greater diversity of manners, standards, and occupations; but it remains true that the American democracy will lose its most valuable and promising characteristic in case it loses the homogeneity of feeling which the pioneers were the first to embody.

It is equally important to remember, however, that the social consistency of the pioneer communities should under different conditions undergo a radical transformation. Neither the pioneers themselves nor their admirers and their critics have sufficiently understood how much individual independence was sacrificed in order to obtain this consistency of feeling, or how completely it was the product, in the form it assumed, of temporary economic conditions. If we study the Western Democrats as a body of men who, on the whole, responded admirably to the conditions and opportunities of their time, but who were also very much victimized and impoverished by the limited nature of these conditions and opportunities—if we study the Western Democrat from that point of view, we shall find him to be the most significant economic and social type in American history. On the other hand, if we regard him in the way that he and his subsequent prototypes wish to be regarded, as the example of all that is permanently excellent and formative in American democracy, he will be, not only entirely misunderstood, but transformed from an edifying into a mischievous type.

Their peculiar social homogeneity, and their conviction that one man was as good as another, was the natural and legitimate product of contemporary economic conditions. The average man, without any special bent or qualifications, was in the pioneer states the useful man. In that country it was sheer waste to spend much energy upon tasks which demanded skill, prolonged experience, high technical standards, or exclusive devotion. The cheaply and easily made instrument was the efficient instrument, because it was adapted to a year or two of use and then for supersession by a better instrument; and for the service of such tools one man was as likely to be good as another. No special equipment was required. The farmer was obliged to be all kinds of a rough mechanic. The business man was merchant, manufacturer, and storekeeper. Almost everybody was something of a politician. The number of parts which a man of energy played in his time was astonishingly large. Andrew Jackson was successively a lawyer, judge, planter, merchant, general, politician, and statesman; and he played most of these parts with conspicuous success. In such a society a man who persisted in one job, and who applied the most rigorous and exacting standards to his work, was out of place and was really inefficient. His finished product did not serve its temporary purpose much better than did the current careless and hasty product, and his higher standards and peculiar ways constituted an implied criticism upon the easy methods of his neighbors. He interfered with the rough good-fellowship which naturally arises among a group of men who submit good-naturedly and uncritically to current standards.

It is no wonder, consequently, that the pioneer Democracy viewed with distrust and aversion the man with a special vocation and high standards of achievement. Such a man did insist upon being in certain respects better than the average; and under the prevalent economic social conditions he did impair the consistency of feeling upon which the pioneers rightly placed such a high value. Consequently they half unconsciously sought to suppress men with special vocations. For the most part this suppression was easily accomplished by the action of ordinary social and economic motives. All the industrial, political, and social rewards went to the man who pursued his business, professional, or political career along regular lines; and in this way an ordinary task and an interested motive were often imposed on men who were better qualified for special tasks undertaken from disinterested motives. But it was not enough to suppress the man with a special vocation by depriving him of social and pecuniary rewards. Public opinion must be taught to approve of the average man as the representative type of the American democracy, so that the man with a special vocation may be deprived of any interest or share in the American democratic tradition; and this attempt to make the average man the representative American democrat has persisted to the present day—that is, to a time when the average man is no longer, as in 1830, the dominant economic factor.

It is in this way, most unfortunately, that one of the leading articles in the American popular creed has tended to impair American moral and intellectual integrity. If the man with special standards and a special vocation interfered with democratic consistency of feeling, it was chiefly because this consistency of feeling had been obtained at too great a sacrifice—at the sacrifice of a higher to a lower type of individuality. In all civilized communities the great individualizing force is the resolute, efficient, and intense pursuit of special ideals, standards, and occupations; and the country which discourages such pursuits must necessarily put up with an inferior quality and a less varied assortment of desirable individual types. But whatever the loss our country has been and is suffering from this cause, our popular philosophers welcome rather than deplore it. We adapt our ideals of individuality to its local examples. When orators of the Jacksonian Democratic tradition begin to glorify the superlative individuals developed by the freedom of American life, what they mean by individuality is an unusual amount of individual energy successfully spent in popular and remunerative occupations. Of the individuality which may reside in the gallant and exclusive devotion to some disinterested, and perhaps unpopular moral, intellectual, or technical purpose, they have not the remotest conception; and yet it is this kind of individuality which is indispensable to the fullness and intensity of American national life.

III

THE WHIG FAILURE

The Jacksonian Democrats were not, of course, absolutely dominant during the Middle Period of American history. They were persistently, and on a few occasions successfully, opposed by the Whigs. The latter naturally represented the political, social, and economic ideas which the Democrats under-valued or disparaged. They were strong in those Northern and border states, which had reached a higher stage of economic and social development, and which contained the mansions of contemporary American culture, wealth, and intelligence. It is a significant fact that the majority of Americans of intelligence during the Jacksonian epoch were opponents of Jackson, just as the majority of educated Americans of intelligence have always protested against the national political irresponsibility and the social equalitarianism characteristic of our democratic tradition; but unfortunately they have always failed to make their protests effective. The spirit of the times was against them. The Whigs represented the higher standards, the more definite organization, and the social inequalities of the older states, but when they attempted to make their ideas good, they were faced by a dilemma either horn of which was disastrous to their interests. They were compelled either to sacrifice their standards to the conditions of popular efficiency or the chance of success to the integrity of their standards. In point of fact they pursued precisely the worst course of all. They abandoned their standards, and yet they failed to achieve success. Down to the Civil War the fruits of victory and the prestige of popularity were appropriated by the Democrats.

The Whigs, like their predecessors, the Federalists, were ostensibly the party of national ideas. Their association began with a group of Jeffersonian Republicans who, after the second English war, sought to resume the interrupted work of national consolidation. The results of that war had clearly exposed certain grave deficiencies in the American national organization; and these deficiencies a group of progressive young men, under the lead of Calhoun and Clay, proposed to remedy. One of the greatest handicaps from which the military conduct of the war had suffered was the lack of any sufficient means of internal communication; and the construction of a system of national roads and waterways became an important plank in their platform. There was also proposed a policy of industrial protection which Calhoun supported by arguments so national in import and scope that they might well have been derived from Hamilton's report. Under the influence of similar ideas the National Bank was rechartered; and as the correlative of this constructive policy, a liberal nationalistic interpretation of the Constitution was explicitly advocated. As one reads the speeches delivered by some of these men, particularly by Calhoun, during the first session of Congress after the conclusion of peace, it seems as if a genuine revival had taken place of Hamiltonian nationalism, and that this revival was both by way of escaping Hamilton's fatal distrust of democracy and of avoiding the factious and embittered opposition of the earlier period.

The Whigs made a fair start, but unfortunately they ran a poor race and came to a bad end. No doubt they were in a way an improvement on the Federalists, in that they, like their opponents, the Democrats, stood for a combination between democracy and nationalism. They believed that the consolidation and the development of the national organization was contributory rather than antagonistic to the purpose of the American political system. Yet they made no conquests on behalf of their convictions. The Federalists really accomplished a great and necessary task of national organization and founded a tradition of constructive national achievement. The Whigs at best kept this tradition alive. They were on the defensive throughout, and they accomplished nothing at all in the way of permanent constructive legislation. Their successes were merely electioneering raids, whereas their defeats were wholly disastrous in that they lost, not only all of their strongholds, but most of their military reputation and good name. Their final disappearance was wholly the result of their own incapacity. They were condemned somehow to inefficiency, defeat, and dishonor.

Every important article in their programme went astray. The policy of internal improvements in the national interest and at the national expense was thwarted by the Constitutional scruples of such Presidents as Monroe and Jackson, and for that reason it could never be discussed on its merits. The Cumberland Road was the only great national highway constructed, and remains to this day a striking symbol of what the Federal government might have accomplished towards the establishment of an efficient system of inter-state communication. The re-charter of the National Bank which was one of the first fruits of the new national movement, proved in the end to be the occasion of its most flagrant failure. The Bank was the national institution for the perpetuation of which the Whig leaders fought most persistently and loyally. They began the fight with the support of public opinion, and with the prestige of an established and useful institution in their favor; but the campaign was conducted with such little skill that in the end they were utterly beaten. Far from being able to advance the policy of national consolidation, they were unable even to preserve existing national institutions, and their conspicuous failure in this crucial instance was due to their inability to keep public opinion convinced of the truth that the Bank was really organized and maintained in the national interest. Their policy of protection met in the long run with a similar fate. In the first place, the tariff schedules which they successively placed upon the statute books were not drawn up in Hamilton's wise and moderate national spirit. They were practically dictated by the special interests which profited from the increases in duties. The Whig leaders accepted a retainer from the manufacturers of the North, and by legislating exclusively in their favor almost drove South Carolina to secession. Then after accomplishing this admirable feat, they agreed to placate the disaffected state by the gradual reduction in the scale of duties until there was very little protection left. In short, they first perverted the protectionist system until it ceased to be a national policy; and then compromised it until it ceased to be any policy at all.

Perhaps the Whigs failed and blundered most completely in the fight which they made against the Federal executive and in the interest of the Federal legislature. They were forced into this position, because for many years the Democrats, impersonated by Jackson, occupied the Presidential chair, while the Whigs controlled one or both of the Congressional bodies; but the attitude of the two opposing parties in respect to the issue corresponded to an essential difference of organization and personnel. The Whigs were led by a group of brilliant orators and lawyers, while the Democrats were dominated by one powerful man, who held the Presidential office. Consequently the Whigs proclaimed a Constitutional doctrine which practically amounted to Congressional omnipotence, and for many years assailed Jackson as a military dictator who was undermining the representative institutions of his country. The American people, however, appraised these fulminations at their true value. While continuing for twelve years to elect to the Presidency Jackson or his nominee, they finally dispossessed the Whigs from the control of Congress; and they were right. The American people have much more to fear from Congressional usurpation than they have from executive usurpation. Both Jackson and Lincoln somewhat strained their powers, but for good purposes, and in essentially a moderate and candid spirit; but when Congress attempts to dominate the executive, its objects are generally bad and its methods furtive and dangerous. Our legislatures were and still are the strongholds of special and local interests, and anything which undermines executive authority in this country seriously threatens our national integrity and balance. It is to the credit of the American people that they have instinctively recognized this fact, and have estimated at their true value the tirades which men no better than Henry Clay level against men no worse than Andrew Jackson.

The reason for the failure of the Whigs was that their opponents embodied more completely the living forces of contemporary American life. Jackson and his followers prevailed because they were simple, energetic, efficient, and strong. Their consistency of feeling and their mutual loyalty enabled them to form a much more effective partisan organization than that of the Whigs. It is one of those interesting paradoxes, not uncommon in American history, that the party which represented official organization and leadership was loosely organized and unwisely led, while the party which distrusted official organization and surrounded official leadership with rigid restraints was most efficiently organized and was for many years absolutely dominated by a single man. At bottom, of course, the difference between the two parties was a difference in vitality. All the contemporary conditions worked in favor of the strong narrow man with prodigious force of will like Andrew Jackson, and against men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who had more intelligence, but were deficient in force of character and singleness of purpose. The former had behind him the impulse of a great popular movement which was sweeping irresistibly towards wholly unexpected results; and the latter, while ostensibly trying to stem the tide, were in reality carried noisily along on its flood.

Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were in fact faced by an alternative similar to that which sterilized the lives of almost all their contemporaries who represented an intellectual interest. They were men of national ideas but of something less than national feeling. Their interests, temperament, and manner of life prevented them from instinctively sympathizing with the most vital social and political movement of their day. If they wanted popularity, they had to purchase it by compromises, whereas Andrew Jackson obtained a much larger popular following by acting strictly in accordance with the dictates of his temperament and ideas. He was effective and succeeded because his personality was representative of the American national democracy, whereas they failed, on the whole, because the constituency they represented concealed limited sympathies and special interests under words of national import. Jackson, who in theory was the servant and mouthpiece of his followers, played the part of a genuine leader in his campaign against the National Bank; while the Whigs, who should have been able to look ahead and educate their fellow-countrymen up to the level of their presumably better insight, straggled along in the rear of the procession.

The truth is that the Democrats, under the lead of Jackson, were temporarily the national party, although they used their genuinely national standing to impose in certain respects a group of anti-national ideas on their country. The Whigs, on the other hand, national as they might be in ideas and aspirations, were in effect not much better than a faction. Finding that they could not rally behind their ideas an effective popular following, they were obliged to seek support, partly at the hands of special interests and partly by means of the sacrifice of their convictions. Under their guidance the national policy became a policy of conciliation and compromise at any cost, and the national idea was deprived of consistency and dignity. It became equivalent to a hodge-podge of policies and purposes, the incompatibility of whose ingredients was concealed behind a smooth crust of constitutional legality and popular acquiescence. The national idea and interest, that is, was not merely disarmed and ignored, as it had been by Jefferson. It was mutilated and distorted in obedience to an erroneous democratic theory; and its friends, the Whigs, deluded themselves with the belief that in draining the national idea of its vitality they were prolonging its life. But if its life was saved, its safety was chiefly due to its ostensible enemies. While the Whigs were less national in feeling and purpose than their ideas demanded, the Democrats were more national than they knew. From 1830 to 1850 American nationality was being attenuated as a conscious idea, but the great unconscious forces of American life were working powerfully and decisively in its favor.

Most assuredly the failure of the Whigs is susceptible of abundant explanation. Prevailing conditions were inimical to men whose strength lay more in their intelligence than in their will. It was a period of big phrases, of personal motives and altercations, of intellectual attenuation, and of narrow, moral commonplaces,—all of which made it very difficult for any statesman to see beyond his nose, or in case he did, to act upon his knowledge. Yet in spite of all this, it does seem as if some Whig might have worked out the logic of the national idea with as much power and consistency as Calhoun worked out the logic of his sectional idea. That no Whig rose to the occasion is an indication that in sacrificing their ideas they were sacrificing also their personal integrity. Intellectual insincerity and irresponsibility was in the case of the Democrats the outcome of their lives and their point of view; but on the part of the Whigs it was equivalent to sheer self-prostitution. Jefferson's work had been done only too well. The country had become so entirely possessed by a system of individual aggrandizement, national drift, and mental torpor that the men who for their own moral and intellectual welfare should have opposed it, were reduced to the position of hangers-on; and the dangers of the situation were most strikingly revealed by the attitude which contemporary statesmen assumed towards the critical national problem of the period,—the problem of the existence of legalized slavery in a democratic state.



CHAPTER IV

I

SLAVERY AND AMERICAN NATIONALITY

Both the Whig and the Democratic parties betrayed the insufficiency of their ideas by their behavior towards the problem of slavery. Hitherto I have refrained from comment on the effect which the institution of slavery was coming to have upon American politics because the increasing importance of slavery, and of the resulting anti-slavery agitation, demand for the purpose of this book special consideration. Such a consideration must now be undertaken. The bitter personal and partisan controversies of the Whigs and the Democrats were terminated by the appearance of a radical and a perilous issue; and in the settlement of this question the principles of both of these parties, in the manner in which they had been applied, were of no vital assistance.

The issue was created by the legal existence in the United States of an essentially undemocratic institution. The United States was a democracy, and however much or little this phrase means, it certainly excludes any ownership of one man by another. Yet this was just what the Constitution sanctioned. Its makers had been confronted by the legal existence of slavery in nearly all of the constituent states; and a refusal to recognize the institution would have resulted in the failure of the whole scheme of Constitutional legislation. Consequently they did not seek to forbid negro servitude; and inasmuch as it seemed at that time to be on the road to extinction through the action of natural causes, the makers of the Constitution had a good excuse for refusing to sacrifice their whole project to the abolition of slavery, and in throwing thereby upon the future the burden of dealing with it in some more radical and consistent way. Later, however, it came to pass that slavery, instead of being gradually extinguished by economic causes, was fastened thereby more firmly than ever upon one section of the country. The whole agricultural, political, and social life of the South became dominated by the existence of negro slavery; and the problem of reconciling the expansion of such an institution with the logic of our national idea was bound to become critical. Our country was committed by every consideration of national honor and moral integrity to make its institutions thoroughly democratic, and it could not continue to permit the aggressive legal existence of human servitude without degenerating into a glaring example of political and moral hypocrisy.

The two leading political parties deliberately and persistently sought to evade the issue. The Western pioneers were so fascinated with the vision of millions of pale-faced democrats, leading free and prosperous lives as the reward for virtuously taking care of their own business, that the Constitutional existence of negro slavery did not in the least discommode them. Disunionism they detested and would fight to the end; but to waste valuable time in bothering about a perplexing and an apparently irremediable political problem was in their eyes the worst kind of economy. They were too optimistic and too superficial to anticipate any serious trouble in the Promised Land of America; and they were so habituated to inconsistent and irresponsible political thinking, that they attached no importance to the moral and intellectual turpitude implied by the existence of slavery in a democratic nation. The responsibility of the Whigs for evading the issue is more serious than that of the Democrats. Their leaders were the trained political thinkers of their generation. They were committed by the logic of their party platform to protect the integrity of American national life and to consolidate its organization. But the Whigs, almost as much as the Democrats, refused to take seriously the legal existence of slavery. They shirked the problem whenever they could and for as long as they could; and they looked upon the men who persisted in raising it aloft as perverse fomenters of discord and trouble. The truth is, of course, that both of the dominant parties were merely representing the prevailing attitude towards slavery of American public opinion. That attitude was characterized chiefly by moral and intellectual cowardice. Throughout the whole of the Middle Period the increasing importance of negro servitude was the ghost in the house of the American democracy. The good Americans of the day sought to exorcise the ghost by many amiable devices. Sometimes they would try to lock him up in a cupboard; sometimes they would offer him a soothing bribe; more often they would be content with shutting their eyes and pretending that he was not present. But in proportion as he was kindly treated he persisted in intruding, until finally they were obliged to face the alternative, either of giving him possession of the house or taking possession of it themselves.

Foreign commentators on American history have declared that a peaceable solution of the slavery question was not beyond the power of wise and patriotic statesmanship. This may or may not be true. No solution of the problem could have been at once final and peaceable, unless it provided for the ultimate extinction of slavery without any violation of the Constitutional rights of the Southern states; and it may well be that the Southern planters could never have been argued or persuaded into abolishing an institution which they eventually came to believe was a righteous method of dealing with an inferior race. Nobody can assert with any confidence that they could have been brought by candid, courageous, and just negotiation and discussion into a reasonable frame of mind; but what we do know and can assert is that during the three decades from 1820 to 1850, the national political leaders made absolutely no attempt to deal resolutely, courageously, or candidly with the question. On those occasions when it would come to the surface, they contented themselves and public opinion with meaningless compromises. It would have been well enough to frame compromises suited to the immediate occasion, provided the problem of ultimately extinguishing slavery without rending the Union had been kept persistently on the surface of political discussion: but the object of these compromises was not to cure the disease, but merely to allay its symptoms. They would not admit that slavery was a disease; and in the end this habit of systematic drifting and shirking on the part of moderate and sensible men threw the national responsibility upon Abolitionist extremists, in whose hands the issue took such a distorted emphasis that gradually a peaceable preservation of American national integrity became impossible.

The problem of slavery was admirably designed to bring out the confusion of ideas and the inconsistency resident in the traditional American political system. The groundwork of that system consisted, as we have seen, in the alliance between democracy, as formulated in the Jeffersonian creed, and American nationality, as embodied in the Constitutional Union; and the two dominant political parties of the Middle Period, the Whigs and the Jacksonian Democrats, both believed in the necessity of such an alliance. But negro slavery, just in so far as it became an issue, tended to make the alliance precarious. The national organization embodied in the Constitution authorized not only the existence of negro slavery, but its indefinite expansion. American democracy, on the other hand, as embodied in the Declaration of Independence and in the spirit and letter of the Jeffersonian creed, was hostile from certain points of view to the institution of negro slavery. Loyalty to the Constitution meant disloyalty to democracy, and an active interest in the triumph of democracy seemed to bring with it the condemnation of the Constitution. What, then, was a good American to do who was at once a convinced democrat and a loyal Unionist?

The ordinary answer to this question was, of course, expressed in the behavior of public opinion during the Middle Period. The thing to do was to shut your eyes to the inconsistency, denounce anybody who insisted on it as unpatriotic, and then hold on tight to both horns of the dilemma. Men of high intelligence, who really loved their country, and believed in the democratic idea, persisted in this attitude, whose ablest and most distinguished representative was Daniel Webster. He is usually considered as the most eloquent and effective expositor of American nationalism who played an important part during the Middle Period; and unquestionably he came nearer to thinking nationally than did any American statesman of his generation. He defended the Union against the Nullifiers as decisively in one way as Jackson did in another. Jackson flourished his sword, while Webster taught American public opinion to consider the Union as the core and the crown of the American political system. His services in giving the Union a more impressive place in the American political imagination can scarcely be over-estimated. Had the other Whig leaders joined him in refusing to compromise with the Nullifiers and in strengthening by legislation the Federal government as an expression of an indestructible American national unity, a precedent might have been established which would have increased the difficulty of a subsequent secessionist outbreak. But Henry Clay believed in compromises (particularly when his own name was attached to them) as the very substance of a national American policy; and Webster was too much of a Presidential candidate to travel very far on a lonely path. Moreover, there was a fundamental weakness in Webster's own position, which was gradually revealed as the slavery crisis became acute. He could be bold and resolute, when defending a nationalistic interpretation of the Constitution against the Nullifiers or the Abolitionists; but when the slaveholders themselves became aggressive in policy and separatist in spirit, the courage of his convictions deserted him. If an indubitably Constitutional institution, such as slavery, could be used as an ax with which to hew at the trunk of the Constitutional tree, his whole theory of the American system was undermined, and he could speak only halting and dubious words. He was as much terrorized by the possible consequences of any candid and courageous dealing with the question as were the prosperous business men of the North; and his luminous intelligence shed no light upon a question, which evaded his Constitutional theories, terrified his will, and clouded the radiance of his patriotic visions.

The patriotic formula, of which Webster was the ablest and most eloquent expositor, was fairly torn to pieces by the claws of the problem of slavery. The formula triumphantly affirmed the inseparable relation between individual liberty and the preservation of the Federal Union; but obviously such a formula could have no validity from the point of view of a Southerner. The liberties which men most cherish are those which are guaranteed to them by law—among which one of the most important from the Southerner's point of view was the right to own negro bondsmen. As soon as it began to appear that the perpetuation of the Union threatened this right, they were not to be placated with any glowing proclamation about the inseparability of liberty in general from an indestructible union. From the standpoint of their own most cherished rights, they could put up a very strong argument on behalf of disunion; and they had as much of the spirit of the Constitution on their side as had their opponents. That instrument was intended not only to give legal form to the Union of the American commonwealths and the American people, but also to guarantee certain specified rights and liberties. If, on the one hand, negro slavery undermined the moral unity and consequently the political integrity of the American people, and if on the other, the South stubbornly insisted upon its legal right to property in negroes, the difficulty ran too deep to be solved by peaceable Constitutional means. The legal structure of American nationality became a house divided against itself, and either the national principle had to be sacrificed to the Constitution or the Constitution to the national principle.

The significance of the whole controversy does not become clear, until we modify Webster's formula about the inseparability of liberty and union, and affirm in its place the inseparability of American nationality and American democracy. The Union had come to mean something more to the Americans of the North than loyalty to the Constitution. It had come to mean devotion to a common national idea,—the idea of democracy; and while the wiser among them did not want to destroy the Constitution for the benefit of democracy, they insisted that the Constitution should be officially stigmatized as in this respect an inadequate expression of the national idea. American democracy and American nationality are inseparably related, precisely because democracy means very much more than liberty or liberties, whether natural or legal, and nationality very much more than an indestructible legal association. Webster's formula counseled an evasion of the problem of slavery. From his point of view it was plainly insoluble. But an affirmation of an inseparable relationship between American nationality and American democracy would just as manifestly have demanded its candid, courageous, and persistent agitation.

The slavery question, when it could no longer be avoided, gradually separated the American people into five different political parties or factions—the Abolitionists, the Southern Democrats, the Northern Democrats, the Constitutional Unionists, and the Republicans. Each of these factions selected one of the several alternative methods of solution or evasion, to which the problem of negro slavery could be reduced, and each deserves its special consideration.

Of the five alternatives, the least substantial was that of the Constitutional Unionists. These well-meaning gentlemen, composed for the most part of former Whigs, persisted in asserting that the Constitution was capable of solving every political problem generated under its protection; and this assertion, in the teeth of the fact that the Union had been torn asunder by means of a Constitutional controversy, had become merely an absurdity. Up to 1850 the position of such Constitutional Unionists as Webster and Clay could be plausibly defended; but after the failure of that final compromise, it was plain that a man of any intellectual substance must seek support for his special interpretation of the Constitution by means of a special interpretation of the national idea. That slavery was Constitutional nobody could deny, any more than they could deny the Constitutionality of anti-slavery agitation. The real question, to which the controversy had been reduced, had become, Is slavery consistent with the principle which constitutes the basis of American national integrity—the principle of democracy?

Each of the four other factions answered this question in a different way; and every one of these answers was derived from different aspects of the system of traditional American ideas. The Abolitionists believed that a democratic state, which ignored the natural rights proclaimed by the Declaration of Independence, was a piece of organized political hypocrisy,—worthy only of destruction. The Southerners believed that democracy meant above all the preservation of recognized Constitutional rights in property of all kinds, and freedom from interference in the management of their local affairs. The Northern Democrats insisted just as strenuously as the South on local self-government, and tried to erect it into the constituent principle of democracy; but they were loyal to the Union and would not admit either that slavery could be nationalized, or that secession had any legal justification. Finally the Republicans believed with the Abolitionists that slavery was wrong; while they believed with the Northern Democrats that the Union must be preserved; and it was their attempt to de-nationalize slavery as undemocratic and at the same time to affirm the indestructibility of the Union, which proved in the end to be salutary.

Surely never was there a more distressing example of confusion of thought in relation to a "noble national theory." The traditional democratic system of ideas provoked fanatical activity on the part of the Abolitionists, as the defenders of "natural rights," a kindred fanaticism in the Southerners as the defenders of legal rights, and moral indifference and lethargy on the part of the Northern Democrat for the benefit of his own local interests. The behavior of all three factions was dictated by the worship of what was called liberty; and the word was as confidently and glibly used by Calhoun and Davis as it was by Garrison, Webster, and Douglas. The Western Democrat, and indeed the average American, thought of democratic liberty chiefly as individual freedom from legal discrimination and state interference in doing some kind of a business. The Abolitionist was even more exclusively preoccupied with the liberty which the Constitution denied to the negro. The Southerners thought only of the Constitutional rights, which the Abolitionists wished to abolish, and the Republicans to restrict. Each of the contending parties had some justification in dwelling exclusively upon the legal or natural rights, in which they were most interested, because the system of traditional American ideas provided no positive principle, in relation to which these conflicting liberties could be classified and valued. It is in the nature of liberties and rights, abstractly considered, to be insubordinate and to conflict both one with another and, perhaps, with the common weal. If the chief purpose of a democratic political system is merely the preservation of such rights, democracy becomes an invitation to local, factional, and individual ambitions and purposes. On the other hand, if these Constitutional and natural rights are considered a temporary philosophical or legal machinery, whereby a democratic society is to reach a higher moral and social consummation, and if the national organization is considered merely as an effective method of keeping the legal and moral machinery adjusted to the higher democratic purpose, then no individual or faction or section could claim the benefit of a democratic halo for its distracting purposes and ambitions. Instead of subordinating these conflicting rights and liberties to the national idea, and erecting the national organization into an effective instrument thereof, the national idea and organization was subordinated to individual local and factional ideas and interests. No one could or would recognize the constructive relation between the democratic purpose and the process of national organization and development. The men who would rend the national body in order to protect their property in negro slaves could pretend to be as good democrats as the men who would rend in order to give the negro his liberty. And if either of these hostile factions had obtained its way, the same disastrous result would have been accomplished. American national integrity would have been destroyed, and slavery on American soil, in a form necessarily hostile to democracy, would have been perpetuated.

II

SLAVERY AS A DEMOCRATIC INSTITUTION

I have already suggested that it was the irresponsibility and the evasions of the party politicians, which threw upon the Abolitionists the duty of fighting slavery as an undemocratic institution. They took up the cause of the negro in a spirit of religious self-consecration. The prevalence of irresolution and timidity in relation to slavery among the leaders of public opinion incited the Abolitionists to a high degree of courage and exclusive devotion; and unfortunately, also, the conciliating attitude of the official leaders encouraged on the part of the Abolitionists an outburst of fanaticism. In their devotion to their adopted cause they lost all sense of proportion, all balance of judgment, and all justice of perception; and their narrowness and want of balance is in itself a sufficient indication that they were possessed of a half, instead of a whole, truth.