leaders favored the tariff; in 1820 it was seventeen cents, and the South saw in the protective system a grievance; in 1824 it was fourteen and three-quarters cents, and the South Carolinians denounced the tariff as unconstitutional. When the woolens bill was agitated in 1827, cotton had fallen to but little more than nine cents, and the radicals of the section threatened civil war." In the summer of 1828 Calhoun prepared a document, destined to see light as the report of a legislative committee, because it seemed hardly expedient for the Vice-President to proclaim the philosophy which he was considering. This was the South Carolina "Exposition," which for the first time put the doctrine of nullification into concrete, systematic form. Arguing first that the tariff was unconstitutional, he went on to develop the theory that it operated as a heavy burden on the South, compelling that section to pay for the advantages received by the industrial North. The plantation owners had to buy practically all of their manufactured supplies, and Calhoun argued that the tariff compelled them to purchase in an unnecessarily high market. As a remedy for all this expensive inequality in the operation of the tariff, Calhoun suggested nullification, the logical conclusion of the extreme states' rights doctrine. In the "Exposition” he rejected the theory that sovereignty was divided between the states and the federal system. The powers of sovereignty were divided, he agreed, but sovereignty resided solely with the people of the states. He characterized the Constitution as a compact among sovereign states. Each state, he reasoned, was entitled to determine for itself whether or not the federal government had exceeded its Constitutional authority, and to prevent the law in question from operating within its limits, until three-fourths of the states had declared for or against it. By this means Calhoun hoped to provide a peaceful way to protect the states from unwarranted federal measures. Under his handling, nullification developed into something more than a protest; it became a plan of action. Calhoun proposed it as an instrument to preserve the union, but his successors used it to justify secession. The whole tariff issue, with its related problem of nullification, became one of the legacies left to the next administration. THE GEORGIA INDIANS The other heritage was the Georgia Indian problem. In 1802 Georgia had ceded her unoccupied lands to the federal government, in return for one and a quarter million dollars, plus the promise of the federal authorities to extinguish the Indian title throughout the state. As late as 1821, some of the best lands in the state were still in the possession of the Indians. In response to the repeated protests from Georgia, in 1825 the government made with the Indians the Treaty of Indian Springs, by which the Creeks ceded all their land in the state. Soon after the ratification of this treaty, the Creek chief who signed it was murdered, and the entire tribe repudiated the whole agreement. Governor Troup of Georgia prepared to survey the lands, and President Adams warned him to wait until new arrangements could be made. Troup refused to desist, and threatened civil war in case the United States tried to stop him by force. In 1826, Adams secured a new treaty with the Creeks, which ceded all but a small part of their lands, giving them until January 1, 1827, to withdraw. Then Georgia denied the right of the federal government to reopen the question, which from the point of view of the state had been finally settled by the Treaty of Indian Springs. Declaring that Georgia was sovereign on her own territory, Troup had the survey begun. Adams threatened the belligerent governor with the full weight of federal displeasure, and then laid the whole matter before Congress. Congress, however, refused to authorize the use of force. In 1827 the Cherokees in the same state declared themselves independent of all outside authority, state or federal. The Georgia legislature passed a law extending its jurisdiction over the whole Cherokee region, and the tribe appealed to Adams. His term expired before there was time to act, so Jackson inherited another serious problem. THE ELECTION OF 1828 The campaign of 1828 began in 1825, immediately after the House had chosen John Quincy Adams. In the course of it there was comparatively little that was significant, except the careful work of the Jackson managers. They kept Jackson continually before the public, by means of receptions, public dinners, and functions all arranged with a view to the greatest publicity. Jackson newspapers advertised their candidate, not infrequently by resorting to scurrilous misrepresentation and actual falsehoods about Adams. Local committees were organized, the leaders of which looked after the business of organizing the voters. There were no more genuine issues involved in the campaign of 1828 than in the two preceding ones, a fact which the volume of noise served to conceal. Jackson profited from the personal unpopularity of Adams. Also, as the victim of the machine in 1824, and as the "candidate of the people" in 1828, he was able to capitalize the widespread, but rather vague demand for reform. More specifically, Jackson carried the Northwest, partly because of the desire of that section to turn out the eastern leaders, who had been monopolizing the federal government, and partly because of his known attitude toward the Indians. The West wanted the Indians removed, and Jackson was the man to do it. In the Southwest, Jackson could stand on his own record against the Indians at Horseshoe Bend, against the British at New Orleans, and against the outlaws in Florida. In the older West, Kentucky, Missouri, and Tennessee, formerly Clay's bailiwick, Jackson swept the field, because Clay had supported the Bank and John Quincy Adams. Every electoral vote from all three sections of the West therefore went to Jackson. In the South, the cotton sections favored Jackson, because they felt that he was opposed to the tariff. Then too his ticket was strengthened there because of the popularity of the vice-presidential candidate, Calhoun. The three other southern states, Virginia, North Carolina, and Maryland, the center of old fashioned Jeffersonian democracy, favored Jackson because he was supposed to favor states' rights. There was perhaps less enthusiasm here than in the "Cotton South" or in the West, and Maryland gave six electoral votes to Adams. In the middle states Jackson secured all the electoral votes of Pennsylvania, and twenty out of the thirty-six of New York. This section was the stronghold of protectionism, and Jackson was popular because he was believed to favor the tariff. His managers had been most astute in leading each region to find in the "Old Hero" the very things they wanted. The fact that he drew votes from ardent protectionists and from violent opponents of the tariff did not greatly bother them. The main thing was to win the election. In New England, Jackson got one electoral vote, from the state of Maine. The total electoral vote gave Jackson one hundred seventy-eight, to eighty-three for Adams. It is probable that in this campaign very few men took the trouble to consider policies and to study issues. They wanted Jackson, and that was enough. Feelings and emotions counted for more than intellect, with the voters-as with the new President during both of his terms. CHAPTER XXXII THE JACKSONIAN ERA In 1828 the election of Andrew Jackson was hailed as the triumph of an honest man over a crowd of corrupt politicians, and as a vindication of true democracy. Whether this interpretation was correct or not makes little difference; the men who had voted for the "Old Hero" either believed it, or professed to believe it. Some of the glamour which surrounded the victory clung to Jackson's administration, and consequently his two terms stand out as a peculiar epoch in American history. Full of contradiction from beginning to end, the Jacksonian era has the distinction of being one of the most difficult to judge fairly and to appraise accurately. ANDREW JACKSON The President himself was genuinely inconsistent, in dealing with issues of the utmost concern, so for that reason it is hard to describe him definitely and precisely. During his two terms the old Jeffersonian party eventually broke up, and out of the remains two new parties were formed. The process both of disintegration and of rebuilding necessarily left the issues beclouded. This inevitable confusion was made worse by the unique nature of the new political alignment. In the Jackson camp were voters widely separated geographically, and even farther apart in their convictions. Their only common ground was loyalty to Jackson. The opposition was perhaps even more chaotic in its structure and less unified in principle. Moreover, as old political connections were broken, personal feeling ran high and individual controversies became bitter. Because of the prominence of some of the personages involved, these contests assumed national importance. As though all this were not enough, the period found new forces at work within the federal government, forces which were clearly the product of western expansion and frontier experiences. Nothing so utterly disturbs the political equilibrium as something new, so the politicians were as badly confused at the time as historians have been |