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THE ERA OF GOOD FEELINGS"

DURING the last year of Mr. Madison's administration Congress passed an act changing the method of paying the members, and, as is usual in such cases, increasing the amount of their compensation. The change was from six dollars per diem to fifteen hundred dollars a year. The 66 compensation act ” was exceedingly unpopular, and was repealed at the next session. Many members who voted for it were defeated. There was a large number of new members in the fifteenth Congress, but the balance of parties was nominally little changed. The new questions began to obliterate all party lines. The tariff united most of the Southern Democrats, the representatives of Pennsylvania and of the manufacturing districts, in favor of the protective policy. Commercial Massachusetts opposed it. The right to make "internal improvements was rising into importance as a political issue; and here, too, the divisions cut across the old party lines. Many Federalists took an attitude of opposition, although logically, as broad constructionists, they should have been the supporters, and the Democrats should have been the opposers, of the policy. It is to be feared that the views of these Federalists were too greatly influenced by the prospect that the Middle and Southern States would profit most, and their own States least, by any appropriation Congress might make for the purpose. Congress declared itself in favor of internal improvements by a resolution that money constitutionally might be appropriated "for the construction" of post and military roads and of canals. But it rejected resolutions that the government constitutionally might "construct" these specified works. The distinction, rather fine-drawn and long ago abandoned by all parties, was that, while Congress might aid in such works, it could not undertake them.

Slavery loomed up for the first time, during Monroe's first term, as a great political issue. The clause of the Constitution which made the basis of representation in Congress the whole

number of free persons, and three fifths of "all other persons," had been a constant source of complaint on the part of the Northern Federalists and those who chafed under the Virginia rule. Up to this time, nearly all the Southern ex-members, whenever they had had occasion to speak of the institution of slavery, had spoken of it as an evil, but one which could not be abolished without causing still greater evils than itself. Now the question of the admission of Missouri to the Union thrust itself upon Congress. Most of the representatives from the North, including those of both of the old parties, united to deny admission to Missouri except as a free State: the South was still more united in demanding that Missouri be admitted without restrictions. No previous debate upon a purely domestic question had been so exciting and passionate as that which took place on the Missouri bill. The whole country was aroused. Meetings were held and resolutions were adopted in cities and country towns; state legislatures expressed their opinions in strong language. In Congress the contest was waged now with violence, now with strategy. The Southern members with their Northern allies, to whom John Randolph applied the term "doughfaces," an appellation which stuck, succeeded in linking together the bill for the admission of Maine as a separate State, to which there was no opposition, and that for the admission of Missouri. The outcome of the struggle was a compromise. An amendment was adopted which virtually permitted the existence of slavery in the proposed new State, but prohibited it forever in any of the remaining territory, ceded by France under the name of Louisiana, north of the line thirty-six degrees thirty minutes north latitude, the northern line of Arkansas Territory. The amendment was carried against the opposition of the Southern extremists; and the bill was then passed by the votes of all the Southern and a few Northern members. This was the famous Missouri Compromise, which became the line of defence of the anti-slavery sentiment of the country thirty years later, but which the South then stormed and captured. It was not the end of the contest over Missouri, for a clause in the Constitution framed for the State contained a provision forbidding admission into the State of free persons of color. The opposition aroused by this clause, which was held by the anti-slavery people to be inconsistent with the Constitution of the United States, was far more bitter than that manifested against the toleration of

slavery in the new State. The legislature of Missouri was required to make a solemn pledge that no act should be passed that would exclude the citizens of any State from the privileges and immunities to which they were entitled under the Constitution. When this pledge had been given, and announced by a proclamation by the President, Missouri was to become a member of the Union.

All these exciting events took place in the year preceding the presidential election. It is not likely that, if Mr. Monroe had taken an active part in the great controversy on either side, he could have been defeated. The time was too short to organize a party of opposition with a prospect of success at the polls. As a matter of fact, the President held aloof altogether. When the "Enabling Act" for Missouri was laid before him he submitted two questions to his cabinet, first, as to the constitutionality of an act to prohibit slavery in a Territory, which all the members, Calhoun as well as John Quincy Adams, answered in the affirmative; and, secondly, did the word "forever" in the compromising amendment extend to the time when the Territory should be erected into a State? Upon the second question there was a division, but the form of it was changed, at Calhoun's suggestion, to an inquiry if the proviso was constitutional. To this, again, all the cabinet agreed; and on March 2, 1820, Mr. Monroe signed the act. The popular excitement died out quickly, when it was supposed that the incident was closed. Had the subsequent action of the Missouri convention been foreseen, the public feeling might have found expression in the ensuing election. As it was, in one State only, Pennsylvania, was an electoral ticket nominated in opposition to Mr. Monroe; but there the ground of opposition was, expressly, that the President was the candidate of the slavery party.

The administration of Mr. Monroe was called at the time, and has since been known, as "the era of good feelings." The Federalists of New England were satisfied with his principles and with his conduct; and as the time drew near for an election they made no movement in opposition to him. In the spring of 1820 a caucus was called, to which were invited not only the Democrats, but such other members of Congress as might see fit to attend. Less than fifty members assembled. They adopted a resolution that it was not expedient to make any nomination, and adjourned.

It has been said already that there was an opposition ticket in Pennsylvania only. Where the electors were chosen by popular vote, the number of votes was exceedingly small. The largest number received by any elector in Connecticut was 3870, — about one vote to every seventy persons of the population. Only seventeen persons went to the polls in Richmond, Virginia. The fusion of parties was nowhere more pleasantly illustrated than in Massachusetts. A change was made once more in the method of appointment. Electors were chosen, one by each congressional district and two at large. The venerable President John Adams was elected unanimously as one of the two electors at large. Daniel Webster was one of the district electors. The college consisted, after vacancies had been filled, of eight Federalists and seven Democrats. They all voted for Mr. Monroe, but divided on the vice-presidency, the Federalists casting their votes for Richard Stockton, of New Jersey. One elector of New Hampshire gave his vote for John Quincy Adams for President, and thus deprived Monroe of the honor of a unanimous election. It has been reported and the statement was repeated in the early editions of this history that the dissenting elector withheld his vote from Mr. Monroe expressly to prevent that statesman from sharing an honor previously accorded to Washington alone. The statement is not correct. The "scattering" vote was given by William Plumer, formerly a senator in Congress and governor of the State, not so much out of jealousy of Washington's record of unanimous election as on account of his positive distrust of Monroe.

Five new States participated in this election, namely, Mississippi, admitted December 10, 1817; Illinois, admitted December 3, 1818; Alabama, admitted December 14, 1819; Maine, separated from Massachusetts and admitted as a State March 15, 1820; and Missouri, which adopted a Constitution in July, 1820, but was not proclaimed a State until August 10, 1821, when it had fulfilled the condition exacted of it by Congress as a prerequisite to admission. The situation in which Missouri stood at the time of the presidential election raised again, and in an exceedingly perplexing form, the question which had arisen in 1817 as to the right of Indiana to participate in the election. For whereas Indiana, although not fully admitted to the Union at the time the electors of 1816 voted, was a State in full standing when the votes were

counted, Missouri had not performed the duty imposed as a condition of admission, and it was not certain that its legislature would ever give the pledge required. The inconvenience of a discussion of this question in the joint convention, and the doubts of members as to the result of an attempt to decide it either in joint meeting or by the two Houses separately, led to the invention of a method of avoiding the point altogether. The joint committee of Congress which was, in accordance with custom, appointed to ascertain and report a mode of examining the votes, reported, in addition to the usual resolution, the following:

Resolved, That if any objection be made to the votes of Missouri, and the counting, or omitting to count, which shall not essentially change the result of the election, in that case they shall be reported by the President of the Senate in the following manner: Were the votes of Missouri to be counted, the result would be, for A. B. for President of the United States, votes; if not counted, for A. B. for President of the United States, votes. But in either event A. B. is elected President of the United States. And in the same manner for Vice-President.

A long debate took place on this proposition in the Senate. The views advanced were various. But the Senate was persuaded to adopt the resolution upon the assurance of Mr. Barbour, who reported it, that it was his intention thereafter to bring up the matter of electoral votes objected to, to repair what he considered as a casus omissus in the Constitution, either by an act of Congress, if that should appear sufficient, or by an amendment to the Constitution.

The discussion in the House was of a different character. Mr. John Randolph attacked the resolution, providing for an alternative statement of the vote of Missouri, on constitutional grounds. He could not recognize in either House, or in both conjoined, the power to decide on the votes of any State. The electoral colleges were as independent of Congress as Congress was of them; and he would rather see an interregnum, or that no votes should be counted, than that a principle should be adopted which went to the very foundation on which the presidential office rested. Several other gentlemen took similar views. The opposing argument was presented by Mr. Clay, then a private member, who said that Congress had been intrusted with the duty of enumerating the votes for President, and it was necessary for the two Houses to determine what were votes.