THE UNION NOT A MERE LEAGUE.

VIII.

STATE RIGHTS-NULLIFICATION.

.

our Union," which he never ceased | tion. They vehemently disclaimed

to regard as of the highest importance and the greatest beneficence. · History teaches scarcely anything more clearly than that it was the purpose of the framers of the Constitution to render the inhabitants of all the States substantially and perpetually one people, living under a common Government, and known to the rest of mankind by a common national designation. The advantages secured to the people of all the States by the "more perfect Union" attained through the Constitution, were so striking and manifest that, after they had been for a few years experienced and enjoyed, they silenced all direct and straightforward opposition. Those who had originally opposed and denounced the Constitution became at least in profession-its most ardent admirers and vigilant guardians. They volunteered their services as its champions and protectors against those who had framed it and with difficulty achieved its ratification. These were plainly and persistently accused of seeking its subversion through the continual enlargement of Federal power by latitudinous and unwarranted construc

3 In the address of the Federal Convention to the people, signed by Washington as its President, September 17, 1787.

4 "Citizens by birth or choice of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of AMERICAN, which belongs to you in your National capacity, must always exalt the just pride of Patriotism, more than any appellation derived from local discriminations." Washington's Farewell Address.

In the Federal Convention of 1787 (Debate of Monday, June 18th):

Mr. HAMILTON, of New York, said: "The General power, whatever be its form, if it preserves itself, must swallow up the State Governments. Otherwise, it would be swallowed up by them. It is against all the principles of good government to vest the requisite powers in such

any desire to return to the chronic feebleness and anarchy of the supplanted Confederation, and consecrated their energies to battling against the measureless ills of an unbalanced and centralized despotism. They generally rejected the appellation of Anti-Federalists, and chose to be distinctively known as Republicans. Thomas Jefferson, who had been absent as embassador to France throughout the five or six preceding years, and who had therefore taken no conspicuous or decided part either for or against the Constitution in its incipiency, became the leader, and was for many years thereafter the oracle, of their party.

The Federalists, strong in the possession of power, and in the popularity and influence of their great chief, Washington, were early misled into some capital blunders. Among these was the passage of the acts of Congress, famous as the Alien and Sedition laws. The aliens, whom the political tempests then convulsing Europe had drifted in large numbers to our shores, were in good part turbulent, restless adventurers, of desperate fortunes, who sought to embroil

a body as Congress. Two sovereignties cannot exist within the same limits."

Mr. WILSON, of Pennsylvania (June 20th), was tenacious of the idea of preserving the State Governments." But in the next day's debate: "Taking the matter in the more general view, he saw no danger to the States from the General Government. On the contrary, he conceived that, in spite of every precaution, the General Government would be in perpetual danger of encroachments from the State Governments." And

Mr. MADISON, of Virginia, "was of the opinion, in the first place, that there was less danger of encroachment from the General Government than from the State Governments; and, in the second place, that the mischiefs from the encroachments would be less fatal, if made by the former, than if made by the latter."-Madison's Papers, vol. ii., pp. 884, 903, 921.

THE RESOLUTIONS OF '98.

83

was far easier to libel a hated opponent than to refute his arguments. The best newspapers of that day would hardly maintain a comparison, either for ability or decorum, with the third class of our time; and personalities largely supplied the place of learning and logic. Hence, many prosecutions under the Sedition law; some of them, doubtless, richly deserved; but all tending to excite hostility to the act and its authors. No other contributed half so palpably to the ultimate overthrow of the Federal ascendency.

When John Adams became President, in 1797, the South had become the stronghold of the Opposition. Mr. Madison had dissolved his earlier association with the great body of the framers of the Constitution, and become the lieutenant of Mr. Jefferson. Kentucky-a Virginia colony and

us in the contest then devastating the Old World. Washington, and the Federal magnates who surrounded him, were inflexibly averse to this, and baffled all attempts to involve us in a foreign war. This very naturally offended the European refugees among us, who looked anxiously to this country for interference to reëstablish them in power and prosperity in their own. Hence, they generally took the lead in reprobating and stigmatizing the negotiation and approval of Jay's treaty with Great Britain, whereby our past differences and misunderstandings with that power were adjusted. They were in good part politicians and agitators by trade, instinctively hostile to a government so cold-blooded and unpulsive as ours, and ardently desired a change. Regarding them as dangerous and implacable enemies to the established policy of non-inter-offset-was ardently and almost vention, and to those who upheld it, the Alien law assumed to empower the President to send out of the country any foreigner whose further stay among us should be deemed by him incompatible with the public safety or tranquillity. The Sedition law provided for the prosecution and punishment of the authors of false, malicious, and wicked libels on the President, and others high in authority. The facts that no one ever was sent away under the Alien act, and that the Sedition law was hardly more than the common law of libel applied specially to those who should venture to speak evil of dignities, proved rather the folly of such legislation than its necessity or its accordance with the Constitution. Party spirit and party feeling ran high. It

6

unanimously devoted to the ideas and the fortunes of Jefferson; and he was privately solicited to draft the manifesto, through which the new State beyond the Alleghanies proclaimed, in 1798, her intense hostility to Federal rule. The famous "Resolutions of '98" were thus originated; Mr. Jefferson's authorship, though suspected, was never established until he avowed it in a letter more than twenty years afterward. These resolutions are too long to be here quoted in full, but the first is as follows:

"Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a General Government for special purposes

• Signed November 19, 1794; ratified by Washington, August 14, 1795:

of the public debt, and during those inter- | by him with reference to new objects, vals when the purposes of war shall not call

for them? Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures? On a few articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression, in due season, will doubtless be right; but the great mass of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them. Their patriotism would certainly prefer its continuance and application to the great purposes of the public education, roads, rivers, canals, and such other objects of public improvement as it may be thought proper to add to the constitutional enumeration of federal powers. By these operations, new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disap; pear; their interests will be identified, and their Union cemented by new and indissolu

ble ties."

"Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation. The subject is now proposed for the consideration of Congress, because, if approved, by the time the State Legislatures shall have deliberated on this extension of the federal

not to those already provided for. Had these required such enlargement, the duties should have been repealed or reduced at once, to be reimposed whenever Congress should be clothed with the requisite constitutional power.

HENRY CLAY entered Congress under Jefferson, in 1806, and was an earnest, thorough, enlightened Protectionist from the start. Mr. Calhoun first took his seat in 1811, when the question of war with Great Britain dwarfed all others; and his zealous efforts, together with those of Clay, Felix Grundy, and other ardent young Republicans, finally overbore the reluctance of Madison and his more sedate councilors, and secured a Declaration of War on the At the close of 18th of June, 1812. that war, a revision of the existing Tariff was imperatively required; and no man did more than John C. Calhoun-then, for his last term, a leading member of the House-to secure the efficient Protection of Home Manufactures, but especially of the Cotton Manufacture, by the Tariff of 1816; which Massachusetts, merated in the Constitution, and to which and most of New England, opposed, it permits the public moneys to be applied." precisely because it was Protective, Mr. Jefferson, it will be seen, sug- and therefore, in the short-sighted gests an amendment to the Constitu- view, hostile to the interests of Comtion, to give Congress power to raise merce and Navigation. Internal Imand appropriate money to the "great provements, and all other features of purposes of education, roads, rivers, what was termed the National in canals," etc.; but he betrays no sus- contradistinction to the Radical or picion that the incidental Protec-strict-construction theory of the nation then confessedly enjoyed by our Home Manufactures was given in defiance of "the Constitution as it is." On the contrary, an enlargement of federal power was suggested

trusts, and the laws shall be passed, and

other arrangements made for their execution, the necessary funds will be on hand and without employment. I suppose an amendment to the Constitution, by consent of the States, necessary, because the objects now recommended are not among those enu

ture and functions of our Federal Government, found in Mr. Calhoun and his personal adherents their most thorough-going champions: and South Carolina was, about 1820, the

THE TARIFF OF 1828.

91

from New England-some provisions having been engrafted upon it with the alleged purpose and the certain effect of making it obnoxious to Massachusetts and the States which, on either side, adjoined her. On the other hand, the members from the Middle and Western Free States, without distinction of party, supported it almost unanimously. This Tariff imposed high duties on Iron, Lead, Hemp, Wool, and other bulky staples, and was very generally popular. Under it, the industry of the Free States, regarded as a whole, was more productive, more prosperous, better rewarded, than ever before, and the country exhibited a rapid growth in wealth, intelligence, and general comfort.

arena of a stirring conflict between | by most of the members from the Cother "National" school of politicians, ton States, and by a majority of those headed by Calhoun and McDuffie, and the "Radicals," whose chief was William H. Crawford, of Georgia. Repeated duels between Mr. McDuffie and Colonel William Cuming, of Georgia, in one of which McDuffie was severely wounded, were among the incidents of this controversy. Yet but few years elapsed before Mr. Calhoun and his trusty henchman, McDuffie, appeared in the novel character of champions of "State Rights," and relentless antagonists of Protection, and all the "National" projects they had hitherto supported! Mr. Calhoun attempted, some years afterward, to reconcile this flagrant inconsistency; but it was like "arguing the seal off the bond"-a feat to which the subtlest powers of casuistry are utterly inadequate. He did prove, however, that his change did not follow, but preceded, his quarrel with General Jackson-his original, though then unacknowledged, demonstration against Protection as unconstitutional, and in favor of Nullification as a reserved right of each State, having been embodied in an elaborate document known as "The South Carolina Exposition," adopted and put forth by the Legislature of his State near the close of 1828. The doctrines therein affirmed were those propounded by Hayne and refuted by Webster in the great debate already noticed.

The South-that is, the cottongrowing region-for Louisiana, through her sugar-planting interest, sustained the Protective policy, and shared in the prosperity thence resulting-now vehemently opposed the Tariff, declaring herself thereby plundered and impoverished. There is no evidence that her condition was less favorable, her people less comfortable, than they had been; but the contrast between the thrift, progress, and activity of the Free States, and the stagnation, the inertia, the poverty, of the cotton region, was very striking. And, as the South was gradually unlearning her Revolutionary principles, and adopting instead the dogma that Slavery is

The Tariff of 1828-the highest and most protective ever adopted in this country-was passed by a Jack-essentially right and beneficent, she on Congress, of which Van Buren, Silas Wright, and the Jacksonian leaders in Pennsylvania and Ohio, were master-spirits. It was opposed

could not now be induced to apprehend, nor even to consider, the real cause of her comparative wretchedness; though she was more than once