/, SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ABRAHAM LINCOLN. From a rare photograph in the possession of Noah Brooks. (Only five copies were printed from this negative.) SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS BY NOAH BROOKS ILLUSTRATED NEW YORK CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS 1895 COPYRIGHT, 1895, BY CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS TROW DIRECTORY PRINTING AND BOOKBINDING COMPANY LIST OF PORTRAITS ABRAHAM LINCOLN, ..... Frontispiece PAGE GEORGE WASHINGTON, 7 JOHN ADAMS, 15 AARON BURR, 23 ALEXANDER HAMILTON, 33 THOMAS JEFFERSON, ....... 43 JOHN JAY, . . . . . . . . -51 JAMES MADISON, 59 GEORGE CLINTON, ........ 65 JAMES MONROE, ........ 73 JOHN C. CALHOUN, 81 HENRY CLAY, 89 JOHN RANDOLPH, 101 JOHN QUINCY ADAMS, 109 JOHN P. HALE, 115 MARTIN VAN BUREN, 121 ZACHARY TAYLOR, 125 vi LIST OF PORTRAITS PAGE ANDREW JACKSON, 131 DANIEL WEBSTER, . 137 WILLIAM H. SEWARD, ... ... 143 WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON, . . . . . . . 149 MlLLARD FlLLMORE, . 153 JOHN TYLER, 161 FRANKLIN PIERCE, 167 JAMES K. POLK, i?5 JAMES BUCHANAN, 183 THURLOW WEED, . . . . .191 CONTENTS PAGE I. SOME FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS, . i II. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS, . . . .63 III. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS, . . 113 IV. THE PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS, . .172 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS SOME FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS THE student of American politics must needs notice the great influence which questions growing out of our foreign relations exerted in the political affairs of the young republic. After we had achieved our independence and were yet struggling to get upon our feet, political parties were divided, not only by the question of the adoption or rejection of the newly framed Constitution, but by their friendship for, or their hostility to, certain foreign nations with which we were forced to have more or less close political and commercial relations. In- deed, there was a time when the Federalists were stigmatized as being pro-English, and the Anti-Federalists were " more French than the Frenchmen," although not a man among them could speak a word of the French lan- guage. From the end of the Revolution to the be- SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ginning of Andrew Jackson's administration, let us say, foreign questions cut a bigger fig- ure in our domestic politics than they ever have since, although the primary develop- ment of parties was along the lines of the debate that sprung up as soon as the new Constitution was submitted to the several States for approval. The names of Whig and Tory, so freely bandied during and im- mediately after the War for Independence, lost their significance when the war was over and the Cowboys had been hanged and the more pestilent of the Tories had been expelled from the country whose successful rebellion had disappointed their hopes. Be- fore we rail at the Anti-Federalists for their lack of patriotism in opposing the adoption of the " Gilded Trap," or " New Roof,"- as they called the present palladium of our lib- erties, we should recall the fact that that wonderful instrument was as yet an experi- ment, and the system of government pro- posed under it was a novelty upon the face of the earth. With that delightful independence of judg- ment which is one of the legitimate charac- teristics of the Anglo-Saxon race, our forefa- thers, the founders of the republic, insisted that the new Constitution was a thing of FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 3 shreds and patches, and would be a fruitful source of abuses ; or they extolled it as the sum of human wisdom and the only rock of salvation. It is not certain that the papers now known as " The Federalist " (the larger number of which were written by Alexander Hamilton for the purpose of convincing men that the new Constitution was worthy of adoption) were greatly influential in secur- ing the end for which they were written ; but those papers, if they did not convince the Anti-Federalists, have survived unto this day to interpret for us the Federal Consti- tution. They were chiefly written by men who helped to frame the fundamental law of the republic. When the Federal Constitution had been finally adopted, party lines were drawn be- tween those who favored a strict construc- tion of its provisions and a large predomi- nance for the reserved rights of the States, and those who demanded a loose, or liberal, construction of that instrument and a some- what centralized national government. The Anti-Federalists would have said, " The Unit- ed States are," and the Federalists would have used the form, " The United States is." Alexander Hamilton was the leader of the Federalists. Thomas Jefferson became the 4 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS chief, the apostle of the party opposed to a strong and centralized government. Both of these men, so unalterably differing with each other's views, were members of Washing- ton's cabinet. In like manner, Lincoln, in later years, framed his cabinet to include non-assimilable elements and named his coun- cil " The Happy Family." But the time came when Hamilton, with his talent for management, was able to se- cure the aid of Jefferson in his famous " log- rolling" scheme by which his own darling financial projects were accepted by Con- gress ; Jefferson's friends voted for those propositions in return for the location of the national capital on the banks of the Poto- mac. Congressmen of a later day and gener- ation, who exchange votes as pioneer Ameri- can builders " changed work," may console themselves with the reflection that the pio- neers of American politics did precisely the same thing when " log - rolling " was one of the first inventions in Congress. Later on, it was the Federalists who were most forward in plans and schemes for build- ing the capital by such aids as lotteries and loans ; and it was the duty of the Anti-Feder- alists to cry out " why did a Government loaded down with a debt of seventy millions FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 5 plunge the citizens into this bottomless pit of lotteries and architecture ? " In the intem- perate language of the time, it was openly charged that votes were influenced in Con- gress by the holding of certificates of indebt- edness made valuable by the funding bill of Hamilton ; and much of the political talk of the time, whether Federalist or Anti-Federal- ist, resembled that of our own day, although it was certainly more acrimonious and un- charitable than anything that the present generation has ever known. Even so elegant a gentleman and sincere a patriot as William Maclay, then a senator from Pennsylvania, stanch Anti-Federalist that he was, could set down in his diary that he considered Presi- dent Washington to be " playing a game " in what he regarded as a disreputable business ; and Maclay, working himself up to a high pitch of indignation, finally declared that " the President has become, in the hands of Hamilton, the dishclout of every dirty spec- ulation, as his name goes to wipe away blame and silence all murmuring." Federalists and Anti - Federalists divided again, naturally enough, on the propositions to levy an excise on certain articles of domes- tic production and to establish a National Bank. The necessity of collecting a tariff on 6 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS foreign goods imported was early recognized ; and when James Madison introduced in the First Congress the first tariff bill, the commo- tion that ensued was caused not so much by opposition to the measure as by those " shrieks of locality " which have never since ceased in the National Congress. Although there was some difference of opinion among the states- men of the time as to the expediency of framing the Impost Bill so as to protect American manufactures, the " claims " of the States for favors to be granted by the bill made more noise than all the other causes of the hot debate combined. Hamilton's famous report on manufactures, then sent to Con- gress, was the first argument in favor of the policy of protection, and is still entitled to respect in these later days. And it is fair to say that the chief opposition to the protec- tive principle and to the Impost Bill came from men who hated Hamilton because they hated a Federalist. Nor was the charge that men vote in Con- gress in a way to subserve their own private interests left to be invented by those who, in this year of grace, take this means to harass their political foes. While the Impost Bill was pending in Congress, it was alleged that sundry members hindered its progress in or- GEORGE WASHINGTON. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart. (The Gibbs Portrait.) FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 9 der that importers might hurry in their duti- able cargoes ; and the good Maclay records his suspicion, well-nigh belief, that one of his colleagues in the Pennsylvania delegation in Congress was doing his best to hinder the passage of the bill in order that his own In- diamen might get in with their cargoes be- fore the tariff should become operative. Again, in 1791, when Hamilton proposed his scheme for a National Bank, party fury ran high over domestic questions. Once more the extent of the Federal powers and the expediency of their exercise were debated with great heat and acrimony. This was not a national banking system that was planned, but a bank which should be the financial agent of the Government. The Federalists, regarding the collection of the revenues as one of the necessary functions of the Gov- ernment, urged that Congress might consti- tutionally charter a bank for that purpose ; and the Anti-Federalists, while they were will- ing to admit that such a bank would be a great public convenience, insisted that it was not absolutely needed; and therefore, they said, it would not be lawful. This subtle hair- splitting, sophistical though it may appear, really opened a conflict of opinion which lasted for more than a half-century, and dur- 10 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ing the administration of Andrew Jackson raged with prodigious heat. Nevertheless, although the National Bank issue was fought over with a closer and yet closer drawing of the lines of Federalist and Anti-Federalist, it was evident that the time had come for the choice of a new name for the party in opposi- tion. The Constitution having been adopted, and all of Hamilton's financial projects hav- ing been carried, the questions that had agi- tated the strict constructionists and the loose constructionists were in a fair way to a set- tlement that might be regarded as perma- nent. New issues demanded a new title for the party. Jefferson, returning from a long sojourn in France, and deeply imbued with the most fantastic and radical notions of democracy and the rights of men, had been rewarded with a place in the cabinet ; the French Revolution had rolled to its highest tide the theory and practice of popular government ; and, now that domestic questions were not so imminent, the American people were in- vited to consider their relations to the strug- gles of other nations for liberty and equality. Sympathizing with the French in their re- publican excesses and hating the English with virulence, Jefferson gave the party of FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS I I which he became the acknowledged head the name of Democraticj^Republican. The first member ofThls~compound title was soon dropped, and we must hereafter know the Anti - Federalists as Republicans. Before this, however, rival factions in Pennsylvania were known as Constitutionalists and Repub- licans. Heretofore the Anti-Federalists had been divided into several separate squads. Now, under Jefferson's management, they were welded into one homogeneous mass, and al- though the Federalists had managed, while their adversaries were not united, to get possession of and hold both branches of Con- gress, the Federal Judiciary, and most of the State Legislatures, the newly baptized Re- publican party was being organized for vic- tory. Washington was first called to the chair by acclamation. Before his second election came on, party divisions began to show themselves in his cabinet, and the Arcadian simplicity of American politics forever dis- appeared. Henceforth there was to be no unanimity in anything that could be lugged into politics ; a readiness to make " a live issue " of everything possible replaced the patriotic unity that had held the people to- gether while they had been threatened by 12 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS the total destruction of their liberties. Polit- ical parties were born. The quarrels of Jefferson and Hamilton, grievous as they were to their illustrious chief, were the natural result of this new formation of parties. Personally antagonized although the two cabinet officers had been, (" pitted against each other like game-cocks," Jefferson had said), their separation on party lines was logical and inevitable. It was lam- entable that one of the first evidences of party development was seen in the wicked and mendacious attacks upon the personal character of Washington, who was a Feder- alist although he does not appear to have known it. At first these attacks were ob- lique. Vice-President John Adams, who was a candidate for re-election when the time for another election drew near, was roundly abused for his coldness, his hauteur, his aristocratic equipage and monarchical ten- dencies, and his stately affectations. Many Anti-Federalists privately said that all this was true of Washington. And the violent language applied by these men to Hamilton, Washington's favorite and nearest friend, were disguised assaults upon the illustrious First President. But notwithstanding these partisan differ- FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 13 ences, no name but that of Washington was mentioned when the presidential succession was under discussion. And now, for the first time, Congress busied itself with laws regulating the method of collecting and counting the votes of the Presidential Elec- tors. As yet there were no formal nomina- tions, no political conventions, no caucuses in Congress, no campaign committees, and, above all, no windy political platforms, nor, indeed, platforms of any kind. Both parties being agreed upon the nomination of Wash- ington, they divided upon the nominations for Vice-President. The Republicans would have supported Jefferson for Vice-President ; but the Constitution forbade the selection of President and Vice-President from the same State, and, forsaking the great supply of " presidential timber " which the Mother of Presidents was ready to furnish, they named George Clinton, of New York; the Federalists adhered to John Adams. It was a curiously free - and - easy method, that by which the Presidential Electors were chosen. The theory of an election by a free choice of the Electoral College was still maintained ; not a man of the whole number of electors was pledged to vote for any specified candi- date. Nor was it required of them that they 14 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS should indicate their choice for President and Vice-President. Each elector was to cast his ballot for two men ; and the man who stood at the top of the poll was to be President ; the next below him was to be Vice-President. The manner of choosing electors in the several States was various ; they were chosen by the people, or by the legislatures ; on a general ticket, or by voters in districts ; or by a combination of these several methods, as wisdom and whim might dictate. In many of the States, perhaps in most of them, the people really had nothing to do with the selection of the Presidential Electors except so far as their voice was heard through the few newspapers of the time. The second national election took place in November, 1792, and the canvass of the votes of the Presidential Electors, which was had in February of the following year, showed that every one of them (and there were one hundred and thirty-two), had voted for George Washington. In the election for Vice-President the Federalists triumphed. John Adams had seventy - seven votes ; George Clinton, fifty ; Thomas Jefferson, four ; and Aaron Burr, one. The election returns came in from the States with exceed- JOHN ADAMS. From a copy by Jane Stuart, about 1874, of a painting by her father, Gil- bert Stuart, about 1800 in the possession of Henry Adams. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS I/ ing slowness. Although the general result was early known, the vote of Kentucky was not heard from until January, 1793. This election over, the attention of the American people was once more diverted to foreign matters and to the effect which was produced upon their own politics by com- motions on the other side of the Atlantic. The sympathy which Federalists had at first felt for the French Republicans had visibly cooled during the mad saturnalia that pre- vailed after the execution of Louis XVI.; but that of the American Republicans had now risen to a fever heat. In all the chief centres of population there was manifested some- thing like a rage for whatever was French, and, more especially, for whatever was sug- gestive of the prevailing temper of the French people. Whatever was distasteful to the Parisian Reds was hateful to American Re- publicans ; and, if we may judge by the universality of this popular craze, the Re- publicans were now in a majority. Men and women were called " Citizen " and " Cit- izeness," and every fantastic notion of the mob that ruled Paris was taken up here and adopted with glad acclaim as eminently fit and proper for the usage of the citizens of the American republic. 1 8 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS When France declared war against Eng- land, Spain, and Holland, the excitement of the Republicans knew no bounds; their hated enemy, England, was now to be swept from the seas, and Washington's proclama- tion of neutrality was the signal for the out- burst of a long -slumbering magazine of hatred and discontent. The extraordinary performances of Citizen Genet, the newly arrived French Minister, in 1793, added fuel to the flames. Jefferson, who was still Secre- tary of State, was doubtless greatly discon- certed by the indiscretions of Genet, who apparently regarded the United States as a French province, and who commissioned pri- vateers, established prize-courts, issued proc- lamations, and appealed to the people of the United States, as if an ambassador of the French republic were not obliged to recog- nize the National Government unless he chose. All these amazing proceedings of Genet were warmly approved by the extreme Re- publicans, but Jefferson, however he may have secretely sympathized with the auda- cious stranger, felt obliged to warn him that his conduct was not to be tolerated. The surprised minister was recalled by his Gov- ernment, at the request of President Wash- FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS IQ ington, and that incident was at least tem- porarily closed. But we may charge to the account of the prevailing temper of the American people at that time the fact that the Republicans had a small majority in the House of Representatives when the Third Congress met in December, 1793, although there was an unattached political contingent in the House holding a balance of power suf- ficiently solid to act as a check upon the larger faction. During the Third Congress many bitter fights raged over such questions as State rights, internal revenue taxation, the tariff, and trade with foreign countries. Out of the enforcement of the internal revenue tax grew the Whiskey Rebellion ; the people of several of the western counties of Pennsyl- vania declared that they would not pay the excise dues ; they stoned and otherwise maltreated the agents of the National Gov- ernment, very much as the " moonshiners " of a later day have done, and finally rose in open revolt against all lawfully consti- tuted authority. The publication of the Jay Treaty furnished another pretext for the rampant attitude of the Republicans, who, by this time, had acquired a habit of railing against everything that was done by the ad- 20 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ministration of Washington. Jay's treaty with England, although it did not provide for the removal of all the causes of popular complaint, did make provision for a more en- larged foreign trade for the young republic, and it was eventually ratified by the Senate. It is interesting to note the asperity with which the House of Representatives, spurred on by the Republicans, then claimed some share in the business of treaty-making, if not in the actual ratification of treaties. The contention of the malcontents was that the House ought at least to be allowed to dis- cuss the provisions of treaties proposed. Democratic societies, which were really clubs of Jeffersonian Republicans, sprang up all over the country, and were denounced for their alleged relations to the Jacobins of France. These, in the absence of political platforms (as yet unknown), passed resolu- tions denouncing the excise tax, praising Genet and his successors in this country, condemning neutrality, assailing the Admin- istration with virulence, and abusing the President in good set terms. The reptile press, managed by such partisans as Philip Freneau and Benjamin Franklin Bache, teemed with the most indecent assaults on the character of Washington, who was called FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 21 " the Stepfather of His Country," accused of incompetency during the war, and of an em- bezzlement of the public funds ; and he was even actually threatened with impeachment and assassination. It is not creditable to the candor of Jefferson that one of these slander- ers was kept in the employment of the Gov- ernment under his administration of the State Department, while thus brutally assail- ing the character of Washington. The Sec- retary of State has set down in his diary the fact that Washington, having vented his in- dignation against Freneau, gave Jefferson the impression that he was about to ask that the man be discharged from the public ser- vice. " I will not," added the faithful Sec- retary to his record of the implied request of the President. When Washington, sickened of public life by attacks which, as he said, were " in terms so exaggerated and indecent as could scarce- ly be applied to a Nero, a notorious default- er, or even to a common pickpocket," had retired to private life, refusing a third term of the Presidency, the first national election that was conducted on strictly political lines had come on. No platforms were framed, no conventions held, and no primaries organ- ized. But the articles of faith of each of the 22 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS two great political parties were by this time clearly formulated and understood. As for the candidates, it was in like manner well understood that Thomas Jefferson and Aaron Burr were the choice of the. Republicans for President and Vice-President, and that the Federalists would vote for John Adams and Thomas Pinckney, respectively, to fill those offices. The canvass of Jefferson gave oc- casion for the first direct foreign interference with our domestic politics. The French Minister to the United States, M. Adet, hav- ing taken a hand in the pending canvass, gradually wrought himself up to the point of informing the free and independent vot- ers of the United States that the defeat of his friend Jefferson would be regarded by France as a possible cause of war. This fin- ished Mr. Jefferson for the time. When the electoral votes were counted (in February, 1797), John Adams had seventy-one, Thomas Jefferson sixty-eight, Thomas Pinckney fifty- nine, and Aaron Burr thirty. The Federal- ists had elected their candidate ; but, under the operation of the curious methods pre- vailing, the Republican candidate for Presi- dent had been chosen Vice-President. Fisher Ames, in a letter written at this time, proph- esied that " the two Presidents would jostle AARON BURR. From a picture by Vanderlyn at the New York Historical Society. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 2$ and conflict for four years, and then the Vice would become chief." This was ex- actly what happened. Foreign affairs furnished the chief causes that led to the downfall of the Federal party, and the elevation of the Republicans to power. The French Directory, as if in exe- cution of the threat implied in M. Adet's electioneering letter in behalf of Jefferson, insulted the American republic with deliber- ate and most exasperating- detail. Our en- voy to France was treated with contempt, and even contumely, and when three special agents were sent to smooth matters over, if possible, they were not only insulted, but were told that they must bribe the Direc- tory, and that the United States Government must lend money to the French Govern- ment, if amicable relations between the two republics were to continue longer. So deeply infatuated were a portion of our people with French Republicanism that even the shameful treatment of the American en- voys in France had been insufficient to rouse their spirit ; but when the famous " X Y Z " letters were published, and the audacious pro- posals of bribery and blackmail were fastened upon the French Directory, the fierceness of the outburst in this country for a time dis- 26 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS mayed even the most ultra of the Republi- cans and brought to the ranks of the exult- ing Federalists many voters who had hereto- fore acted with their adversaries. With amazement and wrath, the American people learned that the three commissioners, C. C. Pinckney, John Marshall, and Elbridge Gerry, had not only been peremptorily or- dered to quit France, after months of inex- plicable delays on the part of the French Government, but had been insulted by propo- sitions of bribery. The French agents, whose identity was concealed under the initials " X Y Z," had demanded blackmail for them- selves and their associates and loans to the French Government as a condition precedent to the settlement of diplomatic difficulties pending between the two republics. These facts, so discreditable to the French govern- ment, were published by order of the United States Senate ; and our people soon knew that the three corrupt and audacious French agents were MM. Hottiguer (X), Bellamy (Y), and Hauteval (Z). French hostility now became more and more patent, and the war spirit flamed out in Congress and all over the country. The Republicans, whose distinctive badge had been the tricolored cockade, were silenced, FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 2/ while the people shouted the newest slogan, " Millions for defence ; not one cent for trib- ute." This war-cry, stamped on copper cents or tokens, and emblazoned in every possible way in every section of the republic, was the American answer to the insulting demand of the French ; and under the influ- ence of this new demonstration of a distinc- tively American spirit of patriotism, the Fed- eralists carried themselves with a high front. This was the cause of their ruin. In the flush of their victory over the Republicans, and with a good working majority in both branches of Congress, they passed the fa- mous Alien and Sedition Laws. The first of these, enacted in June, 1798, authorized the President to expel from the United States any alien whom he should judge to be dan- gerous to the liberties of the country ; and the second law, passed in July of that year, imposed fines and imprisonment upon any who should combine to oppose any measure of the Government, or should utter a false, malicious, or scandalous writing against the members of the Government of the United States. The fact that these two laws, em- bodying as they did the extremest principles of the Federalist creed, and lodging in the hands of the Executive enormous power 28 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS over the persons of alien residents, were placed on the statute-books for a specified term of years (to remain until March 3, 1801), added to their odiousness and immediate un- popularity. The dictatorial policy pursued toward the United States by the French Gov- ernment, and the firm and patriotic stand taken by the Adams administration were enough, one would suppose, to fortify the Federalists in power for years to come ; but the enactment of the Alien and Sedition Laws was naturally regarded by the Repub- licans as a stretch of power not justified by the Constitution and aimed at them and their allies. To the slogan " Millions for defence " now succeeded " Save liberty of speech " and " Defend the freedom of the press." For many a year afterward these two cries were terrible in the ears of the Federalists. Burning in effigy was one of the favorite de- vices of angry patriots in these days. When Chief-Justice Jay had negotiated the famous treaty with England that bore his name, he was burned in effigy and lampooned from one end of the republic to the other. Even be- fore the text of the treaty was made public, the Chief-Justice was pilloried and burned in effigy by indignant Philadelphians, who ran- sacked Juvenal, Ovid, and Virgil for clas- FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 29 sical epithets wherewith to garnish the base image of the man whom they execrated. Al- though the passage of the obnoxious Alien and Sedition Laws greatly excited the peo- ple, or at least the Republicans, their opposi- tion did not manifest itself so much in the personal abuse of individuals (though this was common enough) as in remonstrances and petitions for repeal. Later on, riots and mobs were caused by the popular excitement, and innumerable collisions resulted in many parts of the country from the angry debates over the burning topic of the day. One of the immediate effects of the enact- ment of the Alien and Sedition Laws was the framing of the famous Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions of '98, a formulation of the Jef- fersonian-Democratic creed which has had its adherents unto this day. The Republicans had finally seen that as the Executive, Con- gress, and the Federal Judiciary were still Federalist, they must go into the State Leg- islatures and initiate there the action which they desired to see taken for the shaping of public opinion. Of course the excited condi- tion of the popular mind on the subject of the repressive measures of Congress was the golden opportunity of Jefferson, who affected to believe (as he had said in his letter to Ste- 3O SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS vens Thomson Mason, of Virginia), that the Federalists were bent on setting up a mon- archy, and that if the Alien and Sedition Laws were permitted to stand, they would next propose making Adams President for life and fix the succession in the Adams fam- ily. If Jefferson really believed such non- sense as this, what wonder that many of " the plain people " also believed worse things of the Federal party ? But the Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- tions went quite as far in the direction of de- centralization as any act of the Federalists had gone in the opposite course. The reso- lutions, written by Jefferson while holding the office of Vice-President, were given to George Nicholas, of Kentucky, and by him their adoption by the Legislature of his State was procured. Two months later, James Madison, prompted by Jefferson, had them introduced in the Virginia Legislature, and that body passed the same resolutions slight- ly changed. A plentiful crop of rioting and disorder followed the adoption of this formal declaration of the abstract doctrine of State rights in its most naked form. But the hated Alien and Sedition Laws remained unre- pealed ; the Federalists in Congress formally decided to let them stay on the statute-books. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 31 Matthew Lyon, the first victim of the " Federal Bastile " of that day, was already famed as the inciter of the first fight that ever disgraced the American Congress. Lyon was a Representative from Vermont, a bit- ter Anti-Federalist, who had won much no- toriety as a coarse and brutal debater and a violent partisan. In the course of a wordy wrangle with Mr. Griswold, a Representative from Connecticut, in the House of Represen- tatives, in January, 1798, Lyon deliberately spat in the face of the Connecticut Congress- man ; and thereupon ensued great disorder which was renewed a day or two later when Griswold walked over to Lyon's seat and with deliberation beat him with a cudgel. In the free fight that followed, Lyon de- fended himself with a pair of tongs snatched from the fireplace, and a fisticuff encounter ensued. The offence for which Lyon was subsequently tried and convicted of sedition, was his reading at a public meeting a letter from Joel Barlow, the author of the Ameri- can epic, " The Columbiad," and other queer pieces of blank verse, then residing in Eu- rope ; but Lyon's own letters, printed in Vermont, were held to be full of seditious matter. Barlow had said that the answer of the House to President Adams's address 32 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS should have been " an order to send him to a mad-house ; " and Lyon had written, among other things, that the Government was " us- ing the sacred name of religion as a state en- gine to make mankind hate and persecute each other," and he complained that " mean men " were rewarded by places while their betters were denied place on account of their " independency of sentiment," with more to the same effect ; but not enough, one might say, to constitute groundwork for so grave a charge as that of sedition and privy con- spiracy. Nevertheless, Matthew was found guilty, was scolded by the judge, and was sentenced to pay a fine of one thousand dol- lars and be kept in the jail at Vergennes, Vt., four months. Although President Adams was the nomi- nal head of the Federalist party, Alexander Hamilton was its real leader. That remarka- ble man, who resigned the office of Secretary of the Treasury in February, 1795, and re- turned to the practice of his profession in New York, was at the forefront of every movement designed to advance the cause of the Federal party. In a public and most spirited defence of the Jay Treaty, in New York, he was mobbed and stoned by an an- gry and belligerent crowd of citizens. He ALEXANDER HAMILTON. From a picture by Trumbull, about 1804, in the New York City Hall. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 35 may have been said to have bled in the good cause, for his face was covered with bleeding wounds while he pleaded for the right to be heard. As a defender of the faith, he was entitled to honor ; and as a leader of public opinion he was easily far in advance of every other man in the ranks of the Federal party. Hamilton was resolutely opposed to the Sedition Bill, both because it was " bad poli- tics " and because of its excessive use of the executive powers. He had written to Con- gressmen and had argued against even a semblance of tyranny, such as the proposed law was in his eyes. Hamilton's coolness to- ward Adams and the influential friends of the Adams administration deepened when the President, to the infinite surprise of al- most everybody, including the members of his own cabinet, suddenly resolved to send three envoys to act as Ministers-Plenipotenti- ary to France. This widened the breach be- tween Hamilton and Adams, and it was not long before the ex-Secretary of the Treasury was popularly regarded as one of the leaders of a new faction known as the Independent Federalists. Dissensions like these embar- rassed and weakened the Federal party, al- ready toppling to its fall. Jefferson, a consummate party manager, 36 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS remained quiet while these quarrels were in progress, although we may be sure that his cunning hand was in many an intrigue which added to the complications besetting the path of the Federalists. " The Sage of Mon- ticello" wisely waited for factious excite- ments to work ; and the time for the fourth presidential election drew near. His influen- tial counsels held the eager Republicans in check ; the general irritation over the en- forcement of the Alien and Sedition Laws steadily increased. The Federalists had se- cured a goodly majority in both branches of Congress (the Sixth), which met in De- cember, 1799, but which had been chosen during the war excitement that broke out on the ignominious return of our envoys to France, and the publication of the " X Y Z " letters. Jefferson was calmly biding his time. That time came when a Congressional caucus of the Republican members nominated him for the Presidency (in 1800, during the first session of the Sixth Congress), with Aaron Burr for Vice-President. A Federal caucus, during the same session, placed in nomination John Adams and Thomas Pinck- ney as their candidates for President and Vice-President. For the first time, party FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 37 caucuses had selected candidates to be sup- ported in a political campaign, if we may give to the Jefferson-Adams canvass so mod- ern a title. There had been caucuses of the members of both branches of Congress, not- ably those which William Duane, the reckless and defamatory editor of the Philadelphia Aurora, a fierce Anti- Federalist sheet, had denounced as a junta, that determined the ac- tion of the controlling majority in Congress ; for this denunciation he was ordered into ar- rest by the Senate on charge of contempt. But " the Presidential intrigues " which Duane suspected brought forth from the cau- cus the name of Jefferson as well as that of Adams. New York was early found to be " the pivotal State " in a presidential contest, and the election in that State of members of the Legislature, which took place in April, 1800, resulting as it did in the choice of a Repub- lican legislature by which the Presidential Electors were to be chosen, gave great im- petus to Jefferson's campaign. Party zeal was at once rekindled, and, in the commotion that followed, Adams's cabinet was broken up, some of its members voluntarily retiring and some being summarily dismissed. Ham- ilton, whose friends in the cabinet were stig- 38 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS matized by the President as " the British fac- tion," wrote a furious pamphlet, in which he assailed Adams personally as a man of insane jealousy, tremendous self-conceit, and un- governable temper. He also bitterly criti- cised the foreign and domestic policy of the Adams administration, and disclosed secrets of the political management of the time. Hamilton's intention was to send this pam- phlet privately to trusted Federalist leaders, with the adjuration that the safety of their cause demanded that the Federalist Presi- dential Electors should be induced to cast their ballots for Pinckney for President, and keep the second place for Adams. But Aaron Burr, getting wind of this remarkable document, procured a copy of it and had it printed in the chief Republican newspapers of the country. Although the commotion arising from the explosion of this bomb-shell was tremendous and was most demoralizing to the Federal- ists, there was no such rush of Presidential Electors to the Republicans, when their balloting began, as the Jeffersonians had con- fidently expected. For weeks the result was in doubt. The difficulty of communication between points not very remote from each other kept the country long in suspense ; but, FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 39 on December i6th, while the Federalists were exulting over the fact that the returns footed up forty-seven votes for Adams and forty-six for Jefferson, returns from South Carolina decided the fate of the Federal party, and a majority was given to the Re- publicans in the Electoral College. Now came on the first disputed electoral count ; and the elation of the Jeffersonians was temporarily depressed. Although the candidates in the national election had been voted for as nominated for the Presidency and the Vice-Presidency, respectively, the constitutional provision relating to the se- lection of the highest name on the list for President still remained in force. Jefferson and Burr each received seventy-three votes ; there was no highest candidate. Burr, with his characteristic talent for intrigue, had steadily kept in view the possibilities of his own election to the presidency, and had even taken pains that one of the New York elec- tors should be persuaded to substitute his (Burr's) name for that of Jefferson on the ballot which he was to cast at the meeting of the Presidential Electors of his State. Now that the election was to be thrown into the House of Representatives, Burr stood as good a chance of being the choice of its 4O SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS members as Jefferson did. At least Burr thought so, and he put forward his schemes with confidence and alacrity. The Federalists, naturally tickled by this complication, did not behave with gener- osity. They proposed to hinder any choice by the House, expecting to carry the con- test into the Senate ; and that body, under the Constitution, would be allowed to choose some senator, or the Chief-Justice, to act as President until Congress should meet again, and a new election by the people be ordered. Or, if things came to the worst, they would vote for the intriguing, but little - known, Burr rather than for the detestable Jefferson. When President Adams was besought by the now thoroughly alarmed Jefferson to interfere to prevent these plans from being executed, he coldly said that he could not think of interfering with the prerogatives of Congress. Great was the excitement throughout the United States when, after the formal count- ing of the electoral vote and the declaration of the fact that there had been no choice for President, the two Houses of Congress sepa- rated and the House of Representatives be- gan to ballot, February 11, 1801. There were threats of armed intervention in behalf FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 41 of Jefferson, and there were rumbles of pop- ular applause for Burr. Washington, the new capital of the republic, difficult of access and poorly provided with accommodations for sojourners, could not find room for the thousands of persons who flocked thither to watch the proceedings. Roll-calls in the House were incessant, and at first night ses- sions were held, to the great discomfort of members, some of whom took their night- caps, pillows, and wraps with them to the Capitol. Finally, on the thirty-sixth ballot, the Federalists, who had all along obstructed the election, gave way, and Jefferson was elected, receiving the votes of ten States. Burr received the votes of four States, and two States cast blank ballots. The contest had lasted six days, and the release of public attention from a long and tense strain was fortunate and notable. The price demanded by the Federalists for their surrender to Jefferson was fixed in cau- cus, and was formulated by James Bayard, of Delaware, and Alexander Hamilton, of New York, these men having managed the Federalist phalanx in the interest of Jeffer- son. That price was an assurance from Jef- ferson that the Federalists might fully trust him to carry out their wishes ; he would take 42 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS good care of the infant navy, look carefully after the public credit, which had been main- tained under the policy of Hamilton, and would not remove any petty Federal office- holder who had taken part in the late cam- paign under the Federalist banner. The first disputed presidential election case had been decided, and that, too, as might have been expected, by a bargain between the electors and the elected. The first political revolution in the United States was accom- plished. A pleasing story of Jefferson's inaugura- tion that has long been current reports him as riding to the Capitol and tying his horse to the fence, and then entering almost unat- tended to take the oath of office. This fable has been dispersed. Contemporaneous ac- counts relate his ceremonial installation into office surrounded by martial music, banners, and guns. Salvos of artillery announced his arrival and departure from the Capitol, and the militia paraded in front of his lodgings before he left for the ceremony. His inau- gural address formulated the political creed of the Democratic - Republican party, of which he was the leader and exemplar. The parent of the Virginia and Kentucky Reso- lutions declared in favor of State rights, fru- THOMAS JEFFERSON. From a study by Gilbert Stuart now the property of T. Jefferson Coolidge. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 45 gal expenditures, of the national revenues, honest elections, payment of the public debt, a well-regulated militia, freedom of the per- son, press, and religious belief, and the diffu- sion of knowledge. One of the earliest of Jefferson's innova- tions was his disregard of the custom of a ceremonious visit of the President to Con- gress to read or deliver in person his annual message. Jefferson's critics said that he was not able to acquit himself creditably as a speaker and reader, and so he wrote his mes- sage and sent it by a messenger. But fierce Republicans had all along resented the pub- lic appearance of the President in the halls of Congress. William Maclay, during the administration of Washington, wrote in his diary several unfriendly accounts of Wash- ington's formal visits to the Capitol, one oc- casion being to explain to the Senate in ses- sion certain pending Indian treaties which the President was anxious to see ratified at once and over which the Senate hesitated. Maclay says that Washington's " motions were slow rather than lively, though he showed no signs of having suffered by gout or rheumatism. His complexion pale, nay, almost cadaverous. His voice hollow and indistinct, owing, as I believe, to artificial 46 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS teeth before his upper jaw, which occasioned a flatness of ; " but here some friendly hand has intruded to tear from the diary the rest of the stanch old Republican's descrip- tion of the father of his country, and the picture is left incomplete. Removals from office for political consid- erations engaged Jefferson's attention when he had firmly seated himself in the presiden- tial chair. District-attorneys and marshals of the Federal courts, " the shield of the Re- publican part of the community," Jefferson called them, were the first to go. But the removal of Elizur Goodrich, Collector of Customs at New Haven, Conn., gave occa- sion for one of Jefferson's most famous utter- ances. The removal of Goodrich and the appointment of Samuel Bishop as his suc- cessor were highly distasteful to the mer- chants, more especially as Bishop was an aged man, and already held the offices of town-clerk, mayor, justice of the peace, judge of the probate court, and chief judge of the common pleas. In his reply to the mer- chants' remonstrance, Jefferson argued that the right to appoint men to vacancies during a recess of the Senate implied a right to re- move officials. For how could there be va- cancies unless removals made them ? Of FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 47 vacancies he said : " Those by death are few ; by resignation none." Altogether, Jeffer- son made thirty-nine removals from office, none of which, he said, was for political rea- sons, difficult though this may be to believe. Washington had made nine removals, and Adams the same number. But several of Adams's appointments, on the eve of his quitting the presidential office, were cer- tainly inconsistent with decorum. Adams, whose home was in Braintree, Mass., had been nicknamed by his adversaries " The Duke of Braintree," and twenty-three circuit judges whom he appointed to fill places just created by Congress, in the last hours of his official life, were stigmatized as " The Duke of Braintree's Midnight Judges.'* Unsuc- cessful attempts were made to oust them. But although politics and official patron- age first became wedded in Jefferson's reign, more notable events shed lustre on his ad- ministration. The acquisition of Louisiana Territory by purchase from France was the most brilliant stroke of that administration ; but this was accomplished by an invasion of the political creed of the Democratic-Repub- licans almost ludicrous in its audacity. The treaty by which the purchase was completed was negotiated by James Monroe and ap- 48 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS proved by the President without any ap- parent authority whatever ; and when the ratification of that convention came up for consideration, the Republicans were forced to take the same position that the Federalists had taken when the Jay Treaty was under debate ; and the Federalists calmly ate their own words and argued against the lawful- ness and constitutionality of Jefferson's ac- tion. The President, however, confidently appealed to public sentiment to justify his course ; and the acquisition of this magnifi- cent territory gave us material from which have since been carved the States of Louis- iana, Arkansas, Missouri, Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota, Kansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, Montana, the greater parts of Idaho, Wyoming, and Colorado, and the Indian Territory. This was the first annexation of territory to the United States, acquired by purchase from a foreign power. The firsjt schism in the Democratic-Repub- lican party was that Uf the~" Quids," who, under the leadership oi the vituperative and ^ccentric John Randolph, formed a faction of extreme State Rights men with ultra- Democratic : jjrpclivities. Randolph had be- come alienated from Jefferson on account of purely personal grievances, and he took oc- FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 49 casion to disagree with the President's views when Jefferson's message regarding Spanish aggressions was sent to Congress, in Decem- ber, 1805. He now acted with the Federal- ists, and there was joined to his faction a knot of men who later on opposed the nomi- nation of Madison as Jefferson's successor. This schism lasted through Jefferson's sec- ond term, but disappeared when Madison was chosen, in 1813, and Monroe entered his cabinet as Secretary of State. Randolph's attacks upon Jefferson were doubtless very galling to the President, who was accused of employing " back-stairs influence " on Con- gress, and was generally assailed in terms too vulgar for quotation here. Foreign affairs plagued American politics greatly during Jefferson's two terms ; but as the Democratic -Republicans, or Demo- crats, as they now began to call themselves, were in an overwhelming majority in both branches of Congress, they were enabled to carry through all party measures. Jefferson arbitrarily rejected a new treaty with Eng- land, and was fiercely assailed therefor by the Federalists. In consequence of foreign complications arising from the war between France and other European powers, an em- bargo on American commerce was declared, 4 5O SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS and our ports were closed until the Admin- istration, frightened by threats from poverty- stricken and oppressed New England, in- duced a modification of the odious act. The taking of alleged British deserters from the decks of the American frigate Chesapeake by the British frigate Leopard, after a dis- gracefully feeble resistance, was another in- cident that irritated the people and added fuel to the flames of political dissensions. The trial of Aaron Burr for high treason was another distressing event in Jefferson's administration, for although the President (who refused to attend as a witness when summoned) attempted to secure the convic- tion of Burr, he was finally acquitted by the Virginia court in which he was tried. Dur- ing the excitement caused by the Burr ex- pedition down the Mississippi, the alarmed Senate, which was overwhelmingly Demo- cratic, passed a bill to suspend the writ of habeas corpus ; and another invasion of the creed of their party was the passage of the Cumberland Road Bill, authorizing the ex- penditure of public money for the building of a so-called national highway, thereby first raising the question of the constitutionality of making internal improvements at public expense. JOHN JAY. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart property of Mrs John Jay. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 53 Notwithstanding the complaints of the New England and Middle States against the monopoly of the executive office by Vir- ginia, James Madison was nominated by the Democrats in the spring of 1808, Jefferson having refused to consider a third term. Madison was first named by the Legislature of his own State, and was formally nomi- nated by a Congressional caucus. It was during the preliminary intriguing for the support of the Republican party in this election that there was developed that opposition to the caucus system which event- ually substituted in American politics the convention for the caucus. According to some authorities the word " caucus " origi- nated in a corrupted use of the word " calk- ers," the calkers and gravers of New Eng- land having a society which met in secret conclave and decided questions of interest to their labor organization. John Adams, in his diary, under date of February, 1763, men- tions the fact that the " caucus club " is in the practice of meeting " in the garret of Tom Dawes, the adjutant of the Boston regi- ment." A parody on " Gray's Elegy," published in Boston, in 1788, and quoted by Mr. Charles Ledyard Norton, in his useful little 54 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS book, " Political Americanisms," contains the couplet : " That mob of mobs, a caucus to command, Hurl wild discussion round the maddening land." At all events, this peculiar institution, es- pecially when it was used to control nomina- tions for the Presidency, became odious to the people. We have seen with what viru- lence the caucus system was assailed when it was employed by Congressmen to concert party nominations and measures. Open re- bellion broke out when, in 1808, Senator Stephen R. Bradley, of Vermont, who was the chairman of the last previous caucus of the Republican members of Congress, issued a call for another meeting of the members, the business in hand being the selection of candidates for the Presidency and Vice-Presi- dency. Some of the replies to Bradley 's ad- dress indicate, not only the growing disfavor in which the caucus system was held, but the violent style of the political writing of that time. One of the Virginia members (Mr. Gray), after declaring his " abhorrence of the usurpation of power " of which the innocent Senator from New Hampshire had been guilty, went on to say : " I cannot consent, either in an individual or representative ca- FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 55 pacity, to countenance by my presence the midnight intrigues of any set of men who may arrogate to themselves the right, which belongs only to the people, of selecting proper persons to fill the important offices of President and Vice - President. Nor do I suppose that the honest people of the United States can much longer suffer, in silence, so direct and palpable an invasion upon the most important and sacred right belonging exclusively to them." Nevertheless, the cau- cus was held, and James Madison and George Clinton were the nominees thereof ; but notice was taken of the protests which had been made by those who opposed the system. A formal announcement of the re- sult of the caucus contained a sort of post- script which declared that " in making the foregoing recommendations [or nominations] the members of this meeting have acted only in their individual characters as citizens." And it was added that this " was the most practical mode of consulting and respecting the interests of all upon a subject so truly in- teresting to the people of the United States." The caucus system was coming to an end in national political affairs. The Federalists, who were now completely out of power in all but two or three of the 56 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS States, nominated C. C. Pinckney, of South Carolina. Madison was elected by a large majority, and the returns showed that the Federalists were well-nigh exterminated, but they still made a vigorous fight for life. During Madison's first term the old ques- tion of a National Bank was revived by an attempt to recharter the United States Bank. Although opposition to such an institution was a cardinal principle of the Democratic faith, the rechartering scheme found favor with the ruling majority in both branches of Congress, and was only defeated by the cast- ing vote of the Vice-President (George Clin- ton), when the bill was before the Senate. The war-clouds that now began to rise changed the policy of the dominant party, which, under Jefferson (and so far under Madison), had been in favor of peace at al- most any price. The Administration was supine under the most outrageous acts of Great Britain toward the commerce of the United States, and such leaders of the party as Henry Clay, in the House, and John C. Calhoun and William H. Crawford, in the Senate, loudly called for war. Madison, who was disposed to hesitate, was plainly told that he must assume a more belligerent atti- tude if he expected another term of office. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 57 As that good man wanted another term, he surrendered, and was put in nomination by a Democratic-Republican caucus of Congress. But DeWitt Clinton, of New York, who was regarded as the candidate of the war wing of the Democrats, and who had been prom- ised the nomination in case Madison did not yield, was so dissatisfied with the turn affairs had taken that he remained in the field and was nominated by a Democratic caucus of the New York Legislature, and subsequently by an assemblage in New York City which closely resembled a political convention, the first of which we have any record in national affairs. The Federalists, who managed this convention, supported Clinton ; but a por- tion of the party went over to Madison, who was chosen by one hundred and twenty-eight electoral votes, Clinton receiving only eighty- nine. The war with England (1812), during which the city of Washington was sacked and burned, and President Madison nar- rowly escaped capture, was the fruitful source of many new and lasting political complications. The war was bitterly op- posed in New England, where it caused great commercial distress, and where the enemy had effected a landing on the coast of 58 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS Maine. The celebrated Hartford Conven- tion, called by influential Federalists, to con- fer upon the grievances of the New England States, was part of the general expression of discontent. Its mysterious proceedings were misrepresented, and an impression was erroneously given of its intention to discuss and advocate secession. During this war, too, originated the odious epithet of " Blue Lights." Commodore Decatur complained that whenever he attempted to get out to sea from the port of New London, Conn., under cover of the night, a signal of blue lights was shown by the residents who were op- posed to the war. A rigid inquiry failed to find any ground for this charge, but the term " Blue Light Federalists," with sly reference to the Hartford Convention, galled the spirit of the survivors and heirs of that party for more than a half-century afterward. The Treaty of Ghent, of which Henry Clay was one of the American negotiators, concluded the war, and may be said to mark the final disappearance of the Federalist party. In the next Presidential election, that of 1816, James Monroe was given all the electoral votes but those of Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware. The Federal- ists, who carried those three States, sup- JAMES MADISON. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart-property of T. Jefferson Coolidge. FIRST THINGS IN AMERICAN POLITICS 6l ported Rufus King, of New York, but they made no formal nomination for the Vice- Presidency. Once again " the Virginia in- fluence " made itself felt when, four years later, Monroe was nominated and elected for a second time, receiving an almost unani- mous vote, the Federalists cutting no figure in the contest. For the first time since the first election of Washington there was apparently but one party in the United States. This was the beginning of that fallacious condition which was known as the "_Era of Good Feeling-/' under__wjiih new parties and new political Teuds and jealousies were taking fojrrL Forthe first time in the history of the coun- try, the idea of continental supremacy, now beginning to be cherished by the people, was formulated by executive authority. Intoxi- cated by the military glory of Jackson's vic- tory at New Orleans, the American people began to declare that none but Americans should have any foothold upon the continent. A dream of continental empire slowly dawned in the minds of men. In his annual message to Congress, December 2, 1823, President Monroe propounded the doctrine that "the peace and safety of the United States re- quires that there shall be no further attempt 62 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS on the part of European powers to extend their jurisdiction in the Western Hemisphere, and that the Republic holds itself aloof from any participation of the political affairs of the Eastern Hemisphere." This enunciation of the so-called " Monroe Doctrine " did not attract much attention at the time. Possibly even its author was not aware of its importance ; but, in the course of years, the doctrine was ac- cepted and ratified by all political parties. For the first time, too, during an electoral count, objection to the counting of the vote of a State was made. Missouri, which had been admitted to the family of States under the celebrated compromise, claimed the right to cast a vote in the Electoral College. The State had not then (February, 1821) accepted the condition of admission, which was that it should never interfere with the constitu- tional privileges of citizens of other States ; and the assembled wisdom of Congress, un- der the guidance of Henry Clay, decided that the result of the count should show how many votes the highest candidate would have with the vote of Missouri, and how many without that vote. With this weak and paltering settlement of a grave ques- tion, the dispute was ended, and a new era in American politics began. II THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS IT is difficult to fix the precise date at which the party known as the Anti-Federalist was renamed the Democratic. When the title by which it was originally called became odious (the Federal Constitution having be- come fixed in the affections and confidence of the people), Jefferson gave the organization a new name. In a letter written to Washing- ton in May, 1792, the father of the so-called Jeffersonian Democracy said : " The Repub- lican party, who wish to preserve the gov- ernment in its present form," etc. This is the first use of the name under which Jeffer- son's party was known, until the breaking out of the French Revolution of 1793 ; when, the ultra-French faction in the United States being absorbed into the Anti-Federalist or Republican party, the name of Democrat was adopted. The so-called Jacobins (who flour- ished exceedingly in Philadelphia), enthusias- tically assumed the name of Democrat; it 64 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS was a link that bound them to their friends in France ; and the Federalists employed it as a term of reproach. But it was not until Jefferson had quitted the stage of action that the distinctive title " Democratic," was given to the party of which he was the founder. As for the political principles of the Dem- ocratic-Republican party, originally and au- thoritatively set forth, we must look for them in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions, as well as in the writings of Jefferson himself. As yet, party platforms were not. Generally speaking, the Jeffersonian party was pledged to a strict construction of the Constitution. In the opinion of its leaders, State govern- ments were the foundation of the American political system ; the powers of a State are unlimited, except by State constitutions and the Federal Constitution ; the Federal Gov- ernment has no powers other than those granted to it by the Constitution, with the consent of the several States ; and whenever there is a doubt as to the exact location of a power, it is to be presumed that said power resides in the State, not in the Federal Gov- ernment. In other words, the Federal Gov- ernment has no power to define the bounda. ries of its authority and functions ; that right was reserved to the States. And the seed of GEORGE CLINTON. From a painting by Ezra Ames. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 67 secession was wrapped up in the assumption that the Federal Government might possibly assume powers that had not been granted to it, and that in such a case its acts should be opposed by the legislative, executive, and judicial authority of the States. Particularly, and in addition to these fun- damental principles, the Democratic-Repub- licans were opposed to a public debt, to large expenditures of the public money (and inci- dentally to internal improvements), to a large navy, to any exercise of the governmental functions in any way related to private en- terprises or interests, and to life-terms for the judiciary. They favored liberal naturaliza- tion laws, an elective judiciary, and direct taxes on the people. But no sooner were they in the possession of full power in the government, than the Democratic - Republi- cans made an abrupt change of front on many of the cardinal principles of their political faith. Although strict constructionists of the Constitution when that instrument had been invoked for the guidance of the Nation- al Executive, they regarded with joyful com- plaisance President Jefferson's purchase of the Louisiana territory, utterly unauthorized and arbitrary though it was ; they calmly voted to recharter the United States Bank, 68 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS although Jefferson had declared that the Na- tional Government had no power to grant such a charter ; and, in addition to these and other flagrant invasions of State rights, they finally voted to interdict and prohibit all the commerce of the several States on rivers, lakes, and the ocean, by the Embargo and Non-intercourse acts of 1800-12. While the Federalist party remained to combat these acts by a feeble protest, they did this, although it must be said that the protestants were quite as inconsistent as their adversaries. They argued against the exercise of Federal powers which they had repeatedly invoked during the administra- tions of Washington and Adams ; they de- nied now the constitutionality of acts which they had before insisted were not only necessary but constitutional. The fact is apparent that there was growing up in the triumphant and overwhelmingly victorious Republican party, a faction which was deter- mined to commit the party to a policy of loose construction of the Constitution. It was found that the stricter construction was exceedingly awkward for the party in power, binding it as it did to certain methods that tied the dominant party, and hampering its functions when it got possession of the gov- THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 69 ernment. The peace-at-any-price policy of Jefferson and Madison crippled the nation while it was being hurried into war ; and the suspension of American commerce not only angered the people of the Middle States, but eventually blighted with poverty the agri- cultural States, which were supposed to be indifferent to the effects of the Embargo. The neglect of the navy and the failure to provide means of defence, were the legiti- mate outcome of a strict construction of the Constitution. The Embargo, arbitrary and undemocratic as it was, was only one of many acts which proved how incompetent the dominant party was to carry on a war which was eventually concluded by a peace in which not one of the objects for which the war was begun was secured. During the deceptive peacefulness which bears the title of the " Era of Good Feel- ing," when President Monroe was making a triumphal progress under the influence of which all the people were jubilantly embrac- ing each other and singing, " Let party names no more," the loose constructionists of the Democratic -Republican organization were silently arraying themselves for their first campaign. Henry Clay, the Mill Boy of the Slashes, who was born in a Virginia log- /O SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS house, and who started in life as a clerk in a retail store in Richmond, had by the sheer force of his genius worked himself up to a commanding position in the front rank of Kentucky lawyers, had already served part of a term in the United States Senate (begin- ning it before he was of legal age to hold that office), and was now, in the first of his five terms of office as Speaker of the House of Representatives, the foreordained leader of the Loose Constructionists. This brilliant, dashing, and entirely self- possessed young man took a leading part in Congressional debates. He advocated inter- nal improvements at the national expense, a protective tariff, and a war of reprisals that should carry American aggression into the British possessions in Canada. Exercising his functions as Speaker, he so constituted the standing committees of the House that the war party of young Republicans, of which he and John C. Calhoun were leaders, virtu- ally controlled the legislation of that body. Later on, when Clay and his comrades had seen the inglorious end of a war into which they had hurried the irresolute Madison, they were partially consoled by the battle of New Orleans, which shed a fleeting lustre over the American arms in the closing scene. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS /I Clay, who had been one of the negotiators of the Treaty of Ghent, gladly said that An- drew Jackson's victory (fought after the con- clusion of the treaty of peace) made it possi- ble for the American envoys to go to London without humiliation of spirit. And, still a Republican, the gallant young Kentuckian entered the scrub race for the presidency in 1824. His competitors were John Quincy Adams, then Secretary of State, W. H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, and Andrew Jackson, the hero of New Orleans, with whom Clay was to have many a fierce bout before either laid down his arms. These were all Republicans, or Democratic-Repub- licans, if you please, and the contest for the presidency had now, in the absence of party organization, degenerated into a personal squabble ; and the squabble became disgrace- ful when the wrathful Jackson, disappointed in winning the prize, subsequently denounced the " bribery and corruption " by which, as he averred, he had been cheated out of an election. Clay and Adams favored a loose construc- tion of the Constitution ; Crawford and Jack- son were strict constructionists ; but Jackson favored a protective tariff, and Calhoun, who was an almost unopposed candidate for the 72 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS vice-presidency, was a loose constructionist so far as internal improvements were con- cerned, but an ardent State Rights man and a strict constructionist where other mat- ters were involved. Monroe had vetoed the Cumberland Road bill, thereby still further unifying the loose constructionists and em- barrassing the Republican party ; and when Clay emerged from the scrub race for the presidency, fourth in the list of candidates and therefore ineligible as a candidate in the election then thrown into the House his final and irreparable alienation from the Jack- sonian faction actually began. The new par- ties were slowly taking shape. Unfortunately for Clay, it had become a tradition that the office of Secretary of State was the training - post for the presidency. Every Secretary had been eventually trans- lated to the Chair of State, except in rare instances where appointment had been made to tide over an emergency. Clay, as Speaker of the House, was a greater and more power- ful man than Clay, Secretary of State, could possibly be. But, with the presidential bee still buzzing in his bonnet, he consented to take the State Department portfolio from Adams, whose election by the House he had so powerfully promoted ; and he thereby in- JAMES MONROE. From a painting by Gilbert Stuart now the property of T. Jefferson Coolidge. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS /5 vited the undying enmity of Andrew Jack- son, and laid himself liable to the charge of making a corrupt bargain when he support- ed for the presidency John Quincy Adams, whose fitness for the place Clay had all along declared to be far greater than that of either Crawford or Jackson. Nobody seemed to consider that Clay, who was an advo- cate of a loose construction of the Consti- tution, would naturally favor the only loose constructionist who was in the field after his own relegation to the fourth and hopeless place on the list of eligibles. Although Clay angrily denied all partici- pation in any bargain for Adams's elevation to the presidency, and many eminent per- sons, Chief-Justice Marshall, Justice Story, Daniel Webster, and Lewis Cass had joined in giving him what modern backbiters would call <; a coat of whitewash," the " bargain and corruption " allegation would not down. Jackson, who had at first been inclined to let the matter drop, was awakened to a sense of his wrongs by the fiery and acrimonious ad- dresses with which he was greeted on his way to his Tennessee hermitage ; and Clay on his homeward way, too, was obliged to stop here and there to explain, deprecate, and argue. For many a long year this dis- 76 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS tressing business clung to his skirts, a per- sistent burr, irritating his sensitive nature and obstructing his political progress. All these things created party factions ; for we must bear in mind the fact that there was as yet but one party, the Democratic- Republican, of which every one of the lead- ing statesmen of the United States was a member in good standing. Adams, whose ill-advised invitation of Clay to a place at his council-board had given color to the charge in which both were implicated, still further estranged the friends of Jackson (and friends of other disappointed statesmen, perhaps), and he now proceeded to alienate more surely from him the strict constructionists. Generally, he had inclined toward a policy which represented a disposition to interpret loosely the Constitution when the powers of the National Government were to be defined. Now he proposed a great variety of " in- ternal improvements," some of which, ap- parently modelled on the lines of the state institutions of learning and science patron- ized by monarchical governments, frightened even Clay and other members of the Cabi- net. To crown all, the President appointed commissioners to a congress of American republics to meet at Panama for the purpose THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 77 of concerting measures for mutual protec- tion, thereby committing the United States to the undertaking, and disregarding the right of Congress to act in a matter so im- portant. It was this latter incident that drew Clay into the duel which he subsequently fought with John Randolph. The slave-holding in- terest had now become tolerably solid. The sudden breaking out of the pro-slavery feel- ing over the proposal to exclude slavery from Missouri (which Jefferson said had alarmed him " like a fire-bell in the night ") not only disclosed the determination of the slave-holding States to resist any attempt to restrict the cherished institution, but it acted as a synthetic process ; it caused the instant coherence of all the elements of the Repub- lican party that were divided on other lines, but were fully in sympathy on this single issue slavery must not be touched by an unfriendly hand. The debates on the Pan- ama Convention, while they served as a muster of the anti - Administration forces, disclosed the fact that there was a faction in the Republican party that was unalterably opposed to any interference with slavery. Certain of the South American republics that were to be represented in the Panama Con- 78 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS vention had already become " abolitionists " by the enfranchisement of their slaves. Oth- ers had men of a dark color among their leg- islators and generals. The proposition to meet these persons in an international coun- cil was odious. When Randolph commented, with his usual vituperativeness, upon this proposed union of American Republics in convention, he went out of his way to at- tack Clay, whom he hated, and coarsely bracketed Adams and Clay together as " the coalition of Blifil and Black George the combination, unheard of until now, of the Puritan and the blackleg." This was the casus belli that led up to the duel. No blood was shed ; and Thomas H. Benton, who described the encounter with undisguised zest, in his " Thirty Years' View," spoke of it as " about the last high-toned duel," as well as " the highest-toned," which he ever witnessed. Under such conditions as these were formed the factions of " Republicans " and "National Republicans," " Democratic -Re- publicans," " Adams and Clay Republicans," and " Jackson Republicans ; " for all the dis- sidents still clung to the old name and title. Under such conditions was the Whig party born. For although high tariff and low THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 79 tariff, bank and no-bank, the extension of slavery and the restriction of slavery, for a time continued to divide the heirs and as- signs of Jeffersonian democracy into jarring factions, the schism already open was too deep for healing. John Quincy Adams was cold, reserved, and a purist of the purists. When he and Andrew Jackson met at a levee in Washing- ton, after their memorable contest for the presidency, the crowd, seeing the two men approach, fell back in mute expectancy ; it was possible that there might be a scene. But the defeated Jackson, with fine urban- ity of manner, addressed the President-elect in most cordial terms ; and the victorious Adams, failing to respond to the proffered olive-branch, chilled the ardent hero of New Orleans with formal iciness. Adams, if he saw that he had created a new party, failed to make anything of his opportunities, and, while he persisted in putting forth his favor- ite theories of government, took no pains to conciliate Congressional or other form of public opinion to secure the advance of those theories into practice. During Adams's term of office, the Administration had only a small and diminishing majority in Congress. If Henry Clay, with his winning manner, his 80 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS fascinating address, and his happy faculty for compromise, had then been in the presi- dential chair, what wonders for the new party he might have accomplished ! Nevertheless, the loose constructionists, who were to some extent then aided by log- rolling and by the Western men, were able to enact the tariff of 1828, afterward known as the " tariff of abominations," a measure so extreme in its protection that mutterings of nullification were again heard in the South ; and there was a general overhauling of the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions by those who fell back on the " reserved rights of the States" whenever the aspect of things did not please them. The constitutionality of internal improvements at the public expense also came up for discussion during this ad- ministration, and although Congress did not indorse Adams's extravagant notions of a paternal government, unusually large ap- propriations were voted. Party feeling ran high, and the debates in Congress and in the newspapers verged on indecency in their malignity and venom. But nothing in modern times can equal the virulence and the apparent exacerbation of the presidential campaign of 1828, when An- drew Jackson was formally entered in the JOHN C. CALHOUN. From a picture by King at the Corcoran Art Gallery. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 83 presidential race against John Quincy Adams. For the first time in the history of the Re- public the contest assumed a sectional aspect. The Democratic-Republicans had nominated Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee, and John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina; the National Republican nominees were John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, and Richard Rush, of Pennsylvania. For the first time in our history, too, the presidential electors were chosen by popular vote, South Carolina alone holding out for the old method of election by the Legislature. And by this time the sys- tem of National nominating conventions had come into use, bringing with it the machine and the machinery of politics. In Jackson's candidacy there were abundant signs of that "working up public sentiment" that has since given us literary bureaus and similar appliances of a presidential campaign. Personal abuse was rife. Adams, the im- peccable, the frigidly just, was accused of a variety of crimes, one of the least of which was that he acted as a procurer for the Czar of Russia. Clay was branded as an unprin- cipled adventurer, a professional gambler, a libertine, and an accomplice of Aaron Burr. Jackson was stigmatized as a murderer, a duelling manslayer, a cock -fighter, and a 84 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS turf-sportsman. One of the bitterest attacks upon him was made by Jesse Benton, brother of the great Thomas. Jesse, although his brother had made his peace with Jackson, after years of hostility, still writhed with an- ger over the duel he had fought with " the old hero " in the streets of Nashville, fifteen years before, and he pursued him with a pamphlet in which thirty-two separate and distinct crimes and misdemeanors were charged against him. These included only acts for which Jackson himself was responsi- ble. It was reserved for a Washington news- paper to give currency to a cruel slander re- lating to the private life of the wife of the General. The lady had been divorced from a former husband before she re - married, and both she and Jackson were horrified, later on, by the discovery that that divorce was illegal. The matter was rectified and the couple were lawfully joined in wedlock, although they had innocently gone through previous proceedings which they had sup- posed lawful. Jackson's wife died just be- fore he was first inaugurated President ; and with the wound still rankling in his heart, he refused to meet the retiring President, whom he held responsible for the publication of the slander of Mrs. Jackson. When the trium- THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 85 phant hero was on his way to be sworn in at the Capitol, his predecessor in office was soli- tarily beginning his journey homeward. The Whig party, as yet unnamed, had been de- feated, Jackson having received one hundred and seventy-eight electoral votes against the eighty-three cast for Adams; Calhoun had one hundred and seventy-one votes ; Rush, eighty-three. Calhoun had been deprived of seven votes (thrown away on one William Smith, of South Carolina) by the machina- tions of W. H. Crawford. Now the reign of " the people " had come. Jackson represented the accession of " the great unwashed " to power, after the breed of Revolutionary statesmen and the favorites of the Virginia dynasty had passed away. Jackson was wofully deficient in education and was grotesquely unfamiliar with the ru- dimentary principles of statecraft. He was wilful, easily deceived by the representations of men in whom he might trust, passionate, obstinate to the last degree, a fierce hater, and never averse to " taking the responsibil- ity," however complicated the proceeding or however limited his knowledge of the exi- gencies of the situation. But his personal in- tegrity was absolute, unquestionable. In two traits he resembled Abraham Lincoln: his 86 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS honesty, and his identification as a man of the people. But only in these two respects do the two men appear alike. The Old Hero, who was now in his sixty- third year, was supposed, as Daniel Webster humorously said, to have rescued the coun- try from some great but undefined danger. The dear people swarmed to Washington in vast numbers, intent on two things a sight of the hero, and a grab at the offices. For it had somehow gone out that there was to be that clean sweep which has since become a custom, but was then a threat in suspense. One writer says of the multitudes, " It was like the inundation of the northern barba- rians into Rome, save that the tumultuous tide came in from a different point of the compass. The West and the South seemed to have precipitated themselves upon the North and overwhelmed it." At the first presidential levee in the White House, the mob which poured into the mansion to gaze upon the Hero and dip into his barrels of punch, was so disorderly and riotous that tubs of the tipple were carried out of doors to entice a division of the hungry and thirsty ; and broken glasses, soiled furniture, and wet carpets proclaimed the advent of the sover- eign people. 87 From this time we date that quadrennial division of the spoils of office which has unto this day engaged the attention of the Ameri- can people. Jackson so composed his cabi- net as to make his hostility to Clay as pro- nounced as possible. It was as if a President should seek to gall his rivals and enemies by calling to his council-board a man whose only fitness for the place was the disfavor in which he might be held by the aforesaid ri- vals and enemies. We have seen that Jeffer- son was the first President to depart from the tradition of making fitness, honesty, and capability the only tests in official appoint- ment. But the arbitrary political changes ordered by Jefferson, unprecedentedly nu- merous though they were, were as nothing when compared with the wild sweep or- dered by Jackson. Daniel Webster esti- mated these at two thousand or more ; and this was a large number, if we regard the smallness of the Federal establishment in 1829. But it was William L. Marcy, a Sen- ator from New York, who gave currency, three years later, to the saying so often at- tributed to Jackson, " To the victors belong the spoils." Marcy was defending Van Bu- ren and the Albany politicians when he said- " They see nothing wrong in the rule that to 88 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS the victors belong the spoils of the enemy." And to these illustrious Democrats Jack- son, Van Buren, and Marcy we owe the formal setting up of the spoils system. Another of Jackson's innovations was the discontinuance of cabinet councils. His im- perious spirit irked even the nominal re- straint of advice ; and although he may have consulted with a few individuals of his cabi- net, more especially the wily and astute " Matty," as he called Martin Van Buren, Secretary of State, he had little to do with others. The Mrs. Eaton scandal was one of the causes of the final disruption of the never very harmonious cabinet. Mrs. Eaton was the wife of the Secretary of War ; her maid- en name was Peg O'Neal, and her reputa- tion had been trifled with by Washington gossips during her widowhood as Mrs. Tim- berlake ; she was given a cold shoulder by the ladies of the national capital, and when the wives of cabinet ministers refused to re- ceive or recognize her, President Jackson (who had thrown himself into the unsavory quarrel with characteristic heat) made social recognition of the lady a test of loyalty to him, if not to the Government of the United States. In his blind and unreasoning fury, he banned friends and foes, foreigners and idteEasfeffiaajteS&i^^ HENRY CLAY. From a photograph by Rockwood of an old daguerreotype THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 91 Americans alike, in his determination to compel respect for the hapless woman who had won his dangerous but honest and chiv- alrous friendship. Jackson's dislike for Calhoun, which was bound to appear later in a more serious cri- sis than this petty scandal, was increased by his discovery that Calhoun, while Secretary of War in Monroe's cabinet, had disapproved of the course of General Jackson when he invaded Florida and carried matters there with a high hand as if he were an imperial conqueror and not the military servant of a republic. For a time, at least, the cohorts of Calhoun and Clay were brought together by the well-nigh insane hatred in which Jackson held those two chieftains. Jackson regarded Clay as the inciter of ill-reports about Mrs. Jackson and Mrs. Eaton. Mrs. Calhoun would not receive Mrs. Eaton, and her husband had criticised the course of the general as an in- vader of Spanish territory. From such sordid materials may political crises be evolved ! It was Jackson who gave us the invention of the " Kitchen Cabinet," an institution that outlasted his day. Three newspaper men Duff Green, Amos Kendall, and Isaac Hill were the core of this junta. William B. Lewis, related to Jackson by marriage, was 92 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS a fourth member, and when Duff Green fell from grace and went over to Calhoun, Fran- cis P. Blair became his legitimate successor. These men influenced the unconscious Jack- son and fabricated many statements which the honest old hero employed with great zeal as facts. It was Jackson who gave us that immortal declaration " Our Federal Union : it must be preserved." It was Cal- houn, who, on that same occasion (a Jeffer- sonian birthday dinner in Washington), an- swered Jackson's challenge with the toast, " The Union, next to our liberty the most dear ; may we all remember that it can only be preserved by respecting the rights of the States, and distributing equally the benefit and the burden of the Union." Jackson, too, invented the " pocket veto," the first example of which was shown when he availed himself of his privilege to keep in his figurative pocket for ten days a bill au- thorizing a government subscription to a Kentucky toll-road, during which interval Congress adjourned and left the bill to die, where it was. This expedient was subse- quently useful to President Jackson. It was resorted to by President Lincoln, in 1864, when the Wade - Davis reconstruction bill was similarly put to death. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 93 It is not necessary here to trace the his- tory of Jackson's war on the United States Bank, except to recall the fact that one of the arguments which Jackson used against the bank was borrowed from Henry Clay, who, earlier in his career, was a consistent opponent of that institution. We may re- call, too, with amusement, Benton's long and chivalrous fight for the expunging of the Senate's resolutions of censure of President Jackson for his course in ordering the re- moval of deposits in the United States Bank. It was not until the last days of Jackson's second term of office that the indefatigable Benton, who provisioned the Senate cham- ber as if for a long siege, finally dragooned and wheedled the senators into adopting the famous Expunging Resolutions, and the jour- nal was brought in, and broad black lines were drawn around the now historic entry. Clay's misfortune was his identification with the bank war when, in 1832, he became a candidate for the presidency against An- drew Jackson, and virtually stood on a plat- form pledged to support the United States Bank scheme. The Jackson men were not only active and numerous, but they had " a good cry " to go to the country with, and the popular response to the convention that 94 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS nominated Clay and eulogized the bank was emphatic and overwhelming. One of the earliest champions of a protective tariff, ad- vocating a scheme of finance to which he gave the taking title of " the American sys- tem," Clay permitted, even advocated, the dragging of the bank question into the can- vass for the purpose of alienating from Jack- son the vote of Pennsylvania, that State be- ing the home of the banking institution. In the presidential election of 1832, we must note one of those curious cross-currents in American politics, which from time to time have amused us and puzzled foreign observers the Anti-Masonic diversion. Be- ginning in Genesee County, N. Y., with the alleged murder of William Morgan, in 1826, by Freemasons who suspected him of writ- ing a book revealing the secrets of their or- der, the popular feeling excited against the Freemasons finally assumed a political bias under the skilful manipulation of certain party managers. Local candidates stood or fell as they were opposed to or were in favor of Freemasonry ; and in due course of time there appeared, as leaders of the new party, William H. Seward, Millard Fillmore, and Thurlow Weed, the last of whom gave to the world of politics the phrase " a good THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 95 enough Morgan until after election," some such remark being made when doubts were thrown on the statement that the body found floating in Niagara River was that of the ab- ducted and murdered William Morgan. In 1830, the movement was strong enough to excite the New Yorkers with hopes of carry- ing a national election on that issue opposi- tion to Freemasonry. So, when party lines were again drawn for a presidential campaign in 1832, the Anti- Masons were in the field with William Wirt, of Maryland, and Amos Ellmaker, of Penn- sylvania, as their candidates for President and Vice - President. Mr. Seward, then a young man in politics and in years, had pre- viously gone to Massachusetts to endeavor to induce John Quincy Adams to re-enter politics as the presidential candidate of the Anti-Masons. Mr. Adams's reception of Mr. Seward was characteristic. The chilled am- bassador from Auburn records that he could then understand why Adams had gone out of public life with so few friends. Mr. Wirt received only the electoral vote of Vermont in that canvass. This was the first and last appearance of the Anti-Masons in the open field of National politics. But they were able, in 1835, and again in 1839, to frighten 96 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS the Whig nominating conventions of those years into dropping Clay, who was a Free- mason, and putting up, instead, William Henry Harrison, who, though not an Anti- Mason by political affiliation, was not a mem- ber of the Masonic order. In the election of 1832 all parties put forward candidates named by National conventions ; but the Democrats, as if they regarded Andrew Jackson as their sufficient platform, pre- sented the hero to the people, without a word of comment or a pledge of policy. Jackson once more inaugurated, and the bank war taken up with renewed spirit, an- other political crisis came when South Caro- lina, pushing to their utmost the doctrines enunciated in the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions, declared that the tariff of 1828 (with its modifications of 1832) was unconsti- tutional, null and void, and should be dis- regarded. Jackson made preparations to execute the provisions of the customs laws, and to hang the leaders of the conspiracy for treason. Clay, the Great Pacificator, dex- terously interposed with his famous com- promise tariff of 1833, and again " the country was saved." It may be remembered that the bill passed by Congress to aid in the enforce- ment of the tariff law was called the Force THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 97 Bill, although in South Carolina it was known as " the Bloody Bill." In later days, a bill to provide for Federal supervision of elections in certain contingencies has been stigmatized in like manner, but without the sanguinary epithet. We may recall, too, the fact that Calhoun was a protectionist in 1816; in 1831 he de- nounced the protective principle as unconsti- tutional and oppressive to the South. So, too, Clay, who had, in 1810, furnished An- drew Jackson with anti-bank arguments, found it convenient and consistent, in 1828, to make the cause of the bank his own. And Daniel Webster, on nearly every one of these burning questions of the time, changed his godlike front with ease. It was in February, 1834, that James Wat- son Webb, of the New York Courier and En- quirer, hit upon the title of Whig for the National Republican party brought into ex- istence by the administration of John Quincy Adams and led by Henry Clay. The name was suggested, as Webb averred, by the fact that the party was pledged to resist arbitra- ry government, as the English Whigs had resisted royalist tyranny. It was sought, though unsuccessfully, to brand the Demo- cratic-Republicans with the odious name of 7 98 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS Tories. " The Tories," said Clay, " were the supporters of executive power, of royal pre- rogative, of the maxim that the king can do no wrong ; " the Whigs, h'e added, " were the champions of liberty, the friends of the peo- ple." What more appropriate distinction than this could be made between the Jackson men and the followers of the Great Com- moner? The nickname " Locofoco " stuck to the Democrats with more adhesiveness than the epithet borrowed from English politics. Anti-Bank Democrats of New York, holding a meeting in Tammany Hall, in October, 1835, were annoyed by the bank faction of their own party, who, failing to get posses- sion of the meeting, turned off the gas from the main source of supply. The Anti-Bank men lighted locofoco matches, as friction matches were then called, and conducted their deliberations thereby to a close. A " self-lighting match " was itself a misnomer, but the name stuck to Anti-Bank Democrats, who " were hostile to the moneyed interests of the country " for a long time after this. Andrew Jackson, broken in health and long past the meridian of life, was yet able to designate his own successor, and Martin Van Buren had one hundred and sefventy electoral votes, in 1837; William H. Harrison had sev- THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS 99 enty-three ; Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, twenty -six; Daniel Webster, fourteen; and Willie P. Mangum, of North Carolina, eleven. " The Hugh L. White bolt," as it was called, was one of the political curiosities of the time. It was said that Calhoun moved Judge White to defeat the election of his old chief's candidate for the presidency, and the Hero's own State cast its electoral vote for the bolter. There was no election of Vice-Pres- ident by the people, and the Senate chose Colonel Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, in whose behalf a whiff of the incense of hero-worship was entreated by his friends and admirers; for Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson was credited with having killed Te- cumseh during the war of 1812, an exploit which his opponents celebrated in the satiri- cal jingle : " High-cockalorum rumpsey dumpsey ! Colonel Johnson killed Tecumseh ! " The political creed of the Jackson Demo- crats was embodied in the farewell address of the hero who had made the party what it was, when he left the White House for his Hermitage. The man who had so deeply impressed his personality upon the Demo- cratic party insisted on the inestimable value 100 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS of the Union ; the danger of sectionalism ; the evils of a powerful government ; the ne- cessity for and safety of simple and inexpen- sive public institutions; the perils of surplus revenues; the injustice of a high tariff; the unconstitutionality of internal improvements at the Nation's cost, and the danger of paper money. But Jackson's bold experiments in finance were soon to plant thorns in the chair of state which he had reserved for his suc- cessor. The copper penny tokens struck in the first year of Martin Van Buren's administra- tion represented a jackass ambling with ex- tended feet across the surface of the coin, with the legend, " I follow in the footsteps of my illustrious predecessor." These modest words of Martin Van Buren were as much indicative of his intentions as his servile adoption of Jackson's cabinet, as he found it when he took the presidential office. The financial storm had begun to gather before Jackson left the White House, and his last hours in that place were irritated by the " distress petitions " that came pouring into his cabinet from artisans and manufacturers who were beginning to feel the effects of the stringency caused by the fitful and irrational financial policy of the Administration. The aBftasasag^-r^^-i^-ga^^ JOHN RANDOLPH. From a picture by Jarvis in 1811, at the New York Historical Society. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS IO3 summary checking of the speculations which were the natural outcome of Jackson's course in regard to banks and banking, resulted in the distressful panic of 1837. The elated Whigs exultingly cried, " We told you so ! " and dire disorder reigned in politics as well as in the world of commerce. Whig successes in the elections continued, and the Democratic majority in Congress be- gan to melt away. Finally, the Whigs tri- umphed in 1840, William Henry Harrison, for a second time candidate of his party, be- ing elected by two hundred and thirty-four electoral votes ; Van Buren had only sixty votes. In that election the anti-slavery ele- ments made their first appearance in a Na- tional canvass. James G. Birney, the candi- date of the Liberty party, polled a popular vote of 7,609 ; but he carried no State. General Harrison was the first President to die in office, and that lamentable event at first caused much confusion as to the exact status in law of the Vice-President, John Ty- ler, who now succeeded to the functions of the Executive Chief. But Tyler at once disposed of all doubt; he took the title of President, and thus established the requisite precedent. With him came the epithet of " Tylerization." He soon broke with his 104 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS party, the Whigs, and by his veto of a bill to create a Bank of the United States he alien- ated and embittered the Whig chiefs, of whom Clay was the foremost. It was insisted (es- pecially by Clay), that the bank question had been a dominant issue in the canvass which sent Harrison to the White House. This was not strictly true. In point of fact, the campaign of 1840 was carried on by the Whigs in a wild delirium of hard cider, log- cabins, and coon-skins. Silas Wright, reply- ing to Clay's assertion, ironically said that if the voice of the people, manifested in the late canvass was to be heeded, the Capitol must be replaced by a log-cabin decked with coon- skins. In that canvass something of the old dramatic and unreasoning spirit that had characterized the Jackson campaigns pre- vailed, only that log-cabins replaced hickory poles. Nor was there anything in the declarations of the convention that nominated Harrison, in 1840, to warrant Clay's statement; that convention made no official deliverance on any subject whatever. The Democrats, on the other hand, adopted a strict construction- ist platform, in which they denied the power of Congress to recharter a National bank, carry on public improvements at the Na- THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS IO5 tion's expense, protect manufactures by a tariff, or interfere with slavery in the States. John Tyler was a strict constructionist of the Calhoun school, and when his Whig cabinet was broken up and he was formally read out of the Whig party, the new men who came in to keep company with Daniel Webster (who was left standing there the lone Whig, " grand, gloomy, and peculiar "), they were described by President Tyler " as all original Jackson men who mean to act on Republican principles." Tyler's course was claimed as a great Democratic victory, and his subsequent man- ifestations of indirectness and vacillation of purpose still further alienated from him his Whig friends and allies. The Democratic jubilation took a ludicrous form. The word " veto," made popular among them by Ty- ler's repeated disapprovals of bills passed by a Whig Congress, was adopted as a party war-cry, and was conferred by enthusiastic Democrats upon vessels, horses, and even children. The Whigs burned Tyler in effigy and lampooned him with wrathful zest. Their political adversaries were in parox- ysms of delight and triumph. During Tyler's term came on a time of monetary stringency ; and as it happened 106 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS that a species of influenza raged at that time, everybody was set to talking about the prev- alent " Tyler grip." More serious than this, was the looming of the Texas question, now slowly rising in the background of American politics. When Jefferson had concluded the Louisiana purchase, some doubt prevailed as to the precise location of the western bound- ary of the newly acquired territory. Whether the Sabine or the Rio Grande defined its southwestern limit was not settled. When Florida was purchased, a dicker was made with Spain, and we bartered the disputed territory and accepted the Sabine as the limit of our possession in that direction. And now the South demanded that the southwestern limit of slavery should be at the Rio Grande, on the confines of Mexico, and not on the Sabine, the eastern boundary of Texas. Tyler negotiated a treaty for the annexation of Texas, but the Whig Senate rejected it by an overwhelming majority, and seven Democrats voted on that occasion with the Whigs, to Tyler's great discomfiture. By slow degrees, but with impressive cer- tainty, the Democratic party became more and more closely identified with the support of slavery. It was to stand as the apologist and defender of the institution. Finally the THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS IO/ Democratic National Convention of 1844, which nominated James K. Polk, of Tennes- see, declared in favor of the annexation of Texas; and Martin Van Buren, whose posi- tion on the Texas question had incurred for him the hostility of the Southern delegates, was defeated for a renomination by the skil- ful enforcement of the rule (which still pre- vails), that a two-thirds vote should be re- quired for a nomination in a Democratic National Convention. Clay was nominated by the Whigs on a platform drawn for the benefit of the loose constructionists but which was silent on the subject of the an- nexation of Texas. Subsequently, however, Clay wrote the so-called, "Raleigh letter" in which he deliberately announced his opposi- tion to annexation; then, becoming alarmed by the dissatisfaction of his friends in the South, he wrote again, this time the " Ala- bama letter," in which he temporized with the burning question. He failed to reinstate himself in favor with the South ; he lost much of his Northern support. ; and Polk was elected with one hundred and seventy votes, Clay receiving one hundred and five votes. One of the war-cries of that campaign was, " Polk, Dallas, and the Tariff of 1842." The tariff of 1842 was a modification of that IO8 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS drawn by Clay in 1833 to pacify the South Carolina milliners. Now it was asserted that the Clay Whigs were opposed to that tariff, which was a protective measure. The cry helped to carry Pennsylvania for Polk ; and the tariff of 1842 was repealed with delightful abandonment of principle by the Polk Democrats, as soon as they were in power. Another slogan of the Democrats was " Fifty-four Forty, or Fight," these figures representing the parallel of north latitude on which it was proposed to rest immovably our claim for a northwestern boundary of the republic. But President Polk, with the advice and consent of the Senate, compro- mised on the parallel of forty-nine. In the South, " Texas or Disunion " was the rallying-cry and the toast. The strict constructionists who supported Polk in Con- gress agreed that he might violate the Constitution by the annexation of a foreign State without the incidental intervention of a treaty, provided he were willing to take the responsibility. Texas, with its existing war with Mexico, was annexed in December, 1845. The ignoble compromise with Eng- land on the northwestern boundary was hastened by the complications of the south- western frontier. JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. From a picture by Gilbert Stuart. THE PASSING OF THE WHIGS III The Mexican war was bitterly opposed in the Northern States, especially by the Lib- erty party, and by such Whigs as Thomas Corwin and Abraham Lincoln. Orators who denounced the war expressed their belief, if not their hope, that the invading hosts on Mexican soil would be " welcomed with bloody hands to hospitable graves." It was out of the fever and excitement of this pe- riod of political turmoil, that the country re- ceived the masterly satires of James Russell Lowell, known as the " Biglow Papers," the first of which was an address to a recruiting sergeant drumming up recruits for the Mex- ican war. When the war was over and peace had re- turned, conquest and treaty had added to the United States the territory now occu- pied by the States of Texas, California, and Nevada, parts of the States of Colorado and Wyoming, and the Territories of Utah, Ari- zona, and New Mexico. With this magnifi- cent acquisition to the national domain came a reopening of the question which was sup- posed to have been forever settled by the adoption of the Missouri Compromise, under the manipulation of Clay, the Great Pacifi- cator, in 1820. It opened in American politics the field in which the battle between Free- 112 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS dom and Slavery, after one more truce, was to be fought out to the end. During the campaign that had carried Polk to the White House a new dance the polka was introduced into the United States from Bohemia by the way of Vienna and Paris. It was facetiously said that Polk had been danced into office. And it was with a light heart that the merrymaking slave- holders at the Polk inauguration balls cele- brated their victory. They had defeated the personal party of Henry Clay ; for to this complexion the Whig party had come, in 1844. But in that canvass New York, once more the pivotal State, was lost to the Whigs only by anti-slavery votes, purposely thrown away on James G. Birney, the nominee of the Liberty party. The revolution had be- gun. Ill WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS JAMES G. BIRNEY was an Alabama slave-holder who, being converted to the cause of immediate emancipation, in 1834, freed his slaves, and further evinced the faith that was in him by removing to Cincinnati and there setting up a newspaper, The Philanthropist, in which he advocated the doctrines that he had embraced. After the cheerful custom of that time, he was re- peatedly mobbed and his types and presses destroyed in the interest of the divine insti- tution of slavery, whose outposts he had attacked. Finally, giving up his hopeless task in the free State of Ohio, Mr. Birney went to the city of New York, where he had no perishable property to be wrecked, and where he became an active agent and pro- moter of the American Anti-slavery Society. When the Abolitionists of that day got down to voting, they did not find in the can- didates of either of the two great parties a 114 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS man on whom they could place the decora- tion of their confidence. They voted in the air. They nominated Mr. Birney for Presi- dent in 1840, when General Harrison ran against and defeated Martin Van Buren. They nominated him again in 1844, when Henry Clay was defeated by James K. Polk. If the Abolitionists, who took the name of Liberty party when they went into national politics, had voted for Henry Clay in 1844, they might have elected him. In the can- vass, that year, Polk had only 38,792 votes over Clay ; Birney polled 62,263 votes, all told ; and it was the Liberty party vote of New York that turned the scale, giving that State to Polk by a small plurality, and there- by insuring him a majority of the electoral votes. Of the two leading candidates, Clay was more distinctively to be regarded as op- posed to slavery extension, although he had dallied with the great question. Polk was unreservedly in favor of the annexation of Texas and the whole pro-slavery programme. But the Liberty party men, throwing away their votes on James G. Birney and thereby making sure the election of the pro-slavery candidate of the Democratic party, builded better than they knew. This hastened the more forcible and offensive exhibition of the JOHN P. HALE. From a photograph by Brady. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 1 1/ policy of the slave - owners, and convinced thoughtful Abolitionists that if they were to accomplish anything in American politics they must unite with all the elements that were opposed to any further extension of slavery. Heretofore they had clamored for the immediate abolition of slavery ; they were content with no preliminary 'measures ; they had theorized very much as the Pro- hibitionists have since. Now they began to think that a union of voters opposed to enlarging the domain of slavery was not only practicable but expedient. The Liberty party, passing through sundry mutations, eventually became part of the organization that took up the gage of battle thrown down by the slave power and saved Liberty and Union. President Polk was a strict constructionist in all matters but those relating to the ex- tension of slavery. There he was consistent in his devotion to the peculiar institution, even while he invoked the authority of the Constitution to defeat the intention of Con- gress to provide for the improvement of rivers and harbors and other public works. But by this time, although questions relating to the tariff, public improvements, and other minor interests had not been wholly laid Il8 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS aside, the great, looming-, and all-absorbing topic in American politics was slavery and its innumerable correlatives. In the last year of Folk's administration, the bill to or- ganize the Territory of Oregon without slav- ery was passed by the Whig House of Rep- resentatives ; it was so amended by the Dem- ocratic Senate as to extend the line of the Missouri to the Pacific Ocean. The House, by a sectional vote, rejected that amend- ment ; and the Senate, with reluctance, passed the bill. It was not yet time to di- vide the newly acquired territory into two parts, the northern half free and the south- ern half slave. Debates in Congress grew more and more excited as the slavery question again rose above the horizon. The few Northern Con- gressmen who inclined to anti-slavery views were assailed with coarse abuse. Senator John P. Hale, of New Hampshire, for exam- ple, was not only excluded rigorously from all the standing committees of the Senate, but was assaulted with virulence. The loose - tongued Foote, of Mississippi, once told him that he, Hale, " could not go ten miles into the interior of Mississippi before he would grace one of the tallest trees of the forest, with a rope round his neck, with the WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 1 19 approbation of every honest and patriotic citizen." Compliments like these were com- mon in Congress. The slave-holders now advanced the dogma that human slavery was guaranteed protection under the Con- stitution in all that part of the domain of the United States in which State governments had not been set up and the institution for- mally excluded. Although the Constitution, of which they were so strict constructionists, referred to slaves as " persons," they now contended that they were " property," and as such were entitled to the same protection in the Territories as that accorded to real or any other personal estate. Meanwhile, Abolitionism was assuming a political complexion in the Northern States, to the extreme discomfort of the managers of both great parties. The Presidental elec- tion of 1848 was coming on, and the Whigs of the North were greatly perturbed as they saw their party " ratted " by men who in- continently deserted, as if they already scented disaster and wreck. In the Massa- chusetts Whig Convention of that year, Dan- iel Webster, with characteristic grandilo- quence, calling after the fugitives, said : " For my part, in the dark and troubled night that is upon us, I see no star above the horizon 120 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS promising- light to guide us but the intel- ligent, patriotic, united Whig party of the United States." Already, although that party was on the eve of a famous victory, its knell had sounded. A more serious schism than that in the Whig- party of Massachusetts was going on meanwhile in the Democratic party of New York. The friends of Martin Van Buren did not forgive the defeat of their favorite leader by the aggressive slave power in the Na- tional Convention of 1844. Recognizing the fact that his supposed hostility to the further extension of slavery had cost him dearly, the Sage of Kinderhook was made a hero and a martyr. The Democrats of New York di- vided into anti-slavery and pro-slavery fac- tions ; or they were known as Barn-burners and Hunkers. The Barn-burners did not pro- pose incendiarism ; their nickname was given them by men who accused them of being ready to destroy the Union to kill slavery, like the foolish farmer who burned his barn to exterminate the rats that plagued him. A Hunker was a conservative. In Massachu- setts the Conscience Whigs were opposed by the Cotton Whigs ; and each faction dis- trusted the other. The Democratic and Whig National Con- MARTIN VAN BUREN. From a photograph by Brady. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 123 ventions of 1848 were somewhat non-com- mittal on the burning question ; and by this time conventional deliverances on the sub- jects of tariff, internal improvements, and the finances had become more than perfunctory impertinent. The Democratic Convention, which nominated Lewis Cass for President, uttered platitudes about a strict construction of the Constitution (as it might have prattled in Jefferson's time), but refused to touch the slavery question when it was proposed to declare that Congress had no power to in- terfere with slavery, either in the States or in the Territories. The Whig Convention, which nominated General Zachary Taylor, discreetly made no platform, and could not be induced to declare in favor of the Wilmot Proviso that slavery should not exist in Ter- ritories to be organized under the authority of the United States. The Democratic Convention, puzzled by the appearance of two rival delegations from New York, one Barn-burner and the other Hunker, vainly temporized with the schism and admitted both, with the privilege of di- viding the State vote equally between them. The Barn-burners would have none of the Convention ; they went home, and, assem- bling in Utica, nominated Martin Van Buren 124 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS for President, and Henry Dodge, of Wiscon- sin, for Vice-President. This defiance gave heart to the new anti-slavery organization just forming, and when the new party assembled in convention, at Buffalo, in August of that year, the Barn-burners were there in great force to assist in the nomination of Martin Van Buren for President, and Charles Francis Adams for Vice-President. The Free -Soil party was born. The platform of the Buffalo Convention was presented by Benjamin F. Butler, of New York. It took high ground on the sub- ject of slavery, declared against its further extension, and insisted that " Congress has no more power to make a slave than to make a king." The slogan of the party was declared to be " Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men." John Quincy Adams, who had made the Whig party (without knowing it), for Henry Clay to lead, was in full ac- cord with the men who led the Free -Soil movement. Daniel Webster, chagrined by his own personal defeat in the Whig Conven- tion, stigmatized the nomination of Taylor as one " not fit to be made," and, if political his- torians are to be credited, he wavered for a few days between his own party and the new- born of Buffalo. ZACHARY TAYLOR. From a photograph by Brady. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS I2/ General Taylor was a slave-holder, a mod- erate man, devoted to the Union, and sus- picious of the ultra doctrines of State Rights. When a Southern planter, in the course of the campaign, wrote to know what Taylor pro- posed to do about slavery in case he was elected, saying that he (the writer), had in- vested his savings and gains in one hundred slaves, Taylor diplomatically replied that he had three hundred slaves, the result of his savings and gains. Was it likely that he would sacrifice his property ? The campaign was one of hurrah and military glory. To some extent it was an imitation of Old Hick- ory and of that of the Hero of Tippecanoe. Now it was " Old Rough and Ready," the brave " Old Hero of Buena Vista," who claimed the plaudits of his fellow-country- men and got them in large measure. Against Taylor was opposed General Lewis Cass with his bloodless sword, admirably satirized by Abraham Lincoln, who was far-seeing enough to discern the triumph of the candidate who had snatched from his own beloved chieftain, Harry Clay, the honor of the nomination. Lincoln was a delegate to the Whig Conven- tion, in 1848, and a day or two after its ad- journment he wrote : " In my opinion, we shall have a most overwhelming and glorious 128 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS triumph. One unmistakable sign is that all the odds and ends are with us Barn-burners, Native Americans, Tyler men, disappointed office-seeking Loco-focos, and the Lord knows what. This is important, if in noth- ing else, in showing which way the wind blows." The prophecy was fulfilled. Daniel Web- ster had said, with an air of deep discourage- ment, " There is no North ; " and William H. Seward, then hesitating on the threshold of political anti-slavery, while he pleaded for equal rights and the ending of slavery, had argued that the Whig party was as true to the interests of freedom as " the inert con- science of the American people " would per- mit it to be. Nevertheless, the North had elected a Whig who was known to be a mod- erate conservative over one who was the pledged nominee of the pro-slavery faction. The Democratic party of New York was rent in twain by anti-slavery Whigs. And the Whig party had won its last victory. The wrath of the Northern Democrats was in- tense. Here we should notice another of those odd cross-currents which, like the Anti-ma- sonic panic of 1833, have deranged the best- laid plans of politicians, and for a time have WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 129 obliterated party lines. The American party sprung out of a secret and oath-bound order that was formed in New York for the avowed purpose of checking the influence of foreign- born voters, purifying the ballot-box, and keeping the Bible in the public schools. In the city of New York, where voters of alien birth had become influential, the order flour- ished exceedingly, and when it was extended to other States, it attracted many on whom party obligations sat lightly, while the old parties were either breaking up or undergo- ing a purging process. The Democratic party had usually been in favor of easy nat- uralization. The term of residence requisite to lawful naturalization, at first fixed at two years, was extended in 1795 to five years; the Federalists, in 1798, stretched this to fourteen years, but in 1802 the Democratic- Republicans cut it down again to five years. Men who left the Democratic party because of its domination by foreign voters, or who dropped out of the Whig party when it be- gan to show signs of decay, now found an asylum in the American party. The American party flourished exceeding- ly in 1852, and reached its meridian great- ness in 1855, when it obtained a considerable foothold in the South and carried important 130 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS elections in the New England States, Califor- nia, Kentucky, Texas, and New York, and showed great strength in Virginia, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana. The party made preparations for entering the presidential contest of 1856, and actually did set its standard in the field ; but the rising tide of opposition to the further extension of slavery eventually swamped the organi- zation, and it finally went under, long be- fore the breaking out of the war of the rebel- lion. The new dogma of Squatter Sovereignty, proclaimed in 1849, was to the effect that the people of any Territory of the United States had the right " to vote slavery up or down," as they saw fit. But this doctrine mightily plagued its inventors when California, inun- dated by gold-seekers and suddenly populous enough to demand a State government, adopted a constitution in which slavery was expressly prohibited. Here was popular sov- ereignty with a vengeance ! The application of California for admission as a State, which came to the first Congress under Taylor's administration, in February, 1850, met with a cool reception from the Democratic party. The House was then composed of one hun- dred and ten Democrats, one hundred and ANDREW JACKSON. From a photograph by Brady, WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 133 five Whigs, and nine Free-Soilers ; in the Senate there were thirty -five Democrats, twenty-five Whigs, and two Free-Soilers. Henry Clay, now in the seventy-fourth year of his age, had cancelled his vow of re- tirement, and had returned to the Senate, adding his lustre to the constellation of statesmen Calhoun, Cla} T , and Webster which was to shine for the last time in the great debate that ensued. The South re- garded the proposition to admit California as a Free State, without the counterpoise of a Slave State, as a gross violation of its rights. Intense excitement prevailed all over the Slave States of the Union, and open threats of disunion were made. While the great de- bate was still on, a convention of slave-hold- ing States was held in Nashville, Tenn., and an address was adopted by it declaring, among other things, that "a sectional despot- ism, totally irresponsible to the people of the South, constituted of the representatives of the non-slaveholding States, ignorant of our feelings, condition, and institutions, reigns in Washington." Henry Clay denounced this convocation as " a second edition of the Hartford Convention." The Federalist as- semblage of 1814, however, held its delibera- tions in secret ; ignorant of its real purposes, 134 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS men could misrepresent them without much fear of contradiction. Clay was really in favor of the Wilmot Proviso and opposed to the further extension of slave territory ; and he had very lately in- sisted, with much shrewdness, that if slavery was so good a thing, good for the slave as well as good for the slave-holder, white men should be enslaved for their own benefit whenever the black supply should run low. But as a remedy for the acknowledged ills of slavery, Clay had nothing to offer but the de- portation of manumitted slaves to Africa by colonization societies, when gradual emanci- pation should make that possible. He pro- posed to "taper off" the custom of slave- holding very much as an inebriate might gradually escape from the thraldom of an unnatural appetite. Passionately devoted to the American Union, Clay conceived it to be his mission to pour oil on the troubled waters and post- pone the inevitable day of settlement. His famous compromise had for its basis these propositions: The admission of such new States as might be properly formed out of Texas ; the immediate admission of Cali- fornia with its new constitution ; the organi- zation of the Territories of New Mexico and WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 135 Utah without the Wilmot Proviso, but with Squatter Sovereignty ; Texas to be indemni- fied for its losses by war ; the abolition of the slave-trade (but not of slavery) in the District of Columbia ; and the enactment of a stringent Fugitive Slave Law. This was the basis of the agreement which was to take the place of the abrogated Missouri Com- promise of 1820. It was Clay's desire to defer all further agitation of the slavery question. He was old and feeble, but he persisted in speaking two days in advocacy of his plan of settle- ment. Great numbers of people came to Washington from a distance to hear the win- some and fascinating orator make this last and greatest effort of his life. When his speech was done, admirers rushed upon him to thank him, and a multitude of women kissed him with effusive tears. His task was to save the Union. His was a plea for peace. Of the North he asked concession ; of the South, moderation. Calhoun, pale, gaunt, and saturnine, and more than ever resembling Andrew Jackson in face and figure, addressed the Senate for the last time, his speech being read for him by Senator Mason, of Virginia. He entered his despairing plea for that equilibrium in 136 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS the Union which would be disturbed by the admission of California with a Free consti- tution ; and he asked that the Federal Con- stitution be amended so that the South would have the power, through all time, "to protect herself; " but he did not explain how this amendment was to be worded. On the now historic Seventh of March, 1850, Daniel Webster made his last abject surrender to slavery. He had been an elo- quent and apparently sincere defender of human rights ; now he was a defender of American slavery. He had opposed the ad- mission of Texas, because it was linked in with the pro-slavery programme ; now he advocated the admission and the programme. He had complained, in the Massachusetts Whig Convention of 1847, that the author of the Wilmot Proviso had "stolen his thun- der ; " now he opposed the application of that proviso to the territories to be organ- ized north of the Missouri Compromise line. Nothing in the famous debate gave the na- tion so great a shock of surprise as Webster's speech. In Massachusetts, where he had been idolized, many of his friends fell away from him with sorrow ; he was for a time re- fused the privilege of speaking in Faneuil Hall, "the cradle of Liberty;" and the revul- DANIEL WEBSTER. From a picture by Healy at the State Department, Washington. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 139 sion of feeling added greatly to the strength of the Free-Soil party, already enriched by the accession of such men as Sumner, Wil- son, Banks, Burlingame, Richard H. Dana, jr., and others whose names are now famous in American history. To Webster Whittier addressed his sorrowful yet scathing lyric, " Ichabod." The " Omnibus Bill," as the compromise of 1850 was commonly called, went through Congress in detached sections and became a law. None of the details of the bargain so inflamed and excited the North as the Fugi- tive Slave Law. Meetings denouncing the law were held all over the Northern States ; personal liberty bills were passed by legis- latures ; and the Free-Soil party was re- cruited from the ranks of men who now saw that there was no hope of peace so long as slavery was determined on other aggressions than that of forcing itself into the free terri- tory of the United States. The death of President Taylor, in July, 1850, did not affect the policy of the administration. Congress, with a union of Democrats and Whig " con- servatives," was master of the situation. When one of the sections of the com- promise of 1850 had been whipped through the House of Representatives, aided by the I4O SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS " dodging " of some of the more cowardly Northerners, Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsyl- vania, grimly suggested that the Speaker should send one of his pages " to inform those gentlemen that they might now re- turn with safety, as the slavery question had now been disposed of." But if any timid souls supposed that that question was finally disposed of by the compromise of 1850, they were soon undeceived. The Kansas- Nebraska agitation came on to disturb Na- tional politics just after the campaign of 1852, which had been conducted with Frank- lin Pierce as the candidate of the Democrats, General Winfield Scott of the Whigs, and John P. Hale of the Free-Soilers. There was now no essential difference between the platforms of the two leading parties. Both stood squarely on the compromise measures of 1850; both endorsed the Fugitive Slave Law with fervor. The Whigs kept up a tra- ditional preference for a loose construction of the Constitution ; and the Democrats were still sticklers for a strict construction, just as though both were living in the time of Ham- ilton and Jefferson, and were not bending before the blasts of slavery and anti-slavery that swept over the land. As for the Free- Soilers, they denounced slavery as a sin WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 141 against God and a crime against man ; they execrated the compromise and objurgated the men who supported it. At last, the op- ponents of an indefinite extension of slavery had gone into practical politics. When the bills to abrogate the Missouri Compromise were pending in the House of Representatives, Thomas H. Benton, then transferred to that body from the Senate on his way to complete retirement on the shelf, said that the measure, as a whole, was not called for by any " human being living or expecting to live in the Territories, but by a silent, secret, limping, halting, creeping, squinting, impish motion, conceived in the dark and midwifed in a committee-room." This choice bit of Carlylese must have re- curred to the minds of those who heard it when, Pierce having been elected to carry out the most rigorous and drastic pro-slav- ery policy yet framed, the real purpose of the slavery propaganda was unveiled by the introduction of the Nebraska bill. No long- er willing to accept the line of the Missouri Compromise as denning the northern limit of slavery, running due west to the Pacific Ocean, the slave-holders now argued that the principle of non-interference with slav- ery in the Territories by Congress was in- 142 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS consistent with the Missouri Compromise ; therefore that Compromise was void and of no effect. Hereafter, it was insisted, the people of each Territory, whether north or south of the parallel of 36 30', should admit or exclude slavery as they might determine by vote. The Whig party, a year before this, had been killed, as it was said, by an attempt to swallow the Fugitive Slave Law. Now its last dying hours were embittered by a black draught. By the aid of a few Northern Democrats, the Southern Demo- crats and Whigs were able to carry through the Nebraska bill ; and the Whig party van- ished from the election returns of the Na- tion. The attention of the people of the United States was now fixed upon the tremendous conflict going on in Kansas, where, the bar- rier against slavery being thrown down, the friends of slave labor and those of free labor had been given permission to " fight it out between themselves." It was no longer pos- sible to keep the anti-slavery elements of the * population of the United States out of Na- /" tional and local politics. So far as known, the first movement in the direction of the or- ganization of a new party composed of the friends of free labor, with a new title, was . I^B^.'.^.! 1 iV..;"" : - :zr ^^^.^ri~T-^:i^a WILLIAM H. SEWARD. From a photograph by Brady. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 145 made in Ripon, Fond du Lac County, Wis., early in the spring of 1854. A local meeting dissolved the Whig and Free-Soil town com- mittees and appointed another which should take the place of both. That committee was composed of representatives of three parties Free - Soilers, Whigs, Democrats and it was given a loose-constructionist schedule of principles. It was suggested by the Whig who had called the meeting, A. E. Bovey, that the name of Republican would be a good one for a party to be devoted to the proposition that the United States were a Republic with a Federal organization. But the assemblage in the little Ripon school- house did not venture on anything more than a suggestion. In the following June, a mass convention of " all persons in favor of resisting by all constitutional means the usurpations of the propagandists of slavery " was called in Ver- mont. The Whig party in that State had already cut all communications with the pro- slavery Whig party of the United States, and the new organization declared itself un- alterably opposed to slavery and all its works ; its address closed with these words : " We propose, and respectfully recommend to the friends of freedom in other States, to 146 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS co-operate and be known as Republicans." It has been claimed for William H. Seward that he gave to the party the name of Republican. But, wherever the suggestion first came from, the first formal use of the title by an efficient political combination was when a mass convention of Whigs, Free-Soilers, and Anti-slavery Democrats, at Jackson, Mich., July 6, 1854, adopted a platform of princi- ples, accepted the name of Republican, and nominated for Governor Kinsley S. Bingham, who was triumphantly elected. In the midst of the resounding din of the Kansas conflict, the Democrats nominated James Buchanan, of Pennsylvania, for Presi- dent, and John C. Breckinridge, of Ken- tucky, for Vice-President, on a platform ap- proving of the pro-slavery course of Pierce's administration in Kansas, and disapproving the Know -Nothing, or American, policy. The Know -Nothings ran Millard Fillmore for President, and Andrew Jackson Donel- son (nephew and namesake of " Old Hick- ory ") for Vice-President. The anti-slavery men in the Know-Nothing Convention bolted in high dudgeon when they failed to secure the adoption of a plank advocating the res- toration of the Missouri Compromise line. The scattered fragments of the Whig party, WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 147 later in the campaign, approved of the nom- ination of Fillmore and Donelson ; but they evaded the Know-Nothing platform. For the first time the National Republican party now made its appearance in a presi- dential campaign. Its platform was loose constructionist, after the Whig manner, with a special declaration in favor of internal improvements and a transcontinental rail- way. But the convention's bugle blast on the great question of the day was the signal of the new party's entrance. This was an emphatic statement of the right and duty of Congress to prohibit slavery and polygamy in all the Territories and to admit Kansas as a Free State ; and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, the general policy of the Pierce administration, and the further extension of slavery were condemned. John C. Fremont, of California, and William L. Dayton, of New Jersey, were nominated. The Repub- lican party was born. Popular elections in the Northern States had by this time given the Republicans good reason to hope that they might succeed in a national election, provided they were united and earnest. During this canvass the writer of these lines had a long conversation with Abraham Lincoln, then a rising politician and lawyer, 148 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS while attending a Fremont mass-meeting in Ogle County, 111. Mr. Lincoln cooled the ardor of the young and inexperienced Re- publican newspaper writer by saying that Fremont's case was hopeless. The interpo- sition of Fillmore's nomination, he said, would lose for Fremont the States of Penn- sylvania and Illinois. The result proved the wisdom of his words. Buchanan was elected. Neither of the three candidates had a major- ity of the popular vote. Fremont carried all the New England States, New York, Ohio, Michigan, Iowa, and Wisconsin. The revo- lution had begun. Kansas continued to be the bloody field of strife; the Free -State men, who had now become actual settlers, were fighting against invaders from the slave-ridden State of Mis- souri, backed by the administration. One more blow was needed to finish the crystalli- zation of all the elements opposed to slavery. This fell two days after Buchanan's inau- guration, when the United States Supreme Court announced the famous Dred Scott de- cision. This was, in effect, an opinion that the ancestors of negro slaves were not per- sons, but chattels ; that they had no rights that a white man was bound to respect ; that the Act of Congress of 1820, prohibiting WILLIAM HENRY HARRISON. From a copy at the Corcoran Art Gallery of a painting by Beard in 1840. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 151 slavery north of the parallel of 36 30', was unconstitutional and void, and that a slave- owner could not be lawfully prevented from settling in any Territory of the United States with all his " property ; " and, to make more binding this infamous decision, it was further declared that a slave-owner might carry his slave property into any free State or Terri- tory, without thereby invalidating his right of possession in said property. The North was asked to accept the doctrine that prop- erty in slaves was recognized in every State of the Federal Union, provided only that a slave-holder chose to take up temporary resi- dence in a free State with his chattels. The slave-holders, notwithstanding this concession of all they had previously de- manded, were still unsatisfied. It became more and more doubtful that Kansas could be saved to slavery, although all the machin- ery of law, and all the trickery of politicians, and all the brute force of border raiders had been enlisted for the purpose. The Terri- tory was satirized as " Bleeding Kansas ; " it was also " The Graveyard of Governors ; " four of these, in three years, had vainly been commissioned to help force slavery into the distracted and resisting Territory. In spite of violence and machinations, the people of 152 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS the Territory, who were actual settlers, did occasionally get a chance to vote ; and when they voted, it was invariably against slavery. But it now became expedient that more ter- ritory for the extension of slavery should be procured. The acquisition of Cuba by the United States, or the seizure of some of the Central American States, was openly advo- cated, and these suggestions were accepted as sound Democratic doctrine. But foreign objection summarily defeated both of these schemes as soon as they took shape. It was seriously proposed by some of the Southern politicians that the slave-trade should be re- vived, and this proposition was a legitimate sequence to the urgent claim that Congress should defend the right of property in human beings in every Territory of the United States. This latter article of political faith was em- bodied in the formal platform proposed for the Democratic National Convention of 1860. In that convention, however, the Anti-Le- compton men, led by Stephen A. Douglas, refused to accept the dictum that neither Congress nor the Territorial Legislature had a right to prohibit slavery in a Terri- tory. The recalcitrant Douglas Democrats, with notable inconsistency, were willing to leave the question to the United States Su- MILLARD FILLMORE. From a painting by Carpenter, in 1853, at the City Hall, New York. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 155 preme Court, although that tribunal (in the Dred Scott case) had already decided that Congress had no right to prohibit slavery anywhere. Then the party split in twain. The faction that seceded from the Baltimore Convention nominated John C. Breckinridge on an ultra pro-slavery platform, which ad- vocated the acquisition of more slave terri- tory by the purchase of Cuba. The Douglas Democrats, having adopted a platform which was strictly in accordance with the views of their chief, nominated their favorite statesman. The Know-Nothings, or Americans, hoping to rally again the for- lorn fragments of the Whig party scattered through the States, now called theirs the Constitutional Union party, and nominated John Bell, of Tennessee, and Edward Ever- ett, of Massachusetts. Their platform was a smooth and utterly meaningless evasion of all living questions. The Republican party, when it hoisted the names of Abraham Lincoln, of Illinois, and Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, cited the Declaration of Independence as the charter of human liberty, denounced Democratic threats of disunion, declared that freedom was the normal condition of the Territories (which Congress was bound to defend), and 156 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS pronounced in favor of a protective tariff, in- ternal improvements, a transcontinental rail- way, and a law to give homesteads to actual settlers on the public lands. Lincoln's political views had been fully made known during the celebrated debate with Douglas, two years before, when the two men canvassed Illinois, candidates for an election to the United States Senate. The issue now squarely before the people was that which involved the right and duty of Congress as to the extension of slavery in the Territories of the United States. Lin- coln's election was accepted by the Southern slave-holding States as the signal for their so-called secession. Their withdrawal from Congress gave the Republicans a fair major- ity in both houses of Congress. During the progress of the war that followed, the so- called Peace Democrats of the Northern and Border States were opposed by the War Democrats and the Republicans, and when the time came for a second presidential elec- tion, in 1864, the party that renominated Lincoln styled itself the National Union party. Under that title the fused elements that favored a defence of the Federal Union by force of arms had already taken the field in several of the Northern States. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 157 In addition to measures designed to carry on the Civil War, in which they had the aid of the War Democrats, the Republican ma- jority in Congress admitted Kansas with its Free State Constitution, organized the Ter- ritories of Nebraska, Colorado, and Dakota without any mention of the slavery question, enacted the Morrill protective tariff, passed a bill to authorize the building of a trans- continental railway, and enacted the home- stead law. Slavery was now in a fair way to be elim- inated from the field of National politics, after so many years of agitation. It is not necessary here to recount the steps that led to this consummation. But it may be said that the Democratic contingent left in the North by their seceding brethren was con- sistent in their demand that there should be a strict construction of the Constitution. Democrats could not forsake the traditions of their party ; and they steadily opposed every step that led to the destruction of American slavery ; they urged that the war was unconstitutional; and when in 1864 they nominated General McClellan for President, they demanded that measures for a peaceful adjustment of existing difficulties should be initiated. I $8 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS Among the financial measures adopted by the Republican Congress, from time to time, were those providing for a paper currency, first by the Legal-tender Act and then by the National Banking Act, both of which were denounced by Democrats in their conven- tions. But when it was proposed, after the war was over, to resume specie payments, the Democrats opposed resumption, and in some States they combined with the so- called Greenbackers in local elections. Re- publicans and Democrats were also hope- lessly at odds on the questions of taxation. The latter party was violently opposed to an income-tax and to the system of internal rev- enue generally. They also execrated the Administration when, following the example of the Democratic Congress, during the Burr episode, the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus was suspended. The nomination of Andrew Johnson, of Tennessee, for Vice-President, on the ticket with Lincoln, in 1864, brought to pass a con- dition of things very much like that which obtained when Harrison's administration was " Tylerized," in 1841. The Whigs, in 1840, nominated Tyler, a Southern strict construc- tionist, as a concession to those elements in politics. When he became President, on the WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 159 death of Harrison, he carried out his views in regard to the United States Bank, and some other matters, and broke with his par- ty. Johnson was nominated by the Repub- licans with the expectation that this would conciliate the Border States and attract Democrats who were inclined to the general policy of the Republican party. He was a War Democrat, and he broke with the Re- publican party when, by the death of Lin- coln, he came to the presidential office; his views on negro suffrage, the policy of recon- struction to be pursued in the lately rebel- lious States, the right to remove Federal of- ficials without co-operation of the Senate and the rights of States, were found to be vio- lently and hopelessly opposed to the policy of the majority in Congress. Like Tyler, he sought to build up a party for himself; and, like Tyler, he was disappointed in that ambi- tion. But there are no points of resemblance between the characters of the two men. Johnson was passionate, wilful, and a braw- ler ; Tyler was not one of these. The effort to impeach Johnson brought into strong relief the question of the right of the President to remove high Federal offi- cials without the consent of the Senate. The so - called Tenure of Office Law was de- 160 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS signed to prevent the President from making removals during a recess of the Senate. Jef- ferson had complained that as few died and none resigned, he could find no vacancies to fill unless he first made them by removal. Johnson's determination to rid himself of the Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, compelled him to disregard the new Tenure of Office Act; and this step brought on his trial for impeachment. After the failure of this at- tempt to remove him, the contest between Congress and the President went on over their variance as to the powers of Congress in the matter of reconstruction. Congress claimed the right, under a loose construction of the Constitution, to lay down rules for the readmission of the States recently in rebel- lion. Johnson denied this right. The Democratic party naturally espoused the view of Johnson ; and, at its convention in 1868, nominated Horatio Seymour, of New York, and Frank P. Blair, Jr., of Missouri, on a platform which demanded that the South- ern States should be at once and uncondi- tionally readmitted to representation in Con- gress, and that the question of suffrage should be left to the several States for regu- lation. The Republicans took the opposite view in their platform ; and they nominated JOHN TYLER. From a photograph by Brady. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 163 General Grant for President, and Schuyler Colfax for Vice-President. As there was yet great confusion existing in the lately rebel- lious States, the result in the South of that presidential election cannot be accepted as indicative of any change of political senti- ment. Of the Northern States, New York, New Jersey, and Oregon chose Democratic electors. The Republican position as regarding the status of the States lately in rebellion was sustained by the United States Supreme Court, early in Grant's first year in office. That tribunal decided in the " Texas case " that the ordinances of secession were null ; that the so-called seceding States had never been out of the Union ; that during and after the act of rebellion they had no competent State governments, and that Congress had the power to re-establish relations between the said States and the Federal Union. The time of Congress during Grant's two terms of office was chiefly occupied in the discussion of bills to protect the freedmen in their civil rights and to extend amnes- ty to the rebels lately in arms. The more radical Republicans opposed general amnes- ty ; the liberal Republicans insisted on " uni- versal amnesty and universal enfranchise- 164 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ment." Naturally enough, the Democrats sympathized with the latter, partly for the sake of the divisions which would be made in the Republican party, and partly because they hoped to carry amnesty and in some way prevent universal enfranchisement. From these movements and contentions was brought forth the Liberal Republican Convention that met in Cincinnati in 1872, and nominated Horace Greeley, of New York, and B. Gratz Brown, of Missouri. The Democrats were expected to endorse this unique ticket for the presidency, although Mr. Greeley was a Protectionist Republican who had been a Whig as long as that party was in existence. The tariff question, how- ever, was " remitted to the Congressional dis- tricts " by the Convention, and this amusing juggle with words was solemnly accepted by the Democratic Convention of that year, when platform and candidates were both adopted. A few " kickers " in the party refused to be bound by the agreement and nominated Charles O'Conor, of New York, and John Quincy Adams, of Massachusetts, for Presi- dent and Vice-President. Neither of these two gentlemen would accept the doubtful honor thrust upon them. The " kickers," as the popular vote showed, mustered about WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 165 thirty thousand members of the Democratic party. The death of Mr. Greeley before the time for casting the electoral votes of the States arrived threw the electors into con- fusion. It was an unforeseen contingency. When the votes were finally canvassed, it was found that Grant, nominated for a sec- ond term, had two hundred and eighty-six votes for President ; Thomas A. Hendricks, a Democrat, had forty-two, and there were twenty-one scattering. For Vice-President, Henry Wilson, the Republican nominee, had two hundred and eighty-six votes, B. Gratz Brown forty-seven, arid there were nineteen scattering. The party founded by Thomas Jefferson was once more in an eclipse. The questions that related to the recon- struction of the States lately in rebellion re- mained still unsettled ; and these, with a re- vival of financial issues, furnished topics for political discussion and for political divis- ion all through the administrations of Grant, Hayes, and Arthur. In 1884, Grover Cleve- land was elected, and the Democratic party, after twenty-four years, was again in power. It is interesting to note the gradual changes which each of the two great political parties have exhibited since they emerged from the confusion of the civil war and the immedi- 1 66 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS ately following events. That war removed one of the main causes of difference between the two parties. Slavery being extinct, the conflict for a time raged over the treatment . of the ex-slaves. The Republicans insisted that the freedmen should be protected in their civil rights. The Democrats, denying that the freedmen were deprived of any of those rights, rebelled against " negro domination " in the South. But even these questions grad- ually faded from the view of the politicians, and we find the platforms of the two parties being gradually cut down to the considera- y tion of purely economic propositions. Of these questions, that of the tariff has gradually assumed the greatest prominence. The Republican party, which came into ex- istence in response to a popular demand that slavery should not be further extended into the Territories of the United States, and which was continued in power to save the Union from dismemberment by rebellion, gradually took the attitude of a protective- tariff party after its original mission had been fulfilled. On its way to that position, it tarried long enough to take up and handle the treatment of the newly enfranchised col- ored men of the South. The Democratic party, having opposed the prosecution of FRANKLIN PIERCE. From a painting by Healy, in 1852, at the Corcoran Art Gallery. WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS 169 the war to put down the rebellion, as it had opposed all measures designed to check the further advance of slavery into the Terri- tories, was finally compelled to " accept the situation " and to find other issues on which to construct party platforms. It has accord- ingly taken the position that a tariff for pro- tection is not only inexpedient but unconsti- tutional ; and although the actions of the party in Congress have been somewhat in- consistent with this view, the Democratic or- ganization has steadily adhered to its fun- damental proposition when called upon to frame its creed. One of the most emphatic deliverances upon the subject of the tariff was that made by the Republicans in 1884, when Mr. Blaine, having been nominated on a protectionist platform, boldly forced the question into the canvass and made it promi- nent by his letters and addresses. In that campaign the Democrats declared in favor of a reduction of the tariff, but evaded the issue of protection. They also declared for " honest money," which was defined to be gold and silver coin, " and a circulating me- dium convertible into such money without loss." The inconsistency of this declaration with the old-time "hard- money" theory of the Democratic party is obvious. SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS Generally the Democrats have committed themselves to a tariff for revenue purposes only ; and it is impossible to separate the Republican party from the protective-tariff idea. Both parties have shown themselves responsive to occasional popular demands for a change in an existing financial policy ; but both have been constant to a central idea. These popular demands, often unrea- sonable, have created other political organi- zations, which, like the Anti-Masons and the Know-Nothings of an earlier day, have flit- ted across the stage of National life and have disappeared after a brief exhibition. Of these, the Grangers, the Prohibitionists, the Greenbackers, the Labor Party men, the Independent Nationalists, the Silver Infla- tionists, and sundry others, have crystallized around economic points and have then passed into a state of deliquescence. For a time these skirmishers have had some influence upon the two great parties that lead to-day in American politics ; but the solidarity of those two organizations re- mains unimpaired. It cannot be said that there is much in the fundamental belief of the Democratic party to remind one of the party of Jefferson's time. The Republican party has outlived the evils in the State WHEN SLAVERY WENT OUT OF POLITICS Ijl which it was born to destroy. It has cre- ated for itself another and wholly different policy in National affairs. Economics, not moral questions, now divide the mass of American voters. IV THE PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS THE practice of framing- declarations of party principles grew slowly in the United States. It was not until 1832 that a National Convention adopted a series of resolutions that might properly be called a party platform. Previous to that time, however, resolutions had been passed by sun- dry political assemblages more or less de- clarative of the articles of party faith. The Virginia and Kentucky resolutions of 1798, and the answers of the various State legis- latures which endorsed and accepted those tenets of political faith, were party platforms, for all intents and purposes. For example, a caucus of Republican Congressmen, which assembled in Washington, in 1800, adopted the series of resolutions which embodied the generally accepted articles of faith of the Jef- ferson party at that time a strict construc- tion of the provisions of the Constitution, freedom of speech, avoidance of all treaty PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 1/3 complications with European powers, and an advocacy of liberal naturalization laws. The so-called Clintonian Convention, held in New York, August 17, 1812, was composed exclusively of Republican members of the New York legislature who were favorable to the nomination of DeWitt Clinton for Presi- dent of the United States. That convention put forth a declaration of political principles, and although five of the seven sections of this curious platform declared " opposition to " the political methods of the adversaries of the Clintonians, and only the remaining two were affirmative of anything whatever, here was the promising beginning of the crystal- lization of political faiths. Those platform- makers demanded, among other things, that the country should be placed in a condition " to invade and conquer the British American Provinces." Those were warlike times. The Hartford Convention, in January, 1815, formulated the extreme Federalist doctrines ; but this was not a representative National gathering. In the Anti-Masonic Convention, held in Philadelphia, September, 1830, ten States were represented ; and when the sec- ond convention of that party assembled in Baltimore, one year later, three more States sent delegates thereto, and a very long and 174 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS wordy address to the people of the United States, which was adopted and issued, par- took of the nature of a political platform. But when the party in opposition to the Democratic-Republicans met in Baltimore, December 12, 1832, the system of National political conventions had finally taken shape. The new party was known as the National Republican. In that convention seventeen States were represented by one hundred and fifty-seven delegates, and the address to the people which was adopted was just such an arraignment of the existing administration of the Government as the voters of the Unit- ed States have become familiar with in these later years. The convention nominated Henry Clay for President, and John Ser- geant for Vice-President. Clay was the idol of the young men, and at the suggestion of the convention that nominated him, an as- semblage of young men was called together to ratify the nomination of Clay and Ser- geant. This convention met at Washington, in May, 1832, and adopted the first formal platform ever framed by a National Conven- tion. The resolutions were ten in number. They embraced a variety of topics. On the subject of the tariff they declared " that an adequate protection to American industry is JAMES K. POLK. From a photograph by Brady. PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS I// indispensable to the prosperity of the coun- try ; and that an abandonment of the policy at this period would be attended with conse- quences ruinous to the best interests of the nation." Henry Clay's " American system " was taking shape. It is worthy of remark that this convention, which represented the " outs," denounced as dangerous the doctrine " lately boldly preached in the Senate of the United States " by William L. Marcy, that " to the victors belong the spoils." The Jackson Democrats were not slow to make use of the system of National Conven- tions and platforms, the many advantages of which were readily apparent. Already in that year, 1832, Jackson had been nominated by sundry States for a second term of the Presidency, and the National Convention called to meet in Baltimore, in May, 1832, had before it merely the duty of ratifying that nomination and of selecting a candidate for Vice-President. Martin Van Buren, already designated as Jackson's political heir, was de- clared the nominee. As for a platform, An- drew Jackson was the sole and sufficient ex- ponent of the principles of the party that supported him for the second term. During the next eight years political par- ties gradually became accustomed to the 1/8 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS practice of holding National Conventions and constructing platforms. These latter, how- ever, partook more of a personal character than a character of creeds. They denounced the nominees of the opposing parties, and lauded those of their own party. When the Whigs conducted their noisy and enthusias- tic presidential campagn, in 1840, they did not think it worth while to put forth any declaration of principles. " Tippecanoe and Tyler too " was enough for them, and the only apparent issue of that memorable con- test was that which was embodied in the log- cabin, hard cider, and that same old coon, which were the emblems of the exultant and confident campaigners. The Democrats, on the other hand, declared that they were op- posed to a policy of internal improvements and to the chartering of United States banks. Slavery had now become an issue in politics, and this, with the tariff question, must hence- forth be looked for in the outgiving of politi- cal conventions. We need not hereafter con- sider any other questions than these two. The Abolitionists had a convention at War- saw, N. Y., in December, 1839, an d nominat- ed James G. Birney for President. The slavery question had been discussed in Con- gress and in the newspapers. So now the PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 1/9 Democratic Convention which nominated Van Buren for President (1840), formulated this important declaration : " Congress has no power to interfere with or control the do- mestic institutions of the several States, and such States are the sole and proper judges of their own affairs not prohibited by the Con- stitution, and all efforts by Abolitionists or others made to induce Congress to interfere with questions of slavery . . . ought not to be countenanced by any friend of our political institutions." Abolitionism in various modified forms gradually assumed the shape of a power in politics. The Liberty party met in Buffalo, August 30, 1843, an d again nominated James G. Birney for the Presidency. The platform of that convention declared against slavery as " the grossest and most revolting manifes- tation of despotism," and pledged the party to " carry out the principles of equal rights into all its practical consequences and applications." The Whig Convention which met in Balti- more in May, 1844, and nominated Clay and Frelinghuysen, declared for " a tariff for rev- enue to defray the necessary expenses of the Government, and discriminating with espe- cial reference to the protection of the domes- tic labor of the country." 180 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS In that same year the Democratic National Convention which met at Baltimore in May, and nominated Polk and Dallas, reaffirmed the platform of 1840, which was in effect a pro-slavery platform, and further declared in favor of the annexation of Texas and of Ore- gon- Four years later, in May, 1848, the Demo- cratic Convention assembled in Baltimore nominated Cass and Butler, and reaffirmed the platform of 1840 so far as it related to slavery, justified the war with Mexico, and incidentally denounced a national bank. The Whig Convention assembled in Phila- delphia, June, 1848, and nominated Taylor and Fillmore. The platform was laudatory of General Taylor and expressive of confi- dence in his statesmanship, but on all living issues it was silent. The Free-Soil party, in its convention as- sembled in Buffalo, in June, 1848, nominated Van Buren and Adams, and denounced the action of the other two parties, and declared in favor of " no interference by Congress with slavery within the limits of any State." The same platform, however, further af- firmed that the Free-Soil party was irrevo- cably committed to the doctrine " no more slave States and no more slave Territory ; " PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS l8l and also " in favor of such a tariff of duties as will raise revenue adequate to defray the expenses of the Federal Government." The sixteenth resolution declared as follows : " That we inscribe on our banners Free Soil, Free Speech, Free Labor, and Free Men, and under it we will fight on and fight ever until a triumphant victory shall reward our exertions." Pierce and King were the nominees of the Democratic Convention which met in Balti- more in June, 1852. The platform on which these candidates were placed reaffirmed the sections of the previous platforms relating to slavery from 1840 onward, with additional declarations in favor of the maintenance of the Fugitive Slave Law, then engrossing the attention of the people. The Whig Convention assembled in Balti- more in June, 1852, and nominated Scott and Graham. The platform favored a tariff to be levied " with just discrimination, whereby suitable encouragement may be afforded to American industry." The platform also ex- pressed its acquiescence in the acceptation of the Fugitive Slave Law and other sec- tions of the celebrated compromise of 1850, and deprecated " all further agitation of the question thus settled." 1 82 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS The Free-Soil party assembled in Pitts- burgh, in National Convention, in August, 1852, and nominated John P. Hale and George W. Julian. The most important plank of the platform of that year was the sixth section, which declared " that slavery is a sin against God and a crime against man which no human enactment nor usage can make right, and that Christianity, humanity, and patriotism alike demand its abolition." The platform also denounced the Fugitive Slave Law and the compromise measures of 1850. The American party made its appearance in National politics in a convention held in Philadelphia in February, 1856, nominating Millard Fillmore and Andrew Jackson Don- elson. The most significant plank of the platform of that convention was " Americans must rule America, and to that end native- born citizens should be selected for all State, Federal, and municipal offices of gov- ernment employment in preference to all others." The thirteenth section of that plat- form declared in favor of " opposition to the reckless and unwise policy of the present (Democratic) administration in the general management of our National affairs, . . . as shown in the reopening of sectional strife JAMES BUCHANAN. From a photograph by Brady. PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 1 8$ by the repeal of the Missouri Compromise," etc. The Democratic Convention held in Cin- cinnati, June, 1856, nominated James Bu- chanan and John C. Breckinridge, and while it contained no immediate reference to the tariff, reaffirmed the former position of the Democratic party on the slavery question and repudiated all sectional parties and plat- forms concerning- domestic slavery which would " seek to embroil States and excite to treason an armed resistance to law in the Territories." The platform further declared in favor of " non-interference of Congress with slavery in the Territories or in the Dis- trict of Columbia ; " and also " in favor of free seas and progressive free-trade through- out the world." The first Republican National Convention assembled in Philadelphia, June, 1856, and nominated Fremont and Dayton. At that convention were adopted the principles enunciated in the Declaration of Indepen- dence. The platform further declared it to be the imperative duty of Congress " to pro- hibit in the Territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery." The Whig Convention assembled in Bal- timore in September, 1856, and nominated 1 86 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS Fillmore and Donelson. The platform was silent on the subject of slavery and the tar- iff, but declared " as a fundamental article of political faith an absolute necessity for avoid- ing geographical parties." In May, 1860, the National Republican party again assembled in Chicago, and nomi- nated Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Ham- lin. The platform declared in favor of the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence, and fur- ther declared that " the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom." It also denied the authority of Congress or any territorial legislature or any individuals " to give legal existence to slavery in any Territory of the United States." Furthermore, it was declared that " sound policy requires such an adjustment of imports as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole coun- try." The Douglas Democratic Convention of that year (1860) assembled first in Charleston and afterward in Baltimore, and committed the party to the proposition that it " will abide by the decisions of the Supreme Court of the United States on questions of consti- tutional law. It also declared against State PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 187 legislation to defeat the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law. The conservative, or pro-slavery, wing of the Democratic party assembled first in Charleston and afterward in Baltimore, in 1860, and nominated Breckinridge and Lane. The platform reaffirmed the previous Demo- cratic platforms on the subject of slavery, with the additional statement that a Terri- torial government is merely temporary, and that during its existence " all citizens of the United States have an equal right to settle, with their property, in the Territory " with- out any danger of their rights being im- paired or destroyed by Congressional or Territorial legislation. Furthermore, the platform declared that " it is the duty of the Federal Government to protect these rights ; " and the action of State legislatures to hinder the execution of the Fugitive Slave Law was denounced. The Republican Union party, so called, met in convention in Baltimore in June, 1864, and nominated Abraham Lincoln and An- drew Johnson. As to slavery the platform declared, " Justice and the national safety de- mand its extirpation from the soil of the re- public." In that year (1864) the Democratic Con- 1 88 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS vention assembled in Chicago in August and nominated McClellan and Pendleton. The most impressive declaration of the platform of that convention was as follows : " After four years of failure to restore the Union by the experiment of war, it has become impera- tive that immediate efforts be made for a ces- sation of hostilities, with a view of an ulti- mate convention of all the States, or other peaceable means, to the end that at the ear- liest practicable moment peace may be re- stored on the basis of the federal union of all the States." The Republican Convention which met at Chicago in May, 1868, and nominated Grant and Wilson, made no specific declaration as to slavery in the States, nor as to the tariff. The platform was chiefly taken up with con- siderations of financial questions incidental to the adjustment of the great national debt and to reconstruction problems growing out of the previously disturbed condition of the country. The Democratic Convention which assem- bled in the city of New York, July, 1868, and nominated Horatio Seymour and Frank P. Blair, was also chiefly interested with ques- tions referring to the reconstruction of the Union, the restoration of civil rights, and sim- PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 189 ilar matters ; but that convention declared in favor of " a tariff for revenue upon foreign imports, and such equal taxation under the internal revenue laws as will afford incidental protection to domestic manufactures, and as will, without impairing the revenue, impose the least burden upon, and best promote and encourage the great industrial interests of, the country." The Labor Reform party of 1872 met in convention in Cincinnati and nominated Charles O'Conor ; but the final action on the nomination was not complete until June of that year. The convention declared that " Congress should so modify the tariff as to admit free such articles of common use as we can neither produce nor grow, and lay duties for revenue mainly upon articles of luxury and upon such articles of manufacture as will, we having the raw materials, assist in further developing the resources of our country." The Liberal Republican party, after slowly crystallizing and taking shape, assembled in Cincinnati in May, 1872, and nominated Hor- ace Greeley and B. Gratz Brown. The most important plank in the platform of that con- vention is as follows: "Recognizing that there are in our midst honest but irreconcil- 190 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS able differences of opinion in regard to the respective systems of protection and free- trade, we remit the discussion of the subject to the people in their Congressional districts, and the decision of Congress thereon, wholly free from Executive interference or dicta- tion." The Democratic party that year met in Baltimore in July, and nominated Greeley and Brown, and also accepted the Cincinnati Liberal Republican party's platform " as es- sential to just government." The Republican party in convention in Philadelphia, June, 1872, nominated Grant and Coif ax. As to a revenue tariff, the plat- form declared that the details of such a scheme " should be so adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor and promote the industrial prosperity and growth of the whole country." The Independent (Greenback) party held a convention in Indianapolis in May, 1876, and demanded the repeal of the act to resume specie payments, and protested against any further contraction of the currency. The Republican Convention which assem- bled in Cincinnati in June, 1876, demanded further progress in the direction of a resump- tion of specie payments, but had nothing THURLOW WEED. From an unpublished photograph by Disderi, Paris, in 1861. In the pos- session of Thurlow Weed Barnes. PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 1 93 more significant to say upon the tariff ques- tion than that " all revenue necessary to the maintenance of the Government must be de- rived from duties on imports, which so far as possible should be adjusted so as to pro- tect the interests of American labor and advance the prosperity of the whole coun- try." The Democratic party assembled in con- vention in St. Louis, June, 1876, nominated Tilden and Hendricks, and denounced the resumption law of 1875 and demanded its repeal. Upon the tariff question its utter- ance was as follows: "We demand that all custom-house taxation shall be only for rev- enue." In 1880 the Republican party in convention in Chicago in June, nominated Garfield and Arthur, and declared that "the duties levied for the purpose of revenue should so discrim- inate as to favor American labor." The National Greenback Convention at Chicago, June, 1880, declared in favor of the abolition of national banks, substitution of legal-tender currency, and unlimited coinage of silver ; it also demanded a graduated in- come-tax. The Democratic Convention which assem- bled in Cincinnati June, 1880, and nomi- 13 194 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS nated Hancock and English, declared briefly in favor of " a tariff for revenue only." The Republican Convention which met in Chicago in June, 1884, and nominated Elaine and Logan, made this declaration on the sub- ject of the tariff: "We therefore demand that the imposition of duties on foreign im- ports shall be made not for revenue only, but that in raising the requisite revenues of the Government such duties shall be so lev- ied as to afford security to our diversified industries and protection to the rights and wages of the laborers, to the end that active and intelligent labor, as well as capital, may have its just reward and the laboring man his full share in the national prosperity." The Democratic Convention which nomi- nated Cleveland and Hendricks met in Chi- cago in July, 1884, and made this declara- tion on the subject of the tariff: "Knowing full well, however, that legislation affecting the occupations of the people should be cau- tious and conservative in method, not in ad- vance of public opinion, but responsive to its demands, the Democratic party is pledged to revise the tariff in a spirit of fairness to all interests, but in making reduction in taxa- tion it is not proposed to injure any domes- tic industries, but rather to promote their PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 1 95 healthy growth. . . . We demand that federal taxation shall be exclusively for pub- lic purposes and shall not exceed the needs of the Government economically adminis- tered." In June, 1888, the Democratic party in con- vention in St. Louis nominated Cleveland and Thurman. The platform adopted at that convention contained the following dec- laration on the all-absorbing topic of the tar- iff : " Our established domestic industries and enterprises should not and need not be endangered by the reduction and correction of the burdens of taxation. On the contrary, a fair and careful revision of our tax laws, with due allowance for the difference be- tween the wages of American and foreign labor, must encourage and promote every branch of such industries and enterprises by giving them assurance of extended market and steady and continuous operations in the interests of American labor, which should in no event be neglected. The revision of our tax laws contemplated by the Democratic party should promote the advantage of such labor by cheapening the cost of the necessa- ries of life in the home of every workman and at the same time securing to him steady and remunerative employment." 196 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS The Republican party in its convention in Chicago, June, 1888, nominated Harrison and Morton, and made the following decla- ration on the subject of the tariff: " We are uncompromisingly in favor of the American system of protection. We protest against its destruction as proposed by the President and his party. They serve the interests of Eu- rope ; we will support the interests of Amer- ica. We accept the issue and confidently appeal to the people for their judgment. The protective system must be maintained. Its abandonment has always been followed by disaster to all interests except those of the usurer and the sheriff. We denounce the Mills bill as destructive to the general business, to labor, and the farming interests of the country." The Republican Convention which met in Minneapolis in June, 1892, and nominated Harrison and Reid, made the following dec- larations : " We affirm the American doctrine of pro- tection. We call attention to its growth abroad. We maintain that the prosperous condition of our country is largely due to the wise revenue legislation of the Republi- can Congress. " We believe that all articles which cannot PARTY PLATFORMS OF SIXTY YEARS 197 be produced in the United States, except luxuries, should be admitted free of duty, and that on all imports coming into compe- tition with the products of American labor there should be levied duties equal to the dif- ference between wages abroad and at home." The Democratic party in June, 1892, held its convention in Chicago and nominated Cleve- land and Stevenson. Its most important dec- laration on the subject of the tariff was that embodied in the third section, as follows : " We denounce the Republican protection as a fraud, a robbery of the great majority of the American people for the benefit of the few. We declare it to be a fundamental principle of the Democratic party that the Federal Government has no constitutional power to impose and collect tariff duties, except for the purposes of revenue only, and we de- mand that the collection of such taxes shall be limited to the necessities of the govern- ment when honestly and economically ad- ministered. " We denounce the McKinley tariff law enacted by the Fifty-First Congress as the culminating atrocity of class legislation. We endorse the efforts made by the Democrats of the present Congress to modify its most oppressive features in the direction of free 198 SHORT STUDIES IN PARTY POLITICS raw materials and cheaper manufactured goods that enter into general consumption, and we promise its repeal as one of the benef- icent results that will follow the action of the people in intrusting power to the Demo- cratic party." INDEX ABOLITIONISM, in Northern States, iigetseq., 179 Abolitionists. See Liberty Party Adams, John, roundly abused, 12, 13, 14 ; chosen for presi- dent, 22, 36 ; Hamilton's cool- ness toward, 35 ; his cabinet broken up, 37 ; Hamilton's attack on, 38, 40 ; his remov- als and appointments, 47 Adams, John Quincy, runs for presidency, 71 ; a loose con- structionist, 71 ; his policy alienates the strict construc- tionists, 76, 77 ; cold and re- served, 79, 95 ; and Andrew Jackson, 79 ; his campaign for presidency against Jackson, 80-85, I 2 4 Adet, M., his electioneering let- ter in behalf of Jefferson, 22, 25 Alien and Sedition Laws, the, 27 et seq. American Party, the, 129, 130 ; platform, 182 American politics. See Politics, American Ames, Fisher, his words con- cerning Adams and Jefferson, 22, 25 Anti- Federalist Party, "more French than the French," i ; and the Constitution, 2, 3 ; and lotteries and loans, 4, 5 ; on tariff and National Bank, 5- 10 ; known as Republicans, n Anti-Masonic diversion, the, 94- 96, 170 B BACHE, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN, 20 Bank, the National, 5, 9, 10, 56 ; Jackson's war on, 93 ; Clay and, 93, 94 Barlow, Joel, 31 Barn-burners, 120, 123, 124 Bayard, James, 41 Bell, John, candidate for presi- dent, 155 Benton, Jesse, his abuse of An- drew Jackson, 84 Benton, Thomas H., his words concerning the Clay -Ran- dolph duel, 78 ; and the Na- tional Bank, 93 ; his words on the bills to abrogate Missouri Compromise, 141 Bingham, Kinsley S. .Governor, 146 Birney, James G. ,and the Liber- ty Party, 103, 112-115, 1 7 8 - *79 Blaine, James G. , 169 Blair, Francis P., 92 Blair, Frank P., Jr., candidate for vice-president, 160 " Blue Lights," 58 Bradley, Stephen R., and the caucus, 54 Breckinridge, John C., candi- date for vice-president, 146 Brown, B. Gratz, candidate for vice-president, 164, 165 Buchanan, James, candidate for president, 146 Burr, Aaron, 14, 22, 36, 38 ; in the canvass of 1800, 38-40, 41 ; trial for treason, 50 Butler, Benjamin F., at Buffalo Convention, 124 2OO INDEX CALHOUN, JOHN C., urges war with England, 56 ; a leader of Republicans, 70 ; aloosecon- structionist, 72 ; candidate for vice-presidency, 71, 83, 85 ; Andrew Jackson's dislike for, 91; and protection, 97; his last speech, 135, 136 California, application of, for admission as a State, 130, 131 Campaign, Presidential, of Jack- son and Adams, 80-85 ; of Harrison in 1840, 103, 104, 178 Cass, Lewis, 75 ; nominated for president, 123 Caucus, origin of the word, 53 ; convention substituted for, 53, 54. 55 Chesapeake affair, the, 50 Civil War, 156, 157 Clay, Henry, urges war with England, 56 ; and the treaty of Ghent, 58, 62, 71 ; birth and early life, 69, 70 ; speaker of the House, 70 ; runs for pres- idency, 71, 72, 93, 94, 107, 114, 174 ; a loose constructionist, 71 ; secretary of state, 72 ; incurs enmity of Andrew Jack- son by supporting Adams, 75 ; his duel with Randolph, 77, 78 ; his winning manner, 79, 80 ; personal attacks on, 83 ; and the Mrs. Eaton scandal, 91 ; and the National Bank, 93, 94, 97 ; his compromise tariff, 96, 104; his "Raleigh "and "Alabama " letters, 107, in ; his return to the Senate and last work, 133-135 Clinton, De Witt, nominated for president, 57, 173 Clinton, George, 13, 14 ; chosen vice-president, 55 Colfax, Schuyler, 163 Congress, log-rolling in, 4 ; elec- toral contest in 1800, 40, 41 ; the president's visits to, 45 ; debates in, on slavery, 118, 119; and Andrew Johnson, 160; during Grants presi- dency, 163 Constitution, the opinions con- cerning, 2, 3 ; difference of view concerning construction of, 3 Convention, political, substi- tuted for caucus, 53, 54 ; the first, 57 ; the Hartford, 58, 173 ; the Buffalo, 124 ; the Clintonian, 173 ; various con- ventions during sixty years, 172 et seq. Corwin, Thomas, in. Crawford, W. H., 56, 71, 85 Cumberland Road Bill, the, 50 DAYTON, WILLIAM L. , 147 Democratic Party. See Demo- cratic-Republican Party Democratic-Republican Party, the, named so by Jefferson, 10, ii ; known as Republican Party, n ; and France, 17, 18 ; Jeffersonian Republicans, 20 ; victory of, in 1800, 38, 39 ; political creed of, formulated by Jefferson, 42, 43 ; first schism in, 48 ; majority in Congress, 49 ; called Demo- cratic Party, 49, 63, 64 ; prin- ciples of, 64-69 ; loose con- structionists of, 69 etseq., 80 ; factions in, 76, 78 ; named "Tories" and " Locofoco," 98 ; Jackson Democrats, 99, 100, 177 ; platform of, in 1840, 104 ; identified with support of slavery, 106 ; schism in New York, 120 ; in favor of easy naturalization, 129 ; endorse the Fugitive Slave Law, 140 ; platform of, in 1860, 152, 155 ; Douglas Democrats, 152, 155, INDEX 2O I 186; Peace and War Demo- crats, 156 ; platform in 1868, 160 ; again in power, 165 ; changes in, after the Civil War, 165-171 ; declaration of, on slavery, in 1840, 179 ; plat- form in 1840 and later, 180 et seq.; conservative pro-slavery wing of, 187 Dodge, Henry, candidate for vice-president, 124 Donelson, Andrew Jackson, candidate for vice-presidency, 146 Douglas, Stephen A , his politi- cal views, 152-156 ; Douglas Democrats, 152, 155 Duane, William, 37 E EATON, MRS., 88, 91 Election, the second national, 14, 15 ; the first conducted on strictly political lines, 21, 22 Electoral count, the first dis- puted, 39-42 ; the first State count disputed, 62 Electors, Presidential, the first methods of, 13, 14 Ellmaker, Amos, candidate for vice-president, 95 Embargo and Non-Intercourse acts, the, 68, 69 England, attitude of, toward American commerce, 56 ; war with, in 1812, 57, 58 " Era of Good Feeling," the, 69 Everett, Edward, candidate for vice-president, 155 Expunging Resolutions, the, 93 " FEDERALIST," the, influence of, 3 Federalist Party, the, stigma- tized as being pro-English, i ; and the Constitution, 3 ; and lotteries and loans, 4 ; on tar- iff and National Bank, 5-10 ; and France, 17 ; downfall of, 2 7. 35- S3, 61 ; Jefferson's be- lief concerning, 29, 30; Ham- ilton the real leader of, 32, 35 ; Independent, 35 ; behavior of, in electoral dispute of 1800, 40 ; the price demanded by, for Jefferson's election, 41, 42 ; and the Hartford Convention, 58 Fillmore, Millard, candidate for president, 94, 146 Foote, Senator, 118 Force Bill, the, 97 France, sympathy for, in Amer- ica, i, 17 ; declares war against England, Spain, and Holland, 18 ; her insult to America, 25, 26 ; America's answer to, 27 ; purchase of Louisiana territory from, 47 Freemasonry in politics, 94-96 Free-soil Party, 139 ; denounced slavery, 140, 141 ; platform of, 180, 181, 182 Fremont, John C., candidate for president, 147, 148 Freneau, Philip, 20 Fugitive Slave Law, the, 135, 139. 140 GENET, Citizen, 18 Gerry, Elbridge, 26 Ghent, Treaty of, the, 58 " Gilded Trap," 2 Goodrich, Elizur, removal of, 46 Grant, General, as president, 163-165 Gray, Mr., his words concern- ing a caucus, 54, 55 Greeley, Horace, candidate for president, 164 Green, Duff, 91, 92 2O2 INDEX Greenback Party, the, 158, 170, 190, 193 Griswold, Mr., 31 H HALE, JOHN P., Senator, 118 ; candidate for presidency, 140 Hamilton, Alexander, 3 ; leader of the Federalists, 3, 4 ; his " log-rolling " scheme, 4 ; his funding bill, 5 ; his report on manufactures, 6 ; proposes National Bank, 9 ; quarrels of Jefferson and, 12 ; real leader of the Federalists, 32 ; mobbed and stoned, 32 ; opposed to Sedition Bill, 35 ; his coolness toward Adams, 35 ; his at- tack on Adams, 38, 41, 42 Harrison, William Henry, can- didate for president, 96, 98, 99, 103 ; elected, 103, 104 ; dies in office, 103 Hartford Convention, the, 58 Hendricks, Thomas A., 165 Hill, Isaac, 91 Hunkers, 120 J JACKSON, ANDREW, runs for presidency, 71; his animosity toward Clay, 75, 91 ; and John Quincy Adams, 79 ; his campaign against Adams, 80- 85 ; elected president, 84, 85 ; personal attacks on, 83, 84 ; his lack of education, 85 ; per- sonal traits, 85, 86 ; his inau- gural levee, 86 ; his appoint- ments, 87 ; originator of the spoils system, 87, 88 ; discon- tinues cabinet councils, 88 ; and the Mrs. Eaton scandal, 88, 91 ; his dislike for Cal- houn, 91 ; his " Kitchen Cabi- net," 91, 92; his "pocket veto," 92 ; his war on the Na- tional Bank, 93 ; once more president, 96, 98, 177 ; politi- cal creed, 99, 100 Jay, John, burned in effigy, 28 Jay Treaty, the, 19, 20 Jefferson, Thomas, leader of Anti-Federalism, 3, 4 ; in the cabinet, 10 ; his sympathy for the French, 10 ; gives name to Democatic - Republican party, 10, n ; quarrels of Hamilton and, 12, 14 ; and Genet, 18 ; Jeffersonian Re- publicans, 20 ; and Freneau, 21 ; chosen vice - president, 22 ; his belief concerning the Federalists, 29, 30 ; his quiet policy, 36 ; nominated for president, 36 ; elected, 41 ; his inauguration, 42 ; formu- lates political creed of Demo- cratic-Republican Party, 42, 43 ; his innovations, 45 ; his removals from office, 46, 47 ; Randolph's attacks on, 49 ; declines third term, 53, 77 Johnson, Andrew, candidate for vice-president, 158 ; his polit- ical and personal character, 159 ; endeavors to remove, 159. 160 Johnson, Richard M. , Colonel, chosen vice-president, 99 K KANSAS-NEBRASKA agitations, the, 140 ; the conflict in, 142, 148, 151, 152 Kendall, Amos, 91 King, Rufus, 61 " Kitchen Cabinet," the, 91, 92 Know-Nothing Party, the, 146, 155 LABOR Reform Party, 189 Legal-tender Act, the, 158 INDEX 203 Lewis, William B. , 91 Liberty Party and James G. Birney, 103, 112-115, 178, 179 Lincoln, Abraham, his cabinet, 4 ; and the " pocket veto," 92 ; opposes Mexican War, in ; his words on the campaign of 1848, 127, 128 ; his judgment on Fremont's canvass, 148 ; elected president, 155, 156 Locofoco, 98 Log-rolling in Congress, 4 Loose Constructionists. See Democratic-Republican Party Louisiana, purchase of territory from France, 47, 48 Lowell, James Russell, the "Biglow Papers," in Lyon, Matthew, 31, 32 M MACKAY, WILLIAM, his words concerning Washington, 5, 45; on the first tariff bill, 9 Madison, James, introduces to Congress the first tariff bill, 6 ; and the Virginia and Ken- tucky Resolutions, 30 ; chosen for president, 53, 55, 56 ; re- nominated, 57 ; re-elected, 58.61 Mangum, W. P. , 99 Marcy, William L. , and the spoils system, 87, 88, 177 Marshall, John, 26 McClellan, General, 157 Mexican War, the, in Missouri, admitted to the Elec- toral College, 62 ; Compro- mise, in, 141, 142 Monroe Doctrine, the, 61, 62 Monroe, James, and the Louisi- ana purchase, 47, 48 ; his doc- trine, 61, 62 ; vetoes the Cum- berland Road bill, 72 Morgan, William, murder of, 94 N NATIONAL Banking Act, the, 158 Nebraska Bill, the, 141, 142 " New Roof," 2 New York, the pivotal State, 37 Nicholas, George, 30 O O'CoNOR, CHARLES, 164 " Omnibus Bill," the, 139, 140 PIERCE, FRANKLIN, candidate for presidency, 140 Pinckney, C. C., 26, 56 Pinckney, Thomas, 22, 36 Platform, Party, the first, 172 ; various platforms during sixty years, 172, et seq. See al- so . Democratic - Republican Party, Republican Party, American Party, Whig Party, Free-Soil Party, Liberty Party, Labor Reform Party, Liberal Republican Party, Greenback Party " Pocket Veto," Andrew Jack- son's, 92 Politics, American, influence of foreign affairs on, i, 2, 49, 50 Polk, James K., elected presi- dent, 107 ; on slavery, 117 " QUIDS," 48, 49 R RANDOLPH, JOHN, leader of the "Quids," 48, 49; his at- tacks on Jefferson, 49; his duel with Clay, 77, 78 2O4 INDEX Republicans, Jeffersonian. See Democratic- Republican Party Republicans, Liberal, 189, 190 Republicans, National, 83, 97, 174 Republican Party, origin of, 142, 146 ; platform of, 147, 155, 156, 160, 185 et seq. ; ma- jority in Congress, 156, 157 ; financial measures adopted by, 158 ; position of, as re- gards the status of the States, 163 ; changes in, since the Civil War, 165-171 Rush, Richard, candidate for vice-president, 83, 85 SCOTT, DRED, Decision, the, 148, 152 Scott, General Winfield, candi- date for presidency, 140 Seward, William H., 94; en- deavors to induce Adams to re-enter politics, 95, 128 ; said to have named the Republi- can Party, 146 Seymour, Horatio, candidate for president, 160 Slavery, Democratic Party iden- tified with support of, 106 ; the all-absorbing question, 118 ; debates in Congress on, 118, 119 ; the Dred Scott Decision, 148, 151 ; the struggle in Kan- sas on, 148-152 ; eliminated from national politics, 157 ; Democratic declaration on, in 1840, 179 Spoils system, beginning of, 87, 177 Squatter Sovereignty, 130 Stevens, Thaddeus, quoted, 140 T TARIFF, the first bill, 6, 9 ; the compromise tariff of 1833, 96, 97 ; of 1842, 107, 108 ; Demo- cratic and Republican posi- tion toward, after the Civil War, 166-170; platforms of various parties on. 189 et seq. Taylor, General Zachary, nomi- nated for president, 123 ; a slave-holder, 127 ; his cam- paign for presidency, 127, 128 " Texas Case,'' the, 163 Texas question, the, 106-108 " Tippecanoe and Tyler too," 178 Tories, 98 Tory, name loses significance, 2 Tyler, John, becomes president, 103 ; a strict constructionist, 105 ; his policy, 105, 106, 158 VAN BUREN, MARTIN, and the spoils system, 87, 88 ; votes received in 1837, 98 ; his initia- tive policy, ico ; votes re- ceived in 1840, 103 ; nomi- nated by the Barnburners, 123, 124, 177 Virginia and Kentucky Resolu- tions, the, 29, 30, 80 W WAR of 1812, 57, 58 ; Mexican, in ; Civil, 156, 157 Washington, George, William Mac-lay's words concerning, 5, 11, 45 ; personal attacks on, 12, 20, 21 ; chosen for presi- dential candidate, 13. 14 ; his proclamation of neutrality, 18 ; his visits to Congress, 45, 47 Webb. James Watson, names the Whig Party, 97 Webster, Daniel, 75 ; his change of front, 97 ; votes received, 99 ; his words in the Massa- INDEX 205 chusetts Convention of 1848, victory, 128 ; endorse the 119, 120 ; his words on the Fugitive Slave Law, 140 ; nomination of Zachary Tay- death of, 142, 158 ; platform lor, 124, 128 ; his surrender to in 1840 and later, 178 et seq. slavery, 136, 137 Whiskey Rebellion, the, 19 Weed, Thurlow, 94 White, Hugh L.,99 Whig, name loses significance, Whittier, John G., his lyric 2 " Ichabod," 139 Whig Party, the, birth of, 78 ; Wilmot Proviso, the, 134 named, 97 ; success of, in Wilson, Henry, 165 1837, 103 ; in campaign of Wirt, William, candidate for 1840, 104 ; and President president, 95 Tyler, 105, 106 ; its defeat in 1844, 107, 112 ; desertions j X from, 119 ; Conscience and ; Cotton Whigs, 120 ; its last ' X. Y. Z. letters, the, 25, 26 THE LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Santa Barbara THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW. 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