History of the United States Volume Iii Part 6

JOHN BROWN.

WILLIAM H. SEWARD. (From a photograph by Brady).

ELIAS HOWE.

THE VANDALIA. THE PIONEER PROPELLER ON THE LAKES.

OLD STONE TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA SUSPENSION BRIDGE.

THE NEW IRON TOWERS OF THE NIAGARA BRIDGE.

BIRTHPLACE OF S. F. B. MORSE, AT CHARLESTOWN, Ma.s.s. BUILT 1775.

S. F. B. MORSE.

THE FIRST TELEGRAPHIC INSTRUMENT, AS EXHIBITED IN 1837 BY MORSE.

CALENDERS HEATED INTERNALLY BY STEAM, FOR SPREADING INDIA RUBBER INTO SHEETS OR UPON CLOTH, CALLED THE "CHAFFEE MACHINE."

THE GREAT EASTERN LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE.

SOUNDING MACHINE USED BY A CABLE EXPEDITION.

CYRUS W. FIELD.

PAYING OUT CABLE GEAR. FROM CHART HOUSE.

Sh.o.r.e END OF CABLE--EXACT SIZE.

BARNACLES ON CABLE.

JAMES BUCHANAN. (From a photograph by Brady).

STREET BANNER IN CHARLESTON.

MAJOR ROBERT ANDERSON.

MAJOR ANDERSON REMOVING HIS FORCES FROM FORT MOULTRIE TO FORT SUMTER, DECEMBER 26, 1861.

JEFFERSON DAVIS.

ALEXANDER H. STEPHENS.

SCENE OF THE FIRST BLOODSHED, AT BALTIMORE.

CAPTAIN NATHANIEL LYON.

GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT.

GENERAL IRVIN McDOWELL.

GENERAL SAMUEL P. HEINTZELMAN.

GENERAL JOSEPH E. JOHNSTON.

GENERAL GEORGE B. McCLELLAN.

LIST OF MAPS

THE UNITED STATES AFTER THE ADMISSION OF ARKANSAS, 1836.

PLAN OF THE BATTLE OF BUENA VISTA, MORNING 23D FEBRUARY, 1847.

ROUTE OF THE SIXTH Ma.s.sACHUSETTS TROOPS THROUGH BALTIMORE.

THE ROUTES OF APPROACH TO WAs.h.i.+NGTON.

THE SOUTHERN CONFEDERACY.

BULL RUN--THE FIELD OF STRATEGY.

BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE FORENOON.

BULL RUN--BATTLE OF THE AFTERNOON.

PERIOD II.

WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS TILL THE DOMINANCE OF THE SLAVERY CONTROVERSY.

1814-1840

CHAPTER I.

THE WHIG PARTY AND ITS MISSION

[1820]

The term "whig" is of Scotch origin. During the b.l.o.o.d.y conflict of the Covenanters with Charles II. nearly all the country people of Scotland sided against the king. As these peasants drove into Edinburgh to market, they were observed to make great use of the word "whiggam" in talking to their horses. Abbreviated to "whig," it speedily became, and has in England and Scotland ever since remained, a name for the opponents of royal power. It was so employed in America in our Revolutionary days. Sinking out of hearing after Independence, it reappeared for fresh use when schism came in the overgrown Democratic Party.

The republican predominance after 1800, so complete, bidding so fair to be permanent, drew all the more fickle Federalists speedily to that side. Since it was evident that the new party was quite as national in spirit as the ruling element of the old, the Adams Federalists, those most patriotic, least swayed in their politics by commercial motives, including Marshall, the War Federalists, and the recruits enlisted at the South during Adams's administration, also went over, in sympathy if not in name, to Republicanism. The fortunate issue of the war silenced every carper, and the ten years following have been well named the "era of good feeling."

But though for long very harmonious, yet, so soon as Federalists began swelling their ranks, the Republicans ceased to be a strictly h.o.m.ogeneous party. Incipient schism appeared by 1812, at once announced and widened by the creation of the protective system and the new United States Bank in 1816, and the attempted launching of an internal improvements regime in 1821, all three the plain marks of federalist survival, however men might shun that name. Republicans like Clay, Calhoun in his early years, and Quincy Adams, while somewhat more obsequious to the people, as to political theory differed from old Federalists in little but name. The same is true of Clinton, candidate against Madison for the Presidency in 1812, and of many who supported him.

[1825]