Union and Democracy Part 14

It was at this juncture that Canning, who had become the head of the British ministry, protested against the policy of intervention and sought for ways and means to make the protest effective. The one power whose traditions of liberty and whose interests in this particular seemed to be identical with those of Great Britain was the United States. In truth, their interests were far from being identical. Two years before, in a conversation with the British minister at Was.h.i.+ngton, the Secretary of State, in his most uncompromising manner, had challenged the right of Great Britain to the valley of the Columbia River or to any part of the Pacific Coast. And so recently as April of this critical year 1823, Adams had taken alarm at the appearance of a British naval force off the coast of Cuba and had warned the Government at Madrid that "the transfer of Cuba to Great Britain would be an event unpropitious to the interests of the United States." At the same time Adams stated his conviction that within half a century the annexation of Cuba to the United States would be "indispensable to the continuance of the Union itself." Coupled with this prophecy was the equally frank a.s.surance that the United States desired to have Cuba and Porto Rico "continue attached to Spain"--for the present.

[Map: Russian Claims in North America]

It was in midsummer of this year, too, that Adams protested against the ukase of the czar which had a.s.serted the claim of Russia to the Pacific Coast as far south as the fifty-first degree, and to a maritime jurisdiction one hundred Italian miles from the coast. Adams records in his diary that he told the Russian minister "that we should contest the right of Russia to _any_ territorial establishment on this continent, and that we should a.s.sume distinctly the principle that the American continents are no longer subjects for _any_ new European colonial establishments." The time had come when the United States was bound to take more than a sentimental interest in the affairs of Spanish America.

The disintegration of the Spanish colonial empire not only invited the Intervention of European powers in the internal affairs of the new republics, but also exposed portions of the North American continent to their aggressions.

On several occasions Canning conferred with Richard Rush, the minister of the United States resident in London, to ascertain whether his Government would join Great Britain in a public declaration against any "forcible enterprise for reducing the colonies to subjugation on behalf of or in the name of Spain; or which meditates the acquisition of any part of them to itself, by cession or by conquest." England had no designs upon the distant colonies of Spain, Canning a.s.severated; at the same time it "could not see any part of them transferred to any other power with indifference." Not trusting implicitly in Canning's altruism, Rush wisely suggested that Great Britain should first recognize the South American republics as a preliminary to a joint declaration. To this Canning would not commit himself; and Rush would not a.s.sume responsibility for a public declaration on any other conditions.

On receiving the dispatches from Rush recounting these interesting conferences, President Monroe took counsel with the two Virginia oracles, Jefferson and Madison. Both advised him to meet Canning's overtures and to make common cause with Great Britain--the one nation, as Jefferson put it, which could prevent America from having an independent system and which now offered "to lead, aid, and accompany us in it." Monroe was disposed to follow this advice. He not only drafted a message to Congress upon these lines, but he went further and urged the recognition of Greek independence in a way which departed widely from the traditional aloofness which earlier Presidents had maintained in matters of European concern. On the other hand, Adams was decidedly of the opinion that Canning's invitation should be declined. He did not wish the country to appear "as a c.o.c.k-boat in the wake of the British man-of-war." Moreover, Adams was considerably alarmed at the reactionary principles which the Russian ministry had avowed in a communication addressed to the minister at Was.h.i.+ngton. He urged the President to seize the occasion to make an explicit declaration of American principles.

"The ground I wish to take," said he, "is that of earnest remonstrance against the interference of European powers by force with South America, but to disclaim all interference on our part with Europe; to make an American cause and adhere inflexibly to that."

Yielding to his contentious Secretary of State, President Monroe redrafted his message to Congress. In its final form, December 2, 1823, this famous state paper contained the essential principles of what has come to be known as the Monroe Doctrine. It was a.s.serted "as a general principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have a.s.sumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers."

The message expressly disclaimed any purpose to interfere in European politics; but respecting the affairs of the Western hemisphere a direct and immediate interest was frankly avowed. "The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America." "We should consider any attempt on their part to extend their system to any portion of this hemisphere as dangerous to our peace and safety. With the existing colonies or dependencies of any European power we have not interfered and shall not interfere. But with the Governments who have declared their independence and maintained it, and whose independence we have, on great consideration and on just principles, acknowledged, we could not view any interposition for the purpose of oppressing them, or controlling in any manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States."

The immediate effects of the message are not easily traced. It is not clear, even, that the favorable treaty made with Russia in the following year was the outcome of what Canning somewhat contemptuously styled "the new Doctrine of the President." Russia, it is true, agreed to waive her claims below fifty-four degrees forty minutes and to exclusive jurisdiction in Bering Sea; but the conflicting claims of England in the Northwest remained, and Canning predicted that England would "have a squabble with the Yankees yet in and about those regions."

Later generations have read strange meanings into the message of President Monroe. Even contemporaries were not clear as to its import.

Interpreted in the light of its origin, it was a candid announcement that the United States did not purpose to meddle in the affairs of European states or of their existing dependencies, and a protest against the increase of power of European states in America either by intervention or by new colonization.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

In the concluding volume of Henry Adams's _History of the United States_ are excellent chapters on American literature, art, and religious thought. W. B. Cairns's _On the Development of American Literature from 1815 to 1833_ (1898) contains much interesting information about periodicals. Barrett Wendell's _A Literary History of America_ (1900) is full of pungent comment on early men of letters. C. C. Caffin, _The Story of American Painting_ (1907), and H. T. Tuckerman, _Artist-Life, or Sketches of American Artists_ (1847), record the small achievements of American art.

John Trumbull's _Autobiography, Reminiscences, and Letters, from 1756 to 1841_ (1841), is a book of great interest. E. G. Dexter's _A History of Education in the United States_ (1904) is an excellent manual. The Unitarian Movement can be best followed in J. W. Chadwick's _William Ellery Channing_ (1903). The history of the various denominations may be found in volumes of the _American Church History Series_. The genesis of Monroe's message is described by F. J. Turner, _The Rise of the New West_(in _The American Nation_, vol. 14, 1906), and F. E. Chadwick, _The Relations of the United States and Spain_ (1909). Both of these accounts are based on W. C. Ford, _John Quincy Adams: His Connection with the Monroe Doctrine_ (in Ma.s.sachusetts Historical Society _Proceedings_, 1902). An excellent essay is that by W. F.

Reddaway, _The Monroe Doctrine_ (2d. ed., 1905).

CHAPTER XVII

THE NEW DEMOCRACY

By the year 1824, the West had become a section to be reckoned with by those who were calculating their chances in the presidential race. Since the war six Western States had been admitted into the Union. The population west of the Alleghanies had increased by nearly a million and a half within a decade. The relative importance of this new section appears in the census returns. In 1790, less than six per cent of the total population lived west of the Alleghanies; in 1820, nearly thirty-two per cent were domiciled in this vast region. In the National Legislature the West had acquired notable weight. By the apportionment of 1822, it had forty-seven out of two hundred and thirteen members of the House; in the Senate, eighteen out of forty-eight. But these figures do not tell the whole tale. As Professor Turner has well said, rightly to estimate the weight of Western population we must add the people of western New York and of the interior counties of Pennsylvania, and of the trans-Alleghany counties of Virginia, as well as the people of the back-country of Maine, New Hamps.h.i.+re, Vermont, North Carolina, and Georgia. "All of these regions were to be influenced by the ideals of democratic rule which were springing up in the Mississippi Valley."

[Map: Distribution of Population 1820]

Economic conditions bred a democratic society in the West. What Gallatin said of Pennsylvania was true of the greater West: "An equal distribution of property made every individual independent and produced a true and real equality." The basal characteristic of the West was individual owners.h.i.+p of land; and the reaction of the sense of proprietors.h.i.+p upon individual character was the most significant fact in the history of its population. Intense individualism and rugged self-reliance were the salient characteristics of the Westerner. So far as he reflected upon his social relations, he believed in complete social equality. In numberless instances the pioneer had migrated to escape the social inequalities and depressing conventions of older communities; and he was not minded to encourage the reproduction of these conditions in his new home. "America, then, exhibits in her social state an extraordinary phenomenon," wrote De Tocqueville in his notable study of American democracy. "Men are there seen on a greater equality in point of fortune and intellect, or, in other words, more equal in their strength, than in any other country of the world, or in any age of which history has preserved the remembrance."

Life on the frontier, where a man wrestled with the primitive forces of Nature and conquered by dint of his indomitable will, made the Westerner perhaps overconfident in his ability to deal with all obstacles in the way of human achievement and withal somewhat impatient under the restraints imposed by the more complicated social order in the older communities to the East. The sweep of the prairies and the wide horizon lines of the Middle West may have exercised a subtle influence upon temperament. At all events, the Westerner was buoyant and optimistic, taking large views of national destiny and of the possibilities of human achievement in a democracy.

There was danger, indeed, that in cutting loose from the irritating restraints of the older communities, the people of the West would sacrifice much of the grace and many of the intellectual and spiritual refinements of an older civilization. "In this part of the American continent," observes De Tocqueville, "population has escaped the influence not only of great names and great wealth, but even of the natural aristocracy of knowledge and virtue." It seemed to two young New Englanders who traversed the vast region from the Western Reserve to New Orleans in 1813, in the interests of missionary societies, that the people were wrapped in spiritual darkness, "being ignorant, often vicious, and utterly dest.i.tute of Bibles and religious literature." The General Bible Society of the United States was founded in 1816 to dispel this irreligious gloom. Within five years this organization and its numerous auxiliaries had distributed one hundred and forty thousand Bibles and Testaments through the new States.

Yet the irreligion of the West was painted darker than it really was.

Methodism had struck root where other denominations could not thrive.

Its methods and organization, indeed, were peculiarly adapted to a people which could not support a settled pastor. "A sect, therefore, which marked out the region into circuits, put a rider on each and bade him cover it once a month, preaching here to-day and there to-morrow, but returning at regular intervals to each community, provided the largest amount of religious teaching and preaching at the least expense." The Baptists, too, secured a footing in the new communities and labored effectively in creating religious ties between the old and the new sections of the country. In religion as in politics the people of the West were responsive to emotional appeals. The circuit rider, with his intense conviction of sin and his equally strong conviction of salvation through repentance, wrought great crowds in camp meetings into ecstasies of religious excitement. Odd religious sects and strange "isms" were to be found in the back-country. At New Harmony on the Wabash River were the Rappites, a sect of German peasants who came first to Pennsylvania under their leader George Rapp, and who afterward returned thither. At Zoar in Ohio was the Separatist community led by Joseph Baumeler. Shaker societies were formed at many places; and Mormonism was just beginning its strange history through the revelations of Joseph Smith in western New York.

The intellectual horizon of the Western world was necessarily limited.

Absorbed in the stern struggle for existence, the people had no leisure and no heart to enjoy the finer aspects of life. Education was a luxury which only the prosperous might possess. The purpose to make elementary education a public charge developed tardily. Outside of New England, indeed, a public school system did not exist. Throughout the older portions of the West the traveler might find academies and so-called colleges, but none supported at public expense. The State of Indiana, it is true, entered the Union with a const.i.tution which made it the duty of the legislature to provide, as soon as circ.u.mstances permitted, "for a general system of education, ascending in a regular gradation from towns.h.i.+p schools to a State University, wherein tuition shall be gratis, and equally open to all." But years pa.s.sed before circ.u.mstances permitted the realization of this ideal. Meantime, the prosperous planters of the Southwest employed tutors for their children, and the well-to-do farmers of the Northwest paid tuition for their boys at academies. But young Abraham Lincoln had to teach himself Euclid and to cipher on the back of a wooden shovel, by the flickering embers of a log-cabin fire.

The new Commonwealths entered the Union as self-confessed democracies.

In all the States formed after the War of 1812, with one exception, property qualifications such as prevailed in the older States were swept away and the right to vote was accorded to every adult white male. In Mississippi alone there was the additional qualification that a voter should be enrolled in the militia or have paid a state or county tax.

Everywhere, too, the principle was accepted that representation should be based upon population and not upon property. The men who framed these new const.i.tutions believed that they were establis.h.i.+ng the rule of the people. It was, indeed, unthinkable that, believing themselves equal in all other respects, they should not accept the principle of political equality and popular sovereignty.

There is evidence in these new const.i.tutions, however, that the people placed less reliance in their legislative bodies than did the people of the Revolutionary era. Instead of general grants of legislative power, there are specific prohibitions and positive injunctions. Important limitations are imposed upon the form and mode of legislation. It is clear, too, that fear of an over-strong executive had given way to a belief in the necessity of having a stronger countervailing influence, capable of checking the legislative. Everywhere the governor was made elective directly by the people and given the veto power. The conviction was often expressed in const.i.tutional conventions that the governor was peculiarly the representative of the people, a popular tribune who would protect them against the indiscretions of their legislative representatives. The extension of the elective principle to all important offices was accompanied also by a general conviction that life tenure of office is undemocratic. "Rotation in office," said Andrew Jackson, voicing a popular feeling, "is a cardinal principle of democracy."

The spirit of Western democracy leavened also the older States. The people of Maine, breaking away from Ma.s.sachusetts and her ancient ideals, boldly declared for manhood suffrage in their new const.i.tution.

Connecticut adopted a const.i.tution in 1818 to replace the old charter, and dissolved the old union of Church and State by declaring that no preference should be given by law to any Christian sect or mode of wors.h.i.+p. At the same time Connecticut extended the suffrage to all who served in the militia or paid a state tax. New York in the const.i.tution of 1821 and Ma.s.sachusetts by a const.i.tutional amendment in the same year abandoned the old property qualifications for voting.

In both Ma.s.sachusetts and New York, conservative men like Chancellor Kent and Daniel Webster frankly avowed their apprehensions of universal suffrage. "The tendency of universal suffrage," said Kent in the New York convention, "is to jeopardize the rights of property, and the principles of liberty." He held society to be an a.s.sociation for the protection of property as well as of life, "and the individual who contributes only one cent to the common stock ought not to have the same power and influence in directing the property concerns of the partners.h.i.+p as he who contributes his thousands."

The democratic movement affected not only the formal organization of State Governments, but also the machinery and methods of political parties. In the Northern States there was increasing dissatisfaction with the practice of nominating candidates for office by legislative caucus. The rank and file of the parties were no longer willing to submit blindly to the dictation of leaders. In deference to party voters in districts which were not represented by men of their political faith, the leaders of the respective parties now found it expedient to summon special delegates to their party conclaves, in order to give a more truly representative character to the organization of party. The legislative caucus, in short, gave way to the mixed caucus.

[Map: States Admitted to the Union between 1812 and 1821]

But the old vice remained. The selection of candidates for office was still made by those who had no mandate to act for the party except in a legislative capacity. If the voters of the party were in truth the source of authority within the party, then a means had to be devised of ascertaining their will. The democratic principle, in short, had to be applied to party. In response to this feeling, ma.s.s meetings and irregular conventions were held; but these methods of securing an expression of party opinion were only transitional. Indeed, so long as the means of communication were defective, popular gatherings were necessarily poorly attended. The next step in the democratization of party organization could only be taken when the barriers of s.p.a.ce were overcome by the application of the steam engine to transportation. The nominating delegate convention waited on the development of transportation.

Much the same popular hostility was directed against the congressional caucus. Candidates for the presidential nomination were not blind to this movement, and for the most part they sought other means of promoting their chances. Monroe had hardly entered upon his second term when state legislative caucuses began to nominate favorite sons. In 1821, the legislature of South Carolina put forward the name of William Lowndes, and upon his death named John C. Calhoun as its candidate for the Presidency. In 1822, the legislature of Tennessee presented the name of Andrew Jackson, "the soldier, the statesman, the honest man," to the consideration of the people of the United States. In the same year Republican members of the legislature of Kentucky recommended Henry Clay "as a suitable person to succeed James Monroe as President." A "joint meeting of the Republican members of the Ma.s.sachusetts legislature and of Republican delegates from the various towns of the Commonwealth not represented in the legislature" nominated John Quincy Adams for the Presidency in January, 1823. And finally, ill.u.s.trative of the varied methods in use and of the strange vicissitudes of politics at this time, a public gathering or ma.s.s meeting at Fredericksburg, Virginia, in March, 1824, nominated Adams for President and Jackson for Vice-President.

A series of resolutions pa.s.sed by the legislature of Tennessee in 1823 called attention in no uncertain language to the shortcomings of the congressional caucus and called for its overthrow. A canva.s.s of the members of Congress showed that one hundred and eighty-one out of two hundred and sixty-one believed a caucus inexpedient at this time.

Nevertheless, the minority, acting in Crawford's interest, took their courage in both hands and held a caucus on February 14, 1824. Sixty-four out of sixty-eight votes were cast for William H. Crawford, who thus became by all precedents the "regular" candidate of the Republican party. This nomination and the indors.e.m.e.nt of Jackson by the Republicans of Pennsylvania spoiled Calhoun's chances. In the spring of 1824, he allied himself with the Jackson faction by accepting the nomination for Vice-President at the hands of a state nominating convention at Harrisburg, which had put Jackson at the head of the ticket.

Such issues as were discoverable in the presidential contest of 1824 were formulated in the debates in Congress during the early part of the year. As the country recovered from financial depression, the question of internal improvements again forged to the front. In 1822, a bill to authorize the collection of tolls on the c.u.mberland Road had been vetoed by the President. In an elaborate essay Monroe set forth his views on the const.i.tutional aspects of a policy of internal improvements.

Congress might appropriate money, he admitted, but it might not undertake the actual construction of national works nor a.s.sume jurisdiction over them. For the moment the drift toward a larger partic.i.p.ation of the National Government in internal improvements was stayed. Two years later, however, Congress authorized the President to inst.i.tute surveys for such roads and ca.n.a.ls as he believed to be needed for commerce and military defense. The vote on this bill shows that the source of opposition to internal improvements was chiefly in the Northeast, in Virginia, and in the Carolinas. The West and Southwest, with Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey, were a unit in support of the general survey.

No one pleaded more eloquently for a larger conception of the functions of the National Government than Clay. No one voiced the aspirations of his section more faithfully. He called the attention of his hearers to provisions made for coast surveys and lighthouses on the Atlantic seaboard and deplored the neglect of the great interior of the country.

"A new world has come into being since the Const.i.tution was adopted," he exclaimed. "Are the narrow, limited necessities of the old thirteen States, of, indeed, parts only of the old thirteen States as they existed at the formation of the present Const.i.tution, forever to remain the rule of its interpretation?" Of the other presidential candidates, Jackson voted in the Senate for the general survey bill; and Adams left no doubt in the public mind that he did not reflect the narrow views of his section on this issue. Crawford felt the const.i.tutional scruples which were everywhere being voiced in the South, and followed the old expedient of advocating a const.i.tutional amendment to sanction national internal improvements.

The Tariff Act of 1824 also entered somewhat into the presidential campaign. The failure of the protectionists to secure a higher tariff in 1820 had been followed by other efforts to secure congressional action; but none succeeded until Clay was again elected Speaker of the House and thrust the matter into the foreground of discussion. Clay dwelt eloquently upon the loss of the foreign market for agricultural products and upon the consequent widespread distress. To his mind the remedy was the establishment of an American market by fostering manufactures. That such a policy would involve a clash of sectional interests, he did not deny; but he believed that "reconciliation by mutual concessions" could be effected and a genuine "American system" be brought into existence.

[Map: House Vote on Tariff Bill April 16, 1824]

The tariff bill presented in 1824 was avowedly a protective measure.

Among lesser changes, increased duties were proposed on iron, lead, wool, hemp, cotton bagging, and cotton and woolen goods. At once the clash of sectional interests began. New England s.h.i.+ppers protested against the duty on hemp, which they needed for cordage; and Southern planters made common cause with them on this item, because the cheap bagging which they used for baling their cotton was made of coa.r.s.e hemp.

For the same reason the maritime sections of New England opposed the duty on iron. For precisely opposite reasons, Kentucky clamored for the protection of her hemp-growers, and Pennsylvania, for the protection of her iron-workers. It was well understood that the cotton industry was established and needed no protection; nevertheless, the minimum duty on cotton fabrics was raised. The increased duty on woolens, however, was offset by an increased duty on raw wool, so that the woolen manufacturers profited little by the change of rate. A proposal to apply to woolens the minimum principle which had been extended to cottons in 1816 was defeated by the opposition of the South. Any increase in the cost of cheap woolen goods was bound to enhance the cost of clothing the slaves. On the other hand, the representatives of the great grain-growing and farming States of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, together with the States of the Ohio Valley, were almost unanimously in favor of the proposed bill. When the bill came to a vote in the House on April 16, 1824, only nine of the combined ninety-five votes of these sections were cast in the negative. Equally emphatic was the protest of the South and Southwest: only six out of seventy-six Representatives favored the bill. New England by its divided vote revealed the internal conflict between the commercial and manufacturing interests. The bill pa.s.sed both houses of Congress by small majorities and received the signature of the President.

Of the presidential candidates, only one spoke with uncertain sound on the tariff issue. Clay was the outspoken advocate of a far-reaching American system; Adams thought the tariff of 1824 a fair compromise; Jackson, properly coached by his intimates, put himself on record as a supporter of a protective policy to create a home market; only Crawford, representative of the peculiar interests of the South and candidate for Northern support, felt the impossibility of harmonizing the conflicting interests of his followers by a clear-cut and explicit utterance on the tariff.

With so many candidates in the field, it was difficult to forecast the outcome of the presidential campaign. Even if there had been a p.r.o.nounced popular drift toward any candidate, the result would have remained in doubt until the six States which still gave the choice of electors to their legislatures had completed the complicated electoral process. There was a strong likelihood, however, that the election would go to the House of Representatives. As the choice would then be confined to the three candidates having the highest vote, there was not a little bargaining in the States where the legislatures chose the electors. The completed returns gave Jackson 99 electoral votes; Adams, 84; Crawford, 41; and Clay, 37. Calhoun was elected Vice-President by more than two thirds of the electoral vote. The House, therefore, as wiseacres had foretold, was called upon for the second time to decide a contested presidential election.

The position of Clay was one of unenviable distinction and power. He could not be elected President, but he could, it was believed, determine which of his rivals should have the coveted office. His own State favored Jackson as a second choice; but Clay wrote to a friend that he could not consider the killing of twenty-five hundred Englishmen at New Orleans proved the fitness of Jackson for the chief civil magistracy.

Crawford was personally less objectionable to Clay; but he had suffered a paralytic stroke and his health was precarious. Besides, Crawford had opposed some of the policies which Clay had most at heart. For years Clay had been a bitter opponent of Adams; yet after all was said, he was bound to admit that his interests would be best served by an alliance with this stiff-necked New Englander. At an early date, therefore, he determined to throw his support to Adams.

For weeks the capital was enveloped in an atmosphere of intrigue. Clay was courted by all factions. The possibility of securing his support was a standing temptation to wire-pullers. Even Adams wrote in his diary, "_Incedo super ignes_" (I walk over fires). When Clay announced positively, on January 24, that he and his friends would support Adams, a storm of pa.s.sionate denunciation broke upon him. An anonymous letter appeared in a Philadelphia newspaper, charging that friends of Adams had offered Clay the Secretarys.h.i.+p of State in return for his support, and that friends of Clay had reported the offer to friends of Jackson, with the intimation that Clay would support the general on similar terms.

When the friends of Jackson spurned these overtures, Clay sold out to Adams. With quite unnecessary heat Clay branded the author of this letter as "a base and infamous calumniator, a dastard, and a liar." His first instinct was to challenge the author whoever he might be; but when Representative George Kremer, an odd character who was chiefly conspicuous by reason of the leopard-skin coat which he wore avowed himself the writer of the offensive letter, Clay wisely concluded not to make himself ridiculous by an affair of honor with this Gil Blas. He demanded a congressional investigation instead.

While this investigation of the alleged bargain between Adams and Clay was pending, the House proceeded to the election of a President. On the first ballot, Adams received the votes of thirteen States, while Jackson was the choice of seven States, and Crawford of four. New England, New York, Louisiana, Maryland, and the States of the Northwest, except Indiana, supported Adams. Combined with these were now Missouri and Kentucky, which had voted for Clay. Jackson received the votes of the Southwest, together with those of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Indiana, and South Carolina. Crawford was supported by Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. Two days later the President-elect announced that he had invited Henry Clay to be his Secretary of State. After some hesitation, Clay accepted the post.