The Great Conspiracy Part 1

THE GREAT CONSPIRACY by John Alexander Logan.

PREFACE.

In the preparation of this work it has been the writer's aim to present in it, with historical accuracy, authentic facts; to be fair and impartial in grouping them; and to be true and just in the conclusions necessarily drawn from them. While thus striving to be accurate, fair, and just, he has not thought it his duty to mince words, nor to refrain from "calling things by their right names;" neither has he sought to curry favor, in any quarter, by fulsome adulation on the one side, nor undue denunciation on the other, either of the living, or of the dead. But, while tracing the history of the Great Conspiracy, from its obscure birth in the brooding brains of a few ambitious men of the earliest days of our Republic, through the subsequent years of its devolution, down to the evil days of Nullification, and to the bitter and b.l.o.o.d.y period of armed Rebellion, or contemplating it in its still more recent and, perhaps, more sinister development, of to-day, he has conscientiously dealt with it, throughout, in the clear and penetrating light of the voluminous records so readily accessible at the seat of our National Government. So far as was practicable, he has endeavored to allow the chief characters in that Conspiracy-as well as the Union leaders, who, whether in Executive, Legislative, or Military service, devoted their best abilities and energies to its suppression-to speak for themselves, and thus while securing their own proper places in history, by a process of self-adjustment as it were, themselves to write down that history in their own language. If then there be found within these covers aught which may seem harsh to those directly or indirectly, nearly or remotely, connected with that Conspiracy, he may not unfairly exclaim: "Thou canst not say I did it." If he knows his own heart, the writer can truly declare, with his hand upon it, that it bears neither hatred, malice, nor uncharitableness, to those who, misled by the cunning secrecy of the Conspirators, and without an inkling or even a suspicion of their fell purposes, went manfully into the field, with a courage worthy of a better cause, and for four years of b.l.o.o.d.y conflict, believing that their cause was just, fought the armies of the Union, in a mad effort to destroy the best government yet devised by man upon this planet. And, perhaps, none can better understand than he, how hard, how very hard, it must be for men of strong nature and intense feeling, after taking a mistaken stand, and especially after carrying their conviction to the cannon's mouth, to acknowledge their error before the world. Hence, while he has endeavored truly to depict-or to let those who made history at the time help him to depict-the enormity of the offence of the armed Rebellion and of the heresies and plottings of certain Southern leaders precipitating it, yet not one word will be found, herein, condemnatory of those who, with manly candor, soldierly courage, and true patriotism, acknowledged that error when the ultimate arbitrament of the sword had decided against them. On the contrary, to all such as accept, in good faith, the results of the war of the Rebellion, the writer heartily holds out the hand of forgiveness for the past, and good fellows.h.i.+p for the future.

WAs.h.i.+NGTON, D. C.

April 15, 1886.

CHAPTER I.

A PRELIMINARY RETROSPECT.

To properly understand the condition of things preceding the great war of the Rebellion, and the causes underlying that condition and the war itself, we must glance backward through the history of the Country to, and even beyond, that memorable 30th of November, 1782, when the Independence of the United States of America was at last conceded by Great Britain. At that time the population of the United States was about 2,500,000 free whites and some 500,000 black slaves. We had gained our Independence of the Mother Country, but she had left fastened upon us the curse of Slavery. Indeed African Slavery had already in 1620 been implanted on the soil of Virginia before Plymouth Rock was pressed by the feet of the Pilgrim Fathers, and had spread, prior to the Revolution, with greater or less rapidity, according to the surrounding adaptations of soil, production and climate, to every one of the thirteen Colonies.

But while it had thus spread more or less throughout all the original Colonies, and was, as it were, recognized and acquiesced in by all, as an existing and established inst.i.tution, yet there were many, both in the South and North, who looked upon it as an evil-an inherited evil-and were anxious to prevent the increase of that evil. Hence it was that even as far back as 1699, a controversy sprang up between the Colonies and the Home Government, upon the African Slavery question-a controversy continuing with more or less vehemence down to the Declaration of Independence itself.

It was this conviction that it was not alone an evil but a dangerous evil, that induced Jefferson to embody in his original draft of that Declaration a clause strongly condemnatory of the African Slave Trade-a clause afterward omitted from it solely, he tells us, "in complaisance to South Carolina and Georgia, who had never* attempted to restrain the importation of slaves, and who, on the contrary, still wished to continue it," as well as in deference to the sensitiveness of Northern people, who, though having few slaves themselves, "had been pretty considerable carriers of them to others" a clause of the great indictment of King George III., which, since it was not omitted for any other reason than that just given, shows pretty conclusively that where the fathers in that Declaration affirmed that "all men are created equal," they included in the term "men," black as well as white, bond as well as free; for the clause ran thus: "Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prost.i.tuted his negative for suppressing every Legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce. And that this a.s.semblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also obtruded them; thus paying of former crimes committed against the LIBERTIES of our people with crimes which he urges them to commit against the LIVES of another."

[Prior to 1752, when Georgia surrendered her charter and became a Royal Colony, the holding of slaves within its limits was expressly prohibited by law; and the Darien (Ga.) resolutions of 1775 declared not only a "disapprobation and abhorrence of the unnatural practice of Slavery in America" as "a practice founded in injustice and cruelty, and highly dangerous to our Liberties (as well as lives) but a determination to use our utmost efforts for the manumission of our slaves in this colony upon the most safe and equitable footing for the masters and themselves."]

During the war of the Revolution following the Declaration of Independence, the half a million of slaves, nearly all of them in the Southern States, were found to be not only a source of weakness, but, through the incitements of British emissaries, a standing menace of peril to the Slaveholders. Thus it was that the South was overrun by hostile British armies, while in the North-comparatively free of this element of weakness-disaster after disaster met them. At last, however, in 1782, came the recognition of our Independence, and peace, followed by the evacuation of New York at the close of 1783.

The lessons of the war, touching Slavery, had not been lost upon our statesmen. Early in 1784 Virginia ceded to the United States her claims of jurisdiction and otherwise over the vast territory north-west of the Ohio; and upon its acceptance, Jefferson, as chairman of a Select Committee appointed at his instance to consider a plan of government therefor, reported to the ninth Continental Congress an Ordinance to govern the territory ceded already, or to be ceded, by individual States to the United States, extending from the 31st to the 47th degree of north lat.i.tude, which provided as "fundamental conditions between the thirteen original States and those newly described" as embryo States thereafter-to be carved out of such territory ceded or to be ceded to the United States, not only that "they shall forever remain a part of the United States of America," but also that "after the year 1800 of the Christian era, there shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in any of the said States"-and that those fundamental conditions were "unalterable but by the joint consent of the United States in Congress a.s.sembled, and of the particular State within which such alteration is proposed to be made."

But now a signal misfortune befell. Upon a motion to strike out the clause prohibiting Slavery, six States: New Hamps.h.i.+re, Ma.s.sachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, voted to retain the prohibitive clause, while three States, Maryland, Virginia and South Carolina, voted not to retain it. The vote of North Carolina was equally divided; and while one of the Delegates from New Jersey voted to retain it, yet as there was no other delegate present from that State, and the Articles of Confederation required the presence of "two or more" delegates to cast the vote of a State, the vote of New Jersey was lost; and, as the same Articles required an affirmative vote of a majority of all the States-and not simply of those present-the retention of the clause prohibiting Slavery was also lost. Thus was lost the great opportunity of restricting Slavery to the then existing Slave States, and of settling the question peaceably for all time. Three years afterward a similar Ordinance, since become famous as "the Ordinance of '87," for the government of the North-west Territory (from which the Free States of Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin have since been carved and admitted to the Union) was adopted in Congress by the unanimous vote of all the eight States present. And the sixth article of this Ordinance, or "Articles of Compact," which it was stipulated should "forever remain unalterable, unless by common consent," was in these words: "Art. 6. There shall be neither Slavery nor involuntary servitude in the said Territory, otherwise than in punishment of crimes, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted; provided always that any person escaping into the same from whom labor or service is lawfully claimed in any one of the original States, such fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed, and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor, or service, as aforesaid."

But this Ordinance of '87, adopted almost simultaneously with the framing of our present Federal Const.i.tution, was essentially different from the Ordinance of three years previous, in this: that while the latter included the territory south of the Ohio River as well as that north-west of it, this did not; and as a direct consequence of this failure to include in it the territory south of that river, the States of Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi, which were taken out of it, were subsequently admitted to the Union as Slave States, and thus greatly augmented their political power. And at a later period it was this increased political power that secured the admission of still other Slave States-as Florida, Louisiana and Texas-which enabled the Slave States to hold the balance of such power as against the original States that had become Free, and the new Free States of the North-west.

Hence, while in a measure quieting the great question of Slavery for the time being, the Ordinance of '87 in reality laid the ground-work for the long series of irritations and agitations touching its restrictions and extension, which eventually culminated in the clash of arms that shook the Union from its centre to its circ.u.mference. Meanwhile, as we have seen-while the Ordinance of 1787 was being enacted in the last Congress of the old Confederation at New York-the Convention to frame the present Const.i.tution was sitting at Philadelphia under the Presidency of George Was.h.i.+ngton himself. The old Confederation had proved itself to be "a rope of sand." A new and stronger form of government had become a necessity for National existence.

To create it out of the discordant elements whose harmony was essential to success, was an herculean task, requiring the utmost forbearance, unselfishness, and wisdom. And of all the great questions, dividing the framers of that Const.i.tution, perhaps none of them required a higher degree of self abnegation and patriotism than those touching human Slavery.

The situation was one of extreme delicacy. The necessity for a closer and stronger Union of all the States was apparently absolute, yet this very necessity seemed to place a whip in the hands of a few States, with which to coerce the greater number of States to do their bidding. It seemed that the majority must yield to a small minority on even vital questions, or lose everything.

Thus it was, that instead of an immediate interdiction of the African Slave Trade, Congress was empowered to prohibit it after the lapse of twenty years; that instead of the basis of Congressional Representation being the total population of each State, and that of direct taxation the total property of each State, a middle ground was conceded, which regarded the Slaves as both persons and property, and the basis both of Representation and of Direct Taxation was fixed as being the total Free population "plus three-fifths of all other persons" in each State; and that there was inserted in the Const.i.tution a similar clause to that which we have seen was almost simultaneously incorporated in the Ordinance of '87, touching the reclamation and return to their owners of Fugitive Slaves from the Free States into which they may have escaped.

The fact of the matter is, that the Convention that framed our Const.i.tution lacked the courage of its convictions, and was "bulldozed" by the few extreme Southern Slave-holding States-South Carolina and Georgia especially. It actually paltered with those convictions and with the truth itself. Its convictions-those at least of a great majority of its delegates-were against not only the spread, but the very existence of Slavery; yet we have seen what they unwillingly agreed to in spite of those convictions; and they were guilty moreover of the subterfuge of using the terms "persons" and "service or labor" when they really meant "Slaves" and "Slavery." "They did this latter," Mr. Madison says, "because they did not choose to admit the right of property in man," and yet in fixing the basis of Direct Taxation as well as Congressional Representation at the total Free population of each State with "three-fifths of all other persons," they did admit the right of property in man! As was stated by Mr. Iredell to the North Carolina Ratification Convention, when explaining the Fugitive Slave clause: "Though the word 'Slave' is not mentioned, this is the meaning of it." And he added: "The Northern delegates, owing to their peculiar scruples on the subject of Slavery, did not choose the word 'Slave' to be mentioned."

In March, 1789, the first Federal Congress met at New York. It at once enacted a law in accordance with the terms of the Ordinance of '87-adapting it to the changed order of things under the new Federal Const.i.tution-prohibiting Slavery in the Territories of the North-west; and the succeeding Congress enacted a Fugitive-Slave law.

In the same year (1789) North Carolina ceded her western territory (now Tennessee) south of the Ohio, to the United States, providing as one of the conditions of that cession, "that no regulation made, or to be made, by Congress, shall tend to emanc.i.p.ate Slaves." Georgia, also, in 1802, ceded her superfluous territorial domain (south of the Ohio, and now known as Alabama and Mississippi), making as a condition of its acceptance that the Ordinance of '87 "shall, in all its parts, extend to the territory contained in the present act of cession, the article only excepted which forbids Slavery."

Thus while the road was open and had been taken advantage of, at the earliest moment, by the Federal Congress to prohibit Slavery in all the territory north-west of the Ohio River by Congressional enactment, Congress considered itself barred by the very conditions of cession from inhibiting Slavery in the territory lying south of that river. Hence it was that while the spread of Slavery was prevented in the one Section of our outlying territories by Congressional legislation, it was stimulated in the other Section by the enforced absence of such legislation. As a necessary sequence, out of the Territories of the one Section grew more Free States and out of the other more Slave States, and this condition of things had a tendency to array the Free and the Slave States in opposition to each other and to Sectionalize the flames of that Slavery agitation which were thus continually fed.

Upon the admission of Ohio to Statehood in 1803, the remainder of the North-west territory became the Territory of Indiana. The inhabitants of this Territory (now known as the States of Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin), consisting largely of settlers from the Slave States, but chiefly from Virginia and Kentucky, very persistently (in 1803, 1806 and 1807) pet.i.tioned Congress for permission to employ Slave Labor, but-although their pet.i.tions were favorably reported in most cases by the Committees to which they were referred-without avail, Congress evidently being of opinion that a temporary suspension in this respect of the sixth article of the Ordinance of '87 was "not expedient." These frequent rebuffs by Congress, together with the constantly increasing emigration from the Free States, prevented the taking of any further steps to implant Slavery on the soil of that Territory.

Meanwhile the vast territory included within the Valley of the Mississippi and known at that day as the "Colony of Louisiana," was, in 1803, acquired to the United States by purchase from the French-to whom it had but lately been retroceded by Spain. Both under Spanish and French rule, Slavery had existed throughout this vast yet spa.r.s.ely populated region. When we acquired it by purchase, it was already there, as an established "inst.i.tution;" and the Treaty of acquisition not only provided that it should be "incorporated into the Union of the United States, and admitted as soon as possible, according to the principles of the Federal Const.i.tution," but that its inhabitants in the meantime "should be maintained and protected in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and the religion which they professed"-and, as "the right of property in man" had really been admitted in practice, if not in theory, by the framers of that Const.i.tution itself-that inst.i.tution was allowed to remain there. Indeed the spa.r.s.eness of its population at the time of purchase and the amazing fertility of its soil and adaptability of its climate to Slave Labor, together with the then recent invention by Eli Whitney, of Ma.s.sachusetts, of that wonderful improvement in the separation of cotton-fibre from its seed, known as the "cotton-gin"-which with the almost simultaneous inventions of Hargreaves, and Arkwright's cotton-spinning machines, and Watt's application of his steam engine, etc., to them, marvelously increased both the cotton supply and demand and completely revolutionized the cotton industry-contributed to rapidly and thickly populate the whole region with white Slave-holders and black Slaves, and to greatly enrich and increase the power of the former.

When Jefferson succeeded in negotiating the cession of that vast and rich domain to the United States, it is not to be supposed that either the allurements of territorial aggrandizement on the one hand, or the impending danger to the continued ascendency of the political party which had elevated him to the Presidency, threatening it from all the irritations with republican France likely to grow out of such near proximity to her Colony, on the other, could have blinded his eyes to the fact that its acquisition must inevitably tend to the spread of that very evil, the contemplation of which, at a later day, wrung from his lips the prophetic words, "I tremble for my Country when I reflect that G.o.d is just." It is more reasonable to suppose that, as he believed the ascendency of the Republican party of that day essential to the perpetuity of the Republic itself, and revolted against being driven into an armed alliance with Monarchical England against what he termed "our natural friend," Republican France, he reached the conclusion that the preservation of his Republican principles was of more immediate moment than the question of the perpetuation and increase of human Slavery. Be that as it may, it none the less remains a curious fact that it was to Jefferson, the far-seeing statesman and hater of African Slavery and the author of the Ordinance of 1784-which sought to exclude Slavery from all the Territories of the United States south of, as well as north-west of the Ohio River-that we also owe the acquisition of the vast territory of the Mississippi Valley burdened with Slavery in such shape that only a War, which nearly wrecked our Republic, could get rid of!

Out of that vast and fertile, but Slave-ridden old French Colony of "Louisiana" were developed in due time the rich and flouris.h.i.+ng Slave States of Louisiana, Missouri and Arkansas.

It will have been observed that this acquisition of the Colony of Louisiana and the contemporaneous inventions of the cotton-gin, improved cotton-spinning machinery, and the application to it of steam power, had already completely neutralized the wisdom of the Fathers in securing, as they thought, the gradual but certain extinction of Slavery in the United States, by that provision in the Const.i.tution which enabled Congress, after an interval of twenty years, to prohibit the African Slave Trade; and which led the Congress, on March 22, 1794, to pa.s.s an Act prohibiting it; to supplement it in 1800 with another Act in the same direction; and on March 2, 1807, to pa.s.s another supplemental Act-to take effect January 1, 1808-still more stringent, and covering any such illicit traffic, whether to the United States or with other countries. Never was the adage that, "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men gang aft agley," more painfully apparent. Slaves increased and multiplied within the land, and enriched their white owners to such a degree that, as the years rolled by, instead of compunctions of conscience on the subject of African Slavery in America, the Southern leaders ultimately persuaded themselves to the belief that it was not only moral, and sanctioned by Divine Law, but that to perpetuate it was a philanthropic duty, beneficial to both races! In fact one of them declared it to be "the highest type of civilization."

In 1812, the State of Louisiana, organized from the purchased Colony of the same name, was admitted to the Union, and the balance of the Louisiana purchase was thereafter known as the Territory of Missouri.

In 1818 commenced the heated and protracted struggle in Congress over the admission of the State of Missouri-created from the Territory of that name-as a Slave State, which finally culminated in 1820 in the settlement known thereafter as the "Missouri Compromise."

Briefly stated, that struggle may be said to have consisted in the efforts of the House on the one side, to restrict Slavery in the State of Missouri, and the efforts of the Senate on the other, to give it free rein. The House insisted on a clause in the Act of admission providing, "That the introduction of Slavery or involuntary servitude be prohibited, except for the punishment of crimes whereof the party has been duly convicted; and that all children born within the said State, after the admission thereof into the Union, shall be declared Free at the age of twenty-five years." The Senate resisted it-and the Bill fell. In the meantime, however, a Bill pa.s.sed both Houses forming the Territory of Arkansas out of that portion of the Territory of Missouri not included in the proposed State of Missouri, without any such restriction upon Slavery. Subsequently, the House having pa.s.sed a Bill to admit the State of Maine to the Union, the Senate amended it by tacking on a provision authorizing the people of Missouri to organize a State Government, without restriction as to Slavery. The House decidedly refused to accede to the Senate proposition, and the result of the disagreement was a Committee of Conference between the two Houses, and the celebrated "Missouri Compromise," which, in the language of another-[Hon. John Holmes of Ma.s.sachusetts, of said Committee on Conference, March 2, 1820.]-, was: "that the Senate should give up its combination of Missouri with Maine; that the House should abandon its attempt to restrict Slavery in Missouri; and that both Houses should concur in pa.s.sing the Bill to admit Missouri as a State, with" a "restriction or proviso, excluding Slavery from all territory north and west of the new State"-that "restriction or proviso" being in these words: "That in all that territory ceded by France to the United States under the name of Louisiana, which lies north of thirty-six degrees, thirty minutes north lat.i.tude, excepting only such part thereof as is included within the limits of the State contemplated by this act, Slavery and involuntary servitude, otherwise than in the punishment of crime, whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall be and is hereby forever prohibited; Provided always, that any person escaping into the same, from whom labor and service is lawfully claimed in any State or Territory of the United States, such Fugitive may be lawfully reclaimed and conveyed to the person claiming his or her labor or service, as aforesaid." At a subsequent session of Congress, at which Missouri asked admission as a State with a Const.i.tution prohibiting her Legislature from pa.s.sing emanc.i.p.ation laws, or such as would prevent the immigration of Slaves, while requiring it to enact such as would absolutely prevent the immigration of Free Negroes or Mulattoes, a further Compromise was agreed to by Congress under the inspiration of Mr. Clay, by which it was laid down as a condition precedent to her admission as a State-a condition subsequently complied with-that Missouri must pledge herself that her Legislature should pa.s.s no act "by which any of the citizens of either of the States should be excluded from the enjoyment of the privileges and immunities to which they are ent.i.tled under the Const.i.tution of the United States."

This, in a nut-sh.e.l.l, was the memorable Missouri Struggle, and the "Compromise" or Compromises which settled and ended it. But during that struggle-as during the formation of the Federal Const.i.tution and at various times in the interval when exciting questions had arisen-the bands of National Union were more than once rudely strained, and this time to such a degree as even to shake the faith of some of the firmest believers in the perpetuity of that Union. It was during this bitter struggle that John Adams wrote to Jefferson: "I am sometimes Ca.s.sandra enough to dream that another Hamilton, another Burr, may rend this mighty fabric in twain, or perhaps into a leash, and a few more choice spirits of the same stamp might produce as many Nations in North America as there are in Europe."

It is true that we had "sown the wind," but we had not yet "reaped the whirlwind."

CHAPTER II.

PROTECTION AND FREE TRADE.

We have seen that the first Federal Congress met at New York in March, 1789. It organized April 6th. None knew better than its members that the war of the Americana Revolution chiefly grew out of the efforts of Great Britain to cripple and destroy our Colonial industries to the benefit of the British trader, and that the Independence conquered, was an Industrial as well as Political Independence; and none knew better than they, that the failure of the subsequent political Confederation of States was due mainly to its failure to encourage and protect the budding domestic manufactures of those States. Hence they hastened, under the leaders.h.i.+p of James Madison, to pa.s.s "An Act laying a duty on goods, wares and merchandize imported into the United States," with a preamble, declaring it to be "necessary" for the "discharge of the debt of the United States and the encouragement and protection of manufactures." It was approved by President Was.h.i.+ngton July 4, 1789-a date not without its significance-and levied imports both specific and ad valorem. It was not only our first Tariff Act, but, next to that prescribing the oath used in organizing the Government, the first Act of the first Federal Congress; and was pa.s.sed in pursuance of the declaration of President Was.h.i.+ngton in his first Message, that "The safety and interest of the People" required it. Under the inspiration of Alexander Hamilton the Tariff of 1790 was enacted at the second session of the same Congress, confirming the previous Act and increasing some of the protective duties thereby imposed.

An a.n.a.lysis of the vote in the House of Representatives on this Tariff Bill discloses the fact that of the 39 votes for it, 21 were from Southern States, 13 from the Middle States, and 5 from New England States; while of the 13 votes against it, 9 were from New England States, 3 from Southern States, and 1 from Middle States. In other words, while the Southern States were for the Bill in the proportion of 21 to 3, and the Middle States by 13 to 1, New England was against it by 9 to 5; or again, while 10 of the 13 votes against it were from the New England and Middle States, 21 (or more than half) of the 39 votes for it were from Southern States.

It will thus be seen-singularly enough in view of subsequent events-that we not only mainly owe our first steps in Protective Tariff legislation to the almost solid Southern vote, but that it was thus secured for us despite the opposition of New England. Nor did our indebtedness to Southern statesmen and Southern votes for the inst.i.tution of the now fully established American System of Protection cease here, as we shall presently see.

That Jefferson, as well as Was.h.i.+ngton and Madison, agreed with the views of Alexander Hamilton on Protection to our domestic manufactures as against those of foreign Nations, is evident in his Annual Message of December 14, 1806, wherein-discussing an antic.i.p.ated surplus of Federal revenue above the expenditures, and enumerating the purposes of education and internal improvement to which he thinks the "whole surplus of impost" should during times of peace be applied; by which application of such surplus he prognosticates that "new channels of communication will be opened between the States; the lines of separation will disappear; their interests will be identified, and their Union cemented by new and indissoluble ties"-he says: "Shall we suppress the impost and give that advantage to foreign over domestic manufactures. On a few articles of more general and necessary use, the suppression in due season, will doubtless be right; but the great ma.s.s of the articles on which impost is paid is foreign luxuries, purchased by those only who are rich enough to afford themselves the use of them." But his embargo and other retaliatory measures, put in force in 1807 and 1808, and the War of 1812-15 with Great Britain, which closely followed, furnished Protection in another manner, by shutting the door to foreign imports and throwing our people upon their own resources, and contributed greatly to the encouragement and increase of our home manufactures-especially those of wool, cotton, and hemp.

At the close of that War the traders of Great Britain determined, even at a temporary loss to themselves, to glut our market with their goods and thus break down forever, as they hoped, our infant manufactures. Their purpose and object were boldly announced in the House of Commons by Mr. Brougham, when he said: "Is it worth while to incur a loss upon the first importation, in order by the glut to stifle in the cradle those rising manufactures in the United States which the War had forced into existence contrary to the natural course of things." Against this threatened ruin, our manufacturers all over the United States-the sugar planters of Louisiana among them-clamored for Protection, and Congress at once responded with the Tariff Act of 1816.

This law greatly extended and increased specific duties on, and diminished the application of the ad valorem principle to, foreign imports; and it has been well described as "the practical foundation of the American policy of encouragement of home manufactures-the practical establishment of the great industrial system upon which rests our present National wealth, and the power and the prosperity and happiness of our whole people." While Henry Clay of Kentucky, William Loundes of South Carolina, and Henry St. George Tucker of Virginia supported the Bill most effectively, no man labored harder and did more effective service in securing its pa.s.sage than John C. Calhoun of South Carolina. The contention on their part was not for a mere "incidental protection" -much less a "Tariff for revenue only"-but for "Protection" in its broadest sense, and especially the protection of their cotton manufactures. Indeed Calhoun's defense of Protection, from the a.s.saults of those from New England and elsewhere who a.s.sailed it on the narrow ground that it was inimical to commerce and navigation, was a notable one. He declared that: "It (the encouragement of manufactures) produced a system strictly American, as much so as agriculture, in which it had the decided advantage of commerce and navigation. The country will from this derive much advantage. Again it is calculated to bind together more closely our wide-spread Republic. It will greatly increase our mutual dependence and intercourse, and will, as a necessary consequence, excite an increased attention to internal improvements-a subject every way so intimately connected with the ultimate attainment of national strength and the perfection of our political inst.i.tutions."

He regarded the fact that it would make the parts adhere more closely; that it would form a new and most powerful cement far outweighing any political objections that might be urged against the system. In his opinion "the liberty and the union of the country were inseparably united; that as the destruction of the latter would most certainly involve the former, so its maintenance will with equal certainty preserve it;" and he closed with an impressive warning to the Nation of a "new and terrible danger" which threatened it, to wit: "disunion." n.o.bly as he stood up then-during the last term of his service in the House of Representatives-for the great principles of, the American System of Protection to manufactures, for the perpetuity of the Union, and for the increase of "National strength," it seems like the very irony of fate that a few years later should find him battling against Protection as "unconst.i.tutional," upholding Nullification as a "reserved right" of his State, and championing at the risk of his neck that very "danger" to the "liberties" and life of his Country against which his prophetic words had already given solemn warning.

Strange was it also, in view of the subsequent att.i.tudes of the South and New England, that this essentially Protective Tariff Act of 1816 should have been vigorously protested and voted against by New England, while it was ably advocated and voted for by the South-the 25 votes of the latter which secured its pa.s.sage being more than sufficient to have secured its defeat had they been so inclined.

The Tariff Acts of 1824 and 1828 followed the great American principle of Protection laid down and supported by the South in the Act of 1816, while widening, increasing, and strengthening it. Under their operation-especially under that of 1828, with its high duties on wool, hemp, iron, lead, and other staples-great prosperity smiled upon the land, and particularly upon the Free States.

In the cotton-growing belt of the South, however, where the prosperity was relatively less, owing to the blight of Slavery, the very contrast bred discontent; and, instead of attributing it to the real cause, the advocates of Free Trade within that region insisted that the Protective Tariff was responsible for the condition of things existing there.

A few restless and discontented spirits in the South had indeed agitated the subject of Free Trade as against Protected manufactures as early as 1797, and, hand in hand with it, the doctrine of States Rights. And Jefferson himself, although, as we have already seen, attached to the American System of Protection and believing in its Const.i.tutionality, unwittingly played into the hands of these Free Traders by drawing up the famous Kentucky Resolutions of '98 touching States Rights, which were closely followed by the Virginia Resolutions of 1799 in the same vein by Madison, also an out-and-out Protectionist. It was mainly in condemnation of the Alien and Sedition Laws, then so unpopular everywhere, that these resolutions were professedly fulminated, but they gave to the agitating Free Traders a States-Rights-Secession-weapon of which they quickly availed themselves.

Their drift may be gathered from the first of the Kentucky Resolutions of '98, which was in these words: "Resolved, That the several States composing the United States of America are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their General Government, but that, by a compact under the style and t.i.tle of a Const.i.tution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they const.i.tuted a General Government for special purposes-delegated to that Government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary ma.s.s of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the General Government a.s.sumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force; that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and as an integral party, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party; that the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Const.i.tution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress."

The Resolutions, after enumerating the Alien and Sedition and certain other laws as in point, conclude by calling upon the other States to join Kentucky in her opposition to such Federal usurpations of power as thus embodied, and express confidence: "That they will concur with this Commonwealth in considering the said Acts as so palpably against the Const.i.tution as to amount to an undisguised declaration that that compact is not meant to be the measure of the powers of the General Government, but that it will proceed in the exercise over these States, of all powers whatsoever; that they will view this as seizing the rights of the States, and consolidating them in the hands of the General Government, with the power a.s.sumed to bind the States (not merely as to the cases made federal (casus foederis) but) in all cases whatsoever, by laws made, not with their consent, but by others against their consent; that this would be to surrender the form of government we have chosen, and live under one deriving its powers from its own will, and not from our authority; and that the co-States, returning to their natural rights in cases not made federal, will concur in declaring these Acts void and of no force, and will each take measures of its own in providing that neither these Acts, nor any others of the General Government, not plainly and intentionally authorized by the Const.i.tution, shall be exercised within their respective territories."

The doctrine of States Rights as formulated in these Resolutions, including the a.s.sumed right of a State to nullify laws of the General Government, naturally led up, as we shall see, not only to threats of disunion, but ultimately to a dreadful sectional War waged in the effort to secure it. That Jefferson, when he penned them, foresaw the terrible results to flow from these specious and pernicious doctrines, is not to be supposed for an instant; but that his conscience troubled him may be fairly inferred from the fact that he withheld from the World for twenty years afterward the knowledge that he was their author. It is probable that in this case, as in others, he was a victim of that casuistry which teaches that "the end justifies the means;" that he hoped and believed that the a.s.sertion of these baleful doctrines would act solely as a check upon any tendency to further centralization of power in the General Government and insure that strict construction of the Const.i.tution.

Though afterward violated by himself at the same time that he for the moment threw aside his scruples touching African slavery, when he added to our domain the great French Slave Colony of Louisiana-was none the less the great aim of his commanding intellect; and that he fortuitously believed in the "saving common sense" of his race and country as capable of correcting an existing evil when it shall have developed into ill effects.

[Mr. Jefferson takes this very ground, in almost the same words, in his letter, 1803, to Wilson C. Nichols in the Louisiana Colony purchase case, when, after proving by his own strict construction of the Const.i.tution that there was no power in that instrument to make such purchase, and confessing the importance in that very case of setting "an example against broad construction," he concludes: "If, however, our friends shall think differently, certainly I shall acquiesce with satisfaction; confiding that the good sense of the country will correct the evil of construction when it shall produce ill ejects."]

Be that as it may, however, the fact remains that the seeds thus sown by the hands of Jefferson on the "sacred soil" of Virginia and Kentucky, were dragon's teeth, destined in after years to spring up as legions of armed men battling for the subversion of that Const.i.tution and the destruction of that Union which he so reverenced, and which he was so largely instrumental in founding-and which even came back in his own life to plague him and Madison during his embargo, and Madison's war of 1812-15, in the utterances and att.i.tude of some of the New England Federalists.

The few Free Traders of the South-the Giles's and John Taylor's and men of that ilk-made up for their paucity in numbers by their unscrupulous ingenuity and active zeal. They put forth the idea that the American Protective Policy was a policy of fostering combinations by Federal laws, the effect of which was to transfer a considerable portion of the profits of slave labor from the Slave States to other parts of the Union where it was ma.s.sed in the hands of a few individuals, and thus created a moneyed interest which avariciously influenced the General Government to the detriment of the entire community of people, who, made restive by the exactions of this power working through the Federal Government, were as a consequence driven to consider a possible dissolution of the Union, and make "estimates of resources and means of defense." As a means also of inflaming both the poor whites and Southern slave-holders by arousing the apprehensions of the latter concerning the "peculiar inst.i.tution" of Slavery, they craftily declared that "If the maxim advanced by the advocates of the protecting duty system will justify Congress in a.s.suming, or rather in empowering a few capitalists to a.s.sume, the direction of manufacturing labor, it also invests that body with a power of legislating for the direction of every other species of labor and a.s.signing all occupations whatsoever to the care of the intelligence of mercenary combinations"-and hence untold misery to labor.

They charged as a further means of firing the Southern heart, that this moneyed power, born of Protection, "works upon the pa.s.sion of the States it has been able to delude by computations of their physical strength and their naval superiority; and by boasting of an ability to use the weakening circ.u.mstance of negro slavery to coerce the defrauded and discontented States into submission." And they declared as fundamental truths upon which they rested that "The Federal is not a National Government; it is a league between nations. By this league, a limited power only over persons and property was given to the representatives of the united nations. This power cannot be further extended, under the pretext of national good, because the league does not create a national government."

It was the pa.s.sage of the Tariff of 1824 that gave these crafty Free Traders their first great success in spreading their doctrine of Free Trade by coupling it with questions of slave labor, States Rights, and nullification, as laid down in the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These arguments created great excitement throughout the South-especially in South Carolina and Georgia-which was still further increased by the pa.s.sage of the Tariff of 1828, since declared by eminent authority to have been "the highest and most protective ever adopted in this country."

[Mr. Greeley, in his "History of the American Conflict," 1864.]

Prior to the pa.s.sage of this Tariff Act, excited a.s.semblages met in some of the Southern States, and protested against it as an outrage upon their rights-arraying the South in seditious and treasonable att.i.tude against not only the North but the Union, with threats of Secession. At one of these meetings in South Carolina, in 1827, one of their leaders-[Dr. Thomas Cooper, President of South Carolina College.]-declared that "a drilled and managed majority" in the House of Representatives had determined "at all hazards to support the claims of the Northern manufacturers, and to offer up the planting interest on the altar of monopoly." He denounced the American system of Protection exemplified in that Tariff measure as "a system by which the earnings of the South are to be transferred to the North-by which the many are to be sacrificed to the few-under which powers are usurped that were never conceded-by which inequality of rights, inequality of burthens, inequality of protection, unequal laws, and unequal taxes are to be enacted and rendered permanent-that the planter and the farmer under this system are to be considered as inferior beings to the spinner, the bleacher, and the dyer-that we of the South hold our plantations under this system, as the serfs and operatives of the North, subject to the orders and laboring for the benefit of the master-minds of Ma.s.sachusetts, the lords of the spinning jenny and peers of the power-loom, who have a right to tax our earnings for their emolument, and to burthen our poverty and to swell their riches;" and after characterizing Protection as "a system of fraud, robbery and usurpation," he continued "I have said that we shall ere long be compelled to calculate the value of our Union; and to enquire of what use to us is this most unequal alliance, by which the South has always been the loser and the North always the gainer. Is it worth our while to continue this union of States, where the North demands to be our masters and we are required to be their tributaries? who with the most insulting mockery call the yoke they put upon our necks the 'American system!' The question, however, is fast approaching the alternative of submission or separation."

Only a few days after this inflammatory speech at Columbus, S. C., inciting South Carolinians to resist the pending Protective Tariff even to the lengths of Secession, during a grand banquet at Richmond, Va., William B. Giles-another Free Trade leader-proposed, and those present drank a toast to the "Tariff Schemer" in which was embodied a declaration that "The Southerners will not long pay tribute." Despite these turbulent and treasonable mutterings, however, the "Jacksonian Congress" pa.s.sed the Act-a majority of members from the Cotton and New England States voting against, while the vote of the Middle and Western Free States was almost solidly for, it.

At a meeting held soon after the enactment of the Tariff of 1828, at Walterborough Court House, S. C., an address was adopted and issued which, after reciting the steps that had been taken by South Carolina during the previous year to oppose it, by memorials and otherwise, and stating that, despite their "remonstrances and implorations," a Tariff Bill had pa.s.sed, not indeed, such as they apprehended, but "ten-fold worse in all its oppressive features," proceeded thus: "From the rapid step of usurpation, whether we now act or not, the day of open opposition to the pretended powers of the Const.i.tution cannot be far off, and it is that it may not go down in blood that we now call upon you to resist. We feel ourselves standing underneath its mighty protection, and declaring forth its free and recorded spirit, when we say we must resist. By all the great principles of liberty-by the glorious achievements of our fathers in defending them-by their n.o.ble blood poured forth like water in maintaining them-by their lives in suffering, and their death in honor and in glory;-our countrymen! we must resist. Not secretly, as timid thieves or skulking smugglers-not in companies and a.s.sociations, like money chafferers or stock jobbers-not separately and individually, as if this was ours and not our country's cause-but openly, fairly, fearlessly, and unitedly, as becomes a free, sovereign and independent people. Does timidity ask WHEN? We answer NOW!"

These inflammatory utterances, in South Carolina especially, stirred the Southern heart more or less throughout the whole cotton belt; and the pernicious principles which they embodied found ardent advocates even in the Halls of Congress. In the Senate, Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, was their chief and most vehement spokesman, and in 1830 occurred that memorable debate between him and Daniel Webster, which forever put an end to all reasonable justification of the doctrine of Nullification, and which furnished the ground upon which President Jackson afterward stood in denouncing and crus.h.i.+ng it out with the strong arm of the Government.

In that great debate Mr. Hayne's propositions were that the Const.i.tution is a "compact between the States," that "in case of a plain, palpable violation of the Const.i.tution by the General Government, a State may interpose; and that this interposition is const.i.tutional"-a proposition with which Mr. Webster took direct issue, in these words: "I say, the right of a State to annul a law of Congress cannot be maintained, but on the ground of the inalienable right of man to resist oppression; that is to say, upon the ground of revolution. I admit that there is an ultimate violent remedy, above the Const.i.tution and in defiance of the Const.i.tution, which may be resorted to when a revolution is to be justified. But I do not admit that, under the Const.i.tution, and in conformity with it, there is any mode in which a State Government, as a member of the Union, can interfere and stop the progress of the general movement by force of her own laws under any circ.u.mstances whatever." Mr. Webster insisted that "one of two things is true: either the laws of the Union are beyond the discretion and beyond the control of the States, or else we have no Const.i.tution of General Government, and are thrust back again to the days of the Confederation;" and, in concluding his powerful argument, he declared that "even supposing the Const.i.tution to be a compact between the States," Mr. Hayne's doctrine was "not maintainable, because, first, the General Government is not a party to the compact, but a Government established by it, and vested by it with the powers of trying and deciding doubtful questions; and secondly, because, if the Const.i.tution be regarded as a compact, not one State only, but all the States are parties to that compact, and one can have no right to fix upon it her own peculiar construction."

While the comparatively miserable condition of the cotton-growing States of the South was attributed by most of the Southern Free Traders solely to the Protective Tariff of 1828, yet there were some Southerners willing to concede-as did Mr. Hayne, in the Senate (1832)-that there were "other causes besides the Tariff" underlying that condition, and to admit that "Slaves are too improvident, too incapable of that minute, constant, delicate attention, and that persevering industry which are essential to manufacturing establishments," the existence of which would have made those States prosperous. But such admissions were unwilling ones, and the Cotton-lords held only with the more tenacity to the view that the Tariff was the chief cause of their condition.

The Tariff Act of 1832, essentially modifying that of 1828, was pa.s.sed with a view, in part, to quiet Southern clamor. But the Southern Cotton States refused to be mollified. On the contrary, the Free Traders of South Carolina proceeded to extreme measures, putting in action that which they had before but threatened. On November 19, 1832, the leading men of South Carolina met in Convention, and a few days thereafter-[November 24,1882]-unanimously pa.s.sed an Ordinance of Nullification which declared the Tariff Acts of 1828 and 1832 "Unauthorized by the Const.i.tution," and "null, void, and no law, nor binding on this State, its officers, or citizens." The people of the State were forbidden by it to pay, after the ensuing February 1st, the import-duties therein imposed. Under the provisions of the Ordinance, the State Legislature was to pa.s.s an act nullifying these Tariff laws, and any appeal to the United States Supreme Court against the validity of such nullifying act was prohibited. Furthermore, in the event of the Federal Government attempting to enforce these Tariff laws, the people of South Carolina would thenceforth consider themselves out of the Union, and will "forthwith proceed to organize a separate Government, and do all other acts and things which sovereign and independent States may of right do."

At the subsequent meeting of the Legislature, Mr. Hayne, who had been a member of the Convention, having resigned his seat in the United States Senate, was elected Governor of the State. He declared in his message that he recognized "No allegiance as paramount to that which the citizens of South Carolina owe to the State of their birth or their adoption"-that doctrine of "paramount allegiance to the State" which in after-years gave so much trouble to the Union and to Union-loving Southerners-and declared that he held himself "bound by the highest of all obligations to carry into effect, not only the Ordinance of the Convention, but every act of the Legislature, and every judgment of our own Courts, the enforcement of which may devolve upon the Executive," and "if," continued he, "the sacred soil of Carolina should be polluted by the footsteps of an invader, or be stained with the blood of her citizens, shed in her defense, I trust in Almighty G.o.d * * * even should she stand alone in this great struggle for const.i.tutional liberty, encompa.s.sed by her enemies, that there will not be found, in the wide limits of the State, one recreant son who will not fly to the rescue, and be ready to lay down his life in her defense." In support of the contemplated treason, he even went to the length of calling for an enrolling of volunteer forces and of holding them ready for service.

But while South Carolina stood in this treasonable and defiant att.i.tude, arming for war against the Union, there happened to be in the Presidential chair one of her own sons-General Jackson. Foreseeing what was coming, he had, prior to the meeting of the Convention that framed the Nullification Ordinance, ordered General Scott to Charleston to look after "the safety of the ports of the United States" thereabouts, and had sent to the Collector of that port precise instructions as to his duty to resist in all ways any and all attempts made under such Ordinance to defeat the operation of the Tariff laws aforesaid. Having thus quietly prepared the arm of the General Government for the exercise of its power, he issued in December a Proclamation declaring his unalterable resolution to treat Nullification as Treason-and to crush it.

In that famous doc.u.ment President Jackson said of Nullification: "If this doctrine had been established at an earlier day, the Union would have been dissolved in its infancy. The Excise law in Pennsylvania, the Embargo and Non-intercourse law in the Eastern States, the Carriage-tax in Virginia, were all deemed unconst.i.tutional, and were more unequal in their operation than any of the laws now complained of; but fortunately, none of those States discovered that they had the right now claimed by South Carolina. * * * The discovery of this important feature in our Const.i.tution was reserved for the present day. To the statesmen of South Carolina belongs the invention, and upon the citizens of that State will unfortunately fall the evils of reducing it to practice. * * * I consider, then, the power to annul a law of the United States, a.s.sumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Const.i.tution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded and destructive of the great object for which it was formed. * * * To say that any State may at pleasure secede from the Union, is to say that the United States are not a Nation, because it would be a solecism to contend that any part of a Nation might dissolve its connection with the other parts, to their injury or ruin, without committing any, offense."

Farther on, in his moving appeal to the South Carolinians, he bids them beware of their leaders: "Their object is disunion; be not deceived by names. Disunion, by armed force, is Treason." And then, reminding them of the deeds of their fathers in the Revolution, he proceeds: "I adjure you, as you honor their memory, as you love the cause of freedom to which they dedicated their lives, as you prize the peace of your country, the lives of its best citizens, and your own fair fame, to retrace your steps. s.n.a.t.c.h from the archives of your State the disorganizing edict of its Convention-bid its members to rea.s.semble and promulgate the decided expression of your will to remain in the path which alone can conduct you to safety, prosperity, and honor-tell them that, compared to disunion, all other evils are light, because that brings with it an acc.u.mulation of all-declare that you will never take the field unless the Star-spangled banner of your country shall float over you-that you will not be stigmatized when dead, and dishonored and scorned while you live, as the authors of the first attack on the Const.i.tution of your country! Its destroyers you cannot be."

After a.s.serting his firm "determination to execute the laws-to preserve the Union by all const.i.tutional means"-he concludes with the prayer, "May the great Ruler of Nations grant, that the signal blessings with which He has favored, ours may not, by the madness of party, or personal ambition be disregarded and lost; and may His wise providence bring those who have produced this crisis to see the folly before they feel the misery, of civil strife; and inspire a returning veneration for that Union, which, if we may dare to penetrate His designs, He has chosen as the only means of attaining the high destinies to which we may reasonably aspire."

The firm att.i.tude of General Jackson, together with the wise precautionary measures he had already taken, and the practical unanimity with which his declaration to crush out the Treason was hailed in most of the Southern as well as the Northern States, almost at once broke the back of Nullification.

[In this connection the following letter, written at that time by the great Chief Justice Marshall, to a cousin of his, on the subject of State Sovereignty, is of interest, as showing how clearly his penetrating intellect perceived the dangers to the Union hidden in the plausible doctrine of State Rights: RICHMOND, May 7, 1833.

"MY DEAR SIR: "I am much indebted to you for your pamphlet on Federal Relations, which I have read with much satisfaction. No subject, as it seems to me, is more misunderstood or more perverted. You have brought into view numerous important historical facts which, in my judgment, remove the foundation on which the Nullifiers and Seceders have erected that superstructure which overshadows our Union. You have, I think, shown satisfactorily that we never have been perfectly distinct, independent societies, sovereign in the sense in which the Nullifiers use the term. When colonies we certainly were not. We were parts of the British empire, and although not directly connected with each other so far as respected government, we were connected in many respects, and were united to the same stock. The steps we took to effect separation were, as you have fully shown, not only revolutionary in their nature, but they were taken conjointly. Then, as now, we acted in many respects as one people. The representatives of each colony acted for all. Their resolutions proceeded from a common source, and operated on the whole ma.s.s. The army was a continental army commanded by a continental general, and supported from a continental treasury. The Declaration of Independence was made by a common government, and was made for all the States.

"Everything has been mixed. Treaties made by Congress have been considered as binding all the States. Some powers have been exercised by Congress, some by the States separately. The lines were not strictly drawn. The inability of Congress to carry its legitimate powers into execution has gradually annulled those powers practically, but they always existed in theory. Independence was declared `in the name and by the authority of the good people of these colonies.' In fact we have always been united in some respects, separate in others. We have acted as one people for some purposes, as distinct societies for others. I think you have shown this clearly, and in so doing have demonstrated the fallacy of the principle on which either nullification or the right of peaceful, const.i.tutional secession is a.s.serted.

"The time is arrived when these truths must be more generally spoken, or our Union is at an end. The idea of complete sovereignty of the State converts our government into a league, and, if carried into practice, dissolves the Union.

"I am, dear sir, "Yours affectionately, "J. MARSHALL.

"HUMPHREY MARSHALL, ESQ., "FRANKFORT, KY."]

The Nullifiers hailed with pretended satisfaction the report from the House Committee on Ways and Means of a Bill making great reductions and equalizations of Tariff duties, as a measure complying with their demands, and postponed the execution of the Ordinance of Nullification until the adjournment of Congress; and almost immediately afterward Mr. Clay's Compromise Tariff Act of 1833 "whereby one tenth of the excess over twenty per cent. of each and every existing impost was to be taken off at the close of that year; another tenth two years thereafter; so proceeding until the 30th of June, 1842, when all duties should be reduced to a maximum of twenty per cent."-[Says Mr. Greeley, in his History aforesaid.]-agreed to by Calhoun and other Nullifiers, was pa.s.sed, became a law without the signature of President Jackson, and South Carolina once more became to all appearances a contented, law-abiding State of the Union.

But after-events proved conclusively that the enactment of this Compromise Tariff was a terrible blunder, if not a crime. Jackson had fully intended to hang Calhoun and his nullifying coadjutors if they persisted in their Treason. He knew that they had only seized upon the Tariff laws as a pretext with which to justify Disunion, and prophesied that "the next will be the Slavery or Negro question." Jackson's forecast was correct. Free Trade, Slavery and Secession were from that time forward sworn allies; and the ru