Rise of the New West, 1819-1829 Part 9

To Jefferson [Footnote: Ibid., VI., 394.] the question seemed the most momentous since the Declaration of Independence. One nation, most of all, he thought, could disturb America in its efforts to have an independent system, and that nation, England, now offered "to lead, aid, and accompany us in it." He believed that by acceding to her proposition her mighty weight would be brought into the scale of free government, and "emanc.i.p.ate a continent at one stroke."

Construing the English proposition to be a maintenance of our own principle of "keeping out of our land all foreign-powers," he was ready to accept Canning's invitation. He was even ready to yield his desire for the annexation or independence of Cuba, in order to obtain England's co-operation. Madison, [Footnote: Madison, Writings (ed. of 1865), III., 339-341.] also, was prepared to accept the English proposal, and to invite that government to join in disapproval of the campaign of France in Spain and in a declaration in behalf of the Greeks.

Thus, by a strange operation of fate, members of the "Virginia dynasty," the traditional antagonists of England, were now willing to accept her leaders.h.i.+p in American affairs, and were inclined to mingle in European concerns in opposition to the Holy Alliance. By an equally strange chance, it was a statesman from New England, the section traditionally friendly to British leaders.h.i.+p, who prevented the United States from casting itself into the arms of England at this crisis, and who summoned his country to stand forth independently as the protector of an American system.

When John Quincy Adams learned of Canning's proposals, he had just been engaged in a discussion with the representative of the czar, who informed him of the refusal of Russia to recognize the Spanish- American republics, and expressed the hope that America would continue her policy of neutrality.

While the cabinet had Rush's dispatches under consideration, Adams received a second communication from the Russian minister, expounding the reactionary ideas of the Holy Alliance. [Footnote: Ford, in Ma.s.s. Hist. Soc. Proceedings (2d series), XV., 378, 395, 402-408.] To the secretary of state this was a challenge to defend the American ideas of liberty. Convinces that his Country ought to decline the overture of Great Britain and avow its principles explicitly to Russia and France, "rather than to come in as a c.o.c.k- boat in the wake of the British man-of-war," Adams informed the president that the reply to Russia and the instructions to Rush in England must be part of a combined system of policy. "The ground that I wish to take," he said, "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." [Footnote: Adams, Memoirs, VI., 178, 194, 197, 199-212.]

In the cabinet he stood firmly against giving guarantees to England with respect to Cuba. He heartened up his colleagues, who were alarmed at the possibility of the spread of war to the United States; but at the same time that he dismissed this danger as remote he pictured to the cabinet the alarming alternatives in case the allies subjugated Spanish America: California, Peru, and Chili might fall to Russia; Cuba, to England; and Mexico, to France. The danger was even at our doors, he declared, for within a few days the minister of France had openly threatened to recover Louisiana.

[Footnote: Ibid., VI., 207; cf. Reeves, in Johns Hopkins Univ.

Studies, XXIII, Nos. 9, 10.] Such suggestions exhibit the real significance of the problem, which in truth involved the question of whether America should lie open to seizure by rival European nations, each fearful lest the other gain an undue advantage. It was time for the United States to take its stand against intervention in this hemisphere.

Monroe was persuaded by Adams to change the first draught of his message, in which the president criticized the invasion of Spain by France and recommended the acknowledgment of the independence of the Greeks, in terms which seemed to threaten war with Europe on European questions. Even Webster and Clay, in fervent orations, showed themselves ready to go far towards committing the United States to an unwise support of the cause of the Greeks, which at this time was deeply stirring the sympathy of the United States. On the other hand, Adams stood firmly on the well-established doctrine of isolation from Europe, and of an independent utterance, by the United States, as the leader in the New World, of the principles of a purely American system. In the final draught, these ideas were all accepted, as well as the principles affirmed by Adams in his conferences with the Russian minister.

When sent to Congress, on December 2, 1823, Monroe's message a.s.serted "as a 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." This was in effect the proclamation of the end of a process that began with Columbus, Cabot, and Cartier--the rivalry of the nations of the Old World in the discovery, occupation, and political control of the wild lands of the western hemisphere. The interpretation by the next administration left the enforcement of this general principle to the various American states according to their interests. [Footnote: See chap. xvi. below]

The message further dealt with the determination of the United States not to meddle with European affairs. "It is only when our rights are invaded or seriously menaced," said Monroe, "that we resent injuries or make preparation for our defense. With the movements in this hemisphere we are of necessity more immediately connected, and by causes which must be obvious to all enlightened and impartial observers. The political system of the allied powers is essentially different in this respect from that of America." This declaration expressed the consciousness that there was a real American system contrasted with that of Europe and capable of separate existence.

Finally, the message met the immediate crisis by a bold a.s.sertion of the policy of the United States: "We owe it, therefore, to candor and to the amicable relations existing between the United States and those powers to declare that 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 other manner their destiny, by any European power in any other light than as the manifestation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 207-218; cf. Hart, Foundations of Am.

Foreign Policy, chap. vii.] Herein was the a.s.sertion of the well- established opposition of the United States to the doctrine of intervention as violating the equality of nations. It was the affirmation also of the equality of the Old and the New World in diplomatic relations, and the announcement of the paramount interest of the United States in American affairs. [Footnote: Moore, "Non- Intervention and the Monroe Doctrine," in Harper's Mag., CIX., 857.]

This cla.s.sic statement of the position of the United States in the New World, therefore, applied an old tendency on the part of this country to a particular exigency. Its authors.h.i.+p can hardly be attributed to any single individual, but its peculiar significance at this juncture lay in the fact that the United States came forward, unconnected with Europe, as the champion of the autonomy and freedom of America, and declared that the era of European colonization in the New World had pa.s.sed away. The idea of an American system, under the leaders.h.i.+p of the United States, unhampered by dependence upon European diplomacy, had been eloquently and clearly voiced by Henry Clay in 1820. But John Quincy Adams also reached the conception of an independent American system, and to him belongs the credit for the doctrine that the two Americas were closed to future political colonization. His office of secretary of state placed him where he was able to insist upon a consistent, clear-cut, and independent expression of the doctrine of an American system. Monroe's was the honor of taking the responsibility for these utterances. [Footnote: Cf. Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, chap, v.; and Ford, in Am. Hist. Rev., VII., 676, VIII., 28.]

Canning afterwards boasted, "I called the New World into existence to redress the balance of the Old." [Footnote: Stapleton, Political Life of Canning, III., 227.] Unquestionably his determination that "if France had Spain it should not be Spain with the Indies,"

materially contributed to make effective the protest of the United States, and he recognized the value of the president's message in putting an end to the proposal of a European congress. "It was broken," said he, "in all its limbs before, but the president's message gives it the coup de grace." [Footnote: Stapleton, George Canning and His Times, 395.]

Nevertheless, the a.s.sertion by the United States of an American system independent of Europe, and the proposed exclusion of Europe from further colonization were, in truth, as obnoxious to England as they were to France. [Footnote: Reddaway, Monroe Doctrine, 98.] "The great danger of the time," declared Canning in 1825, shortly after the British recognition of Mexico, "--a danger which the policy of the European system would have fostered--was a division of the world into European and American, republican and monarchical; a league of worn-out governments on the one hand and of youthful and stirring nations, with the United States at their head, on the other. WE slip in between, and plant ourselves in Mexico. The United States have gotten the start of us in vain, and we link once more America to Europe." On December 17, 1824, Canning wrote: "Spanish America is free; and if we do not mismanage our matters sadly, she is English, and novus saeclorum nascitur ordo." [Footnote: Festing, J.H. Frere and His Friends, 267, quoted by E.M. Lloyd, in Royal Hist. Soc.

Transactions (new series), XVIII., 77, 93.]

Later events were to reveal how unsubstantial were the hopes of the British minister. For the present, his hands were tied by the fact that England and the United States had a common interest in safeguarding Spanish America; and the form of Monroe's declaration seemed less important than its effectiveness in promoting this result. In the United States the message was received with approbation. Although Clay, from considerations of policy, withdrew a resolution which he presented to Congress (January 20,1824), giving legislative endors.e.m.e.nt to the doctrine, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1104, II., 2763.] there was no doubt of the sympathy of the American people with its fundamental principles. Together with the att.i.tude of England, it put an end to the menace of the Holy Alliance on this side of the ocean, and it began a new chapter, yet unfinished, in the history of the predominance of the United States in the New World.

CHAPTER XIII

INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS (1818-1824)

The transformation by which the slender line of the Indian trail became the trader's trace, and then a road, superseded by the turnpike and ca.n.a.l, and again replaced by the railroad, is typical of the economic development of the United States. As the population of the west increased, its surplus products sought outlets. Improved means of communication became essential, and when these were furnished the new lines of internal trade knitted the nation into organic unity and replaced the former colonial dependence upon Europe, in the matter of commerce, by an extensive domestic trade between the various sections. From these changes flowed important political results. [Footnote: For the earlier phase of internal improvements, cf. Babc.o.c.k, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.]

Many natural obstacles checked this process. The Appalachian mountain system cut off the seaboard of the United States from the interior. From the beginning, the Alleghenies profoundly influenced the course of American history, and at one time even endangered the permanency of the Union. In our own day the railroad has so reduced the importance of these mountains that it is difficult for us to realize the part which they once played in our development. Although Webster boasted that there were no Alleghenies in his politics, we have already seen [Footnote: See chaps, iii., vi., above.] that in the twenties they exercised a dominant influence on the lines of internal commerce, and compelled the pioneer farmers to s.h.i.+p their surplus down the Mississippi to New Orleans and around the coast, and thence abroad and to the cities of the north. The difficult and expensive process of wagoning goods from Philadelphia and Baltimore across the mountains to the Ohio Valley raised the price of manufactured goods to the western farmer; while, on the other hand, the cost of transportation for his crops left him little profit and reduced the value of his lands. [Footnote: Journ. of Polit. Econ., VIII., 36-41.]

Under these circ.u.mstances, it was inevitable that the natural opportunities furnished by the water system of the Great Lakes and the widely ramifying tributaries of the Mississippi should appeal to statesmen who considered the short distances that intervened between these navigable waters and the rivers that sought the Atlantic.

Turnpikes and ca.n.a.ls had already shown themselves practicable and profitable in England, so a natural effort arose to use them in aid of that movement for connecting east and west by ties of interest which Was.h.i.+ngton had so much at heart. New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, all subdivided by the mountains into eastern and western sections, fostered roads and chartered turnpike and ca.n.a.l companies. Pennsylvania was pre-eminent in this movement even before the close of the eighteenth century, subscribing large amounts to the stock of turnpike companies in order to promote the trade between Philadelphia and the growing population in the region of Pittsburgh. So numerous were the projects and beginnings of roads and ca.n.a.ls in the nation, that as early as 1808 the far-sighted Gallatin made his famous report for a complete national system of roads and ca.n.a.ls. [Footnote: Cf. Hart, Slavery and Abolition (Am.

Nation, XVI.), chap. iii.]

When New York undertook the Erie Ca.n.a.l in 1817 as a state enterprise, and pushed it to such a triumphant conclusion that before a decade after its completion its tolls repaid the cost of construction, a revolution was effected in transportation. The cheapness of water carriage not only compelled the freighters on the turnpike roads to lower their charges, but also soon made it probable that ca.n.a.ls would supersede land transportation for heavy freights, and even for pa.s.sengers. For a time the power of Pittsburgh and the activity of Philadelphia merchants sustained the importance of the Pennsylvania turnpike. Until Great Lake steam navigation developed and population spread along the sh.o.r.e of Lake Erie and ca.n.a.ls joined the Ohio and the lakes, the Erie Ca.n.a.l did not reap its harvest of trade in the west. But already Pennsylvania was alarmed at the prospect of losing her commercial ascendancy.

While New York and Philadelphia were developing ca.n.a.ls and turnpikes to reach the west, Baltimore was placed in an awkward position. The attempts to improve the waters of the upper Potomac engaged the interests of Maryland and Virginia from the days of Was.h.i.+ngton. But the success of the Potomac Company, chartered jointly by these two states in an effort to reach the Ohio trade, would have turned traffic towards the city of Was.h.i.+ngton and its outlying suburbs instead of towards Baltimore, which was already connected by a turnpike with the c.u.mberland Road, so as to share with Philadelphia in the wagon trade to the Ohio. On the other hand, Baltimore was interested in the development of the Susquehanna's navigation, for this river had its outlet in Chesapeake Bay, near enough to Baltimore to make that city its entrepot; and it tapped the great valley of Pennsylvania as well as the growing agricultural area of south-central New York, which was not tributary to the Erie Ca.n.a.l.

But it was not possible to expect New York, Pennsylvania, or even that part of Maryland interested in the Potomac to aid these ambitions of Baltimore; and that city found itself at a disadvantage and Maryland's interests were divided. [Footnote: Hulbert, Historic Highways, XIII., 69 et seq.; Mills, Treatise on Inland Navig.; see chap, xvii., below.]

Meantime, Virginia, anxious to check the western exodus from the interior of her state, established a state fund and a board of public works for the improvement of her rivers, including the project of connecting the James and Kanawha. [Footnote: Babc.o.c.k, Am.

Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Adams, United States, IX., 164.] North Carolina was agitating similar plans; [Footnote: Murphy, Memorial on Internal Improvements; Weaver, Internal Improvements in N. C., in Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, XXI, 113.]

and South Carolina made appropriations for extensive improvements.

New England devoted her attention to ca.n.a.ls along the seaboard and up the Connecticut Valley, to give the products of the interior of that section an outlet on the coast. Boston was feeling the isolation from the western trade that was enriching New York, and some voices were raised in favor of a ca.n.a.l to reach the Hudson; but the undertaking was too difficult, and the metropolis of New England devoted its energies to the ocean commerce.

Meantime, the west was urging the federal government to construct those interstate roads and ca.n.a.ls which were essential to the prosperity of that section and which could not be undertaken by jealous and conflicting states. The veto by Madison of Calhoun's bonus bill, in 1817, [Footnote: Cf. Babc.o.c.k, Am. Nationality (Am.

Nation, XIII.), chap. xvii.] was followed nine months later by Monroe's first annual message, [Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 18.] in which he stated his belief that the Const.i.tution did not empower Congress to establish a system of internal improvements, and recommended an amendment to convey the power. To Clay and the friends of internal improvements, these const.i.tutional scruples of the Virginia dynasty, although accompanied by approval of the plan of a system of internal improvements at federal expense, came as a challenge. In an important debate on the const.i.tutionality of national internal improvements, in 1818, the House of Representatives, voting on four resolutions submitted by Lowndes, of South Carolina, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 15 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1249] declared that Congress had power to appropriate money for the construction of military roads, and of other roads, and of ca.n.a.ls, and for the improvement of watercourses (89 ayes to 75 nays). [Footnote: By count of names; the Journal gives ayes 90.] But after a debate which turned on the significance of the word "establish" in the Const.i.tution, the House decided against the power to construct post-roads and military roads (81 to 84); against the power to construct roads and ca.n.a.ls necessary to commerce between the states (71 to 95); and against the power to construct ca.n.a.ls for military purposes (81 to 83).

It was clear after this debate that there was not a sufficient majority to override the veto which might be expected from the president. On the other hand, the majority were unwilling to hazard the rights which they claimed to possess, by appealing to the states for a const.i.tutional amendment. The next year Calhoun, the secretary of war, responding to an invitation of Congress, submitted a report outlining a comprehensive system of internal improvements requisite for the defense of the United States. While avoiding an opinion on the question of const.i.tutionality, he declared that a judicious system of roads and ca.n.a.ls, constructed for commerce and the mail, would be "itself among the most efficient means for the more complete defense of the United States"; [Footnote: Am. State Papers, Miscellaneous, 534.] and he favored the use of the engineering corps for surveying the routes and of federal troops for the actual work of construction.

By 1818 the National Road [Footnote: Cf. Babc.o.c.k, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap. xv.; Young, c.u.mberland Road, 15; Hulbert, Historic Highways, X., chap. i.] had been constructed from c.u.mberland, on the Potomac, across the mountains to Wheeling, on the Ohio, and two years later Congress made appropriations for a survey of the road westward to the Mississippi River. The panic of 1819, however, left the treasury in such a condition that it was not until 1822 that the preservation and construction of this highway was again taken up with vigor. In that year a bill was introduced authorizing the president to cause toll-houses, gates, and turnpikes to be erected on the c.u.mberland Road, and to appoint toll-gatherers, with power to enforce the collection of tolls to be used for the preservation of the road. The bill further provided for a system of fines for violation of the laws of the road. It therefore involved the question of the right of jurisdiction as well as of construction.

The measure pa.s.sed the House of Representatives by a vote of 87 to 68. The districts along the line of the Potomac and the Ohio, and the regions tributary to the road in Pennsylvania and western Virginia, were almost a unit in favor of the bill. Indeed, the whole vote of the western states, with the exception of two members from Tennessee, was given in the affirmative. But Pittsburgh, which feared the diversion of her western trade to Baltimore, opposed the bill. The area along the Susquehanna which looked to Baltimore also voted in the negative, as did the majority of the delegation from New York, who were apprehensive of the effect of the National Road as a rival to the Erie Ca.n.a.l. The Senate pa.s.sed the bill by the decisive vote of 29 to 7.

Monroe vetoed this measure, on the ground that it implied a power to execute a complete system of internal improvements, with the right of jurisdiction and sovereignty. Accompanying his veto (May 4, 1822), he submitted "Views on the Subject of Internal Improvements."

[Footnote: Richardson, Messages and Papers, II., 142-183; Monroe, Writings, VI., 216; Mason, Veto Power, 85; Nelson presidential Influence on Int. Imp. (Iowa Journal of Hist, and Politics), IV., 29, 30.] In this elaborate disquisition, he rehea.r.s.ed the const.i.tutional history of internal improvements, and expounded his conception of the construction of the Const.i.tution, and of the relation of the states and the nation under the theory of divided sovereignty. Although he denied to the federal government the right of jurisdiction and construction, he a.s.serted that Congress had unlimited power to raise money, and that "in its appropriation, they have a discretionary power, restricted only by their duty to appropriate it to purposes of common defense and of general, not local, national, not state, benefit." Nevertheless, he strongly recommended a system of internal improvements, if it could be established by means of a const.i.tutional amendment. Both houses sustained the president's veto.

Acting upon Monroe's intimation of the power to appropriate money, and following the line of least resistance, the next year an act was pa.s.sed making appropriations for repairs of the c.u.mberland Road. On March 3, 1823, also, was signed the first of the national acts for the improvement of harbors. [Footnote: U. S. Statutes at Large, III., 780.] The irresistible demand for better internal communications and the development of a mult.i.tude of local projects, chief among them a new plan for uniting Chesapeake Bay with the Ohio by a ca.n.a.l along the Potomac, resulted, in 1824, in the introduction of the general survey bill, authorizing the president to cause surveys to be made for such roads and ca.n.a.ls as he deemed of national importance for commercial, military, or postal purposes.

The evident intention of the bill was to prepare a programme for appropriations for internal improvements on a national scale, and for subscription to the stock of companies engaged in these enterprises. The discussion of the general survey bill brought out the significance of the problem of transportation, and revealed the sectional divisions of the nation in clear light.

Henry Clay made an earnest effort to commit Congress to the exercise of the power of construction of interstate highways and ca.n.a.ls which could not be undertaken by individual states or by combinations of states, and which, if built at all, must be by the nation. He recounted the attention given by Congress to the construction of public buildings and light-houses, coast surveys, erection of sea- walls in the Atlantic states--"everything on the margin of the ocean, but nothing for domestic trade; nothing for the great interior of the country." [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1035.] "Not one stone," he said, "had yet been broken, not one spade of earth removed, in any Western State." He boldly claimed that the right to regulate commerce granted as fully the power to construct roads and ca.n.a.ls for the benefit of circulation and trade in the interior as it did the power to promote coastwise traffic. His speech was a strong a.s.sertion of the right of the west to equality of treatment with the old sections of the country. "A new world," said he, "has come into being since the Const.i.tution was adopted. 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?" [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1315; Colton, Private Corresp. of Clay, 81.]

In contrast with the united att.i.tude of the west upon internal improvements, which Henry Clay voiced with such lofty accent, the south showed divisions which reflected opposing economic interests in the section. Not only were the representatives of Maryland almost a unit in support of the bill, but also the western districts of Virginia and North Carolina, as well as a considerable fraction of the representatives from South Carolina and Georgia, supported the cause of the west on this occasion.

The opposition in the south found, perhaps, its most inflexible expression in the speech of John Randolph, [Footnote: Annals of Cong., 18 Cong., 1 Sess., I., 1296-1311.] who, with characteristic recklessness and irresponsibility, dragged from its closet the family skeleton of the south, and warned his fellow slaveholders that, if Congress possessed power to do what was proposed by the bill, they might emanc.i.p.ate every slave in the United States, "and with stronger color of reason than they can exercise the power now contended for." He closed by threatening the formation of a.s.sociations and "every other means short of actual insurrection."

"We shall keep on the windward side of treason," said he. [Footnote: Cf. Macon's identical views in 1818 and 1824, Univ. of North Carolina, James Sprunt Hist. Monographs, No. 2, pp. 47, 72.]

On the other hand, McDuffie, of South Carolina, the friend and protege of Calhoun and a later leader of the nullification forces, supported the measure and spoke as earnestly in favor of a liberal construction of the Const.i.tution as any of the most enthusiastic supporters of the bill. He declared that the const.i.tutional convention "did not regard the state governments as sentinels upon the watch-towers of freedom, or in any respect more worthy of confidence than the general government."

When the bill came to the final vote in the House of Representatives, New England gave 12 votes in favor and 26 against; the middle states, 37 to 26 (New York, 7 to 24); the south, 23 to 34; the west, 43 to 0. Thus the bill carried by 115 to 86. As the map shows, the opposition was chiefly located in New England and New York and in a fragment of the old south. The entire west, including the southwestern slave states, with Pennsylvania and the Potomac Valley, acted together. In the Senate, the vote stood 24 to 18. Here New England gave an almost solid vote against the bill.

Thus by the close of Monroe's administration the forces of nationalism seemed to have triumphed in the important field of internal improvements. It was the line of least resistance then, as it had been in the days of the Annapolis Convention. [Footnote: McLaughlin, Confederation and Const.i.tution (Am. Nation, X.), chap, xi.]

CHAPTER XIV

THE TARIFF OF 1824 (1820-1824)

As has been shown in the last chapter, the att.i.tude of portions of the south towards strict construction was not inveterate upon measures which promised advantages to that section. But the tariff struggle revealed the spirit which arose when powers were a.s.serted unfavorable to any section. The failure of the tariff bill of 1820 [Footnote: See above, chap. ix.] was followed by other unsuccessful attempts to induce a majority of Congress to revive the subject. The messages of Monroe favored a moderate increase of duties; but it was not until 1824, after the return of Henry Clay and his triumphant election to the speakers.h.i.+p, that Congress showed a protectionist majority ably disciplined and led. [Footnote: For previous tariff history, cf. Babc.o.c.k, Am. Nationality (Am. Nation, XIII.), chap.

xiv.]

The tariff bill of 1824 was supported, not as a revenue, but as a protective measure. It proposed an increase of the duty upon iron, hemp, cotton bagging, woolens, and cottons. Upon woolen goods, the friends of protection desired to apply the minimum principle which the tariff of 1816 had provided for cotton goods. But the cheap woolens were mostly used for the clothing of southern slaves, and the proposition for an increase of duty met with so strenuous a resistance that in the outcome the cheap foreign goods bore a lower rate of duty than did the high-priced products. Although the act somewhat increased the protection upon woolen fabrics as a whole, this was more than offset by the increased duty which was levied upon raw wool in response to the demand of the wool-raising interests of the country. [Footnote: Taussig, Tariff Hist., 75.]