The Middle Period, 1817-1858

General Character of the Acts of the Fourteenth Congress-Madison's Message of December 5th, 1815-Change in the Principles of the Republican Party-The United States Bank Act of 1816-Report of the Bank Bill by Mr. Calhoun-Mr. Calhoun's Argument in Favor of the Bill-Webster's Objections to the Bank Bill-Mr.

Clay's Support of the Bank Bill-Passage of the Bank Bill by the House of Representatives-The Passage of the Bank Bill by the Senate-The United States Bank of 1816 a Southern Measure-The Tariff Bill Framed by the Committee on Ways and Means-The Tariff Bill Reported-The Character of the Tariff Bill-Mr. Calhoun's Speech upon the Tariff Bill-The Passage of the Tariff Bill-The Army and Navy Bills-The Bill for National Improvements-Mr. Calhoun's Advocacy of this Bill-The Opposition to the Internal Improvements Bill-Passage of the Bill by Congress-Veto of the Bill by the President-The Failure of Congress to Override the Veto.

It is no part of my task to relate the events of the War of 1812-15. That has already been sufficiently done in the preceding volume of this series. I take up the threads of the narrative at the beginning of the year 1816, and my problem in this chapter will be to expound the acts and policies of the Fourteenth Congress in the light of the experiences of that War.

General

character of

the acts of the

Fourteenth

Congress.

Those acts and policies were shaped and adopted under the influence of those experiences, and this influence was so predominant, at the moment, in the minds of the leading men in the Government and throughout the country as to exclude, or at least to overbalance, all other influences. This is especially manifest in the attitude of the statesmen of the slave-holding Commonwealths, and most especially in the attitude of their great leader, Mr. Calhoun, who was the chief champion of some of the most national measures voted by that Congress. A clear appreciation of his views and his acts at that period of his career will enable us far better than anything else to understand the terrible seriousness of the slavery question, which subsequently drove him into lines of thought and action so widely divergent from those upon which he set out in early life.

Madison's

message of

December

5th, 1815.

It was the President himself, however, one of the chief founders of the "States' rights" party, Mr. Madison, who set the direction toward centralization in the Congressional legislation of 1815-17. In his annual message of December 5th, 1815, he recommended the increase and better organization of the army and the navy, the enlargement of the existing Military Academy and the founding of such academies in the different sections of the country, the creation of a national currency, the protection of manufactures, the construction of roads and canals, and the establishment of a national university.

This is a very different political creed from that promulgated by President Jefferson when the Republican party first gained possession of the Government at Washington. Then, decrease in all the elements of power in the hands of the central Government, and careful maintenance of all the rights and powers of the "States," were recommended and urged upon the attention of the national lawgivers.

Change in the

principles of

the Republican

party.

From a "States'-sovereignty" party in 1801, the Republican party had manifestly become a strong national party in 1816; that is, if we are to take the two Presidential messages, to which we have referred, as containing the political principles of that party at these two periods of its existence.

As the Congress of 1801 showed itself, in its legislation, to be in substantial accord with President Jefferson's views and sentiments, so did the Congress of 1815 manifest, in its legislation, the same general harmony with the views and sentiments of President Madison. In order that the latter part of this statement may be set down as an established fact of history, we will review with some particularity the two cardinal acts of this Congress-the United States Bank Act and the Tariff Act.

The United

States Bank

Act of 1816.

So soon as the reading of President Madison's message before the House of Representatives was completed, that body resolved to refer that part of the message which related to the establishment of an uniform national currency to a select committee. The committee chosen was composed of Mr. Calhoun, Mr. Macon, Mr. Pleasants, Mr. Tucker, Mr. Robertson, Mr. Hopkinson, and Mr. Pickering. The first five of these gentlemen were from Commonwealths south of the Pennsylvania line, and only two, therefore, from what began now to be called the "non-slave-holding States." In other words, it was a Southern committee, and the great South Carolinian was its chairman. It is, therefore, just to regard the bill which this committee brought in, and the arguments with which they supported it, as containing the views and the sentiments of the leading Southern Republicans in the House.

Report of the

Bank Bill by

Mr. Calhoun.

This committee came speedily to the conclusion that the nationalization of the monetary system was the most pressing need of the country, and within a month from the date of the appointment of its members the chairman of the committee reported a bill for the creation of an United States Bank, a mammoth national banking corporation, which should have a capital of thirty-five millions of dollars; in which the central Government should own one-fifth of the stock and be represented by one-fifth of the directors; the president of which should always be selected from among the Government's directors; the demand notes and bills of which should be received in all payments to the United States; and the chartered privileges of which should be made a monopoly for twenty years.

Mr. Calhoun's

argument in

favor of the Bill.

In his great argument in support of the bill, delivered on February 26th, Mr. Calhoun dismissed at the outset any consideration of the constitutionality of the bill. That is, he simply assumed that Congress had the power to pass the bill, and declared that the public mind was entirely made up and settled upon that point.

Only five years before this, even the national-minded Clay had pronounced the dictum that Congress had no power to grant a national bank charter, and the fact that Congress then declined to grant such a charter is good evidence that the majority of the people of the country held the same view. There can be little question that the Republican party, down to 1812, regarded the establishment of an United States bank by Congress as an usurpation of power not granted by the Constitution.

Five years constitute a short period of time for the accomplishment of so important a change in the public opinion. Five years of ordinary experience would not have produced it. It was, without doubt, the strain brought upon the finances of the country by the necessities of the War that had developed a powerful national opinion upon the subject of the financial system of the country.

Mr. Calhoun also declined to discuss the question whether banks were favorable or unfavorable to "public liberty and prosperity." He assumed, here again, that public experience had settled that question, and said that such an inquiry was now purely metaphysical. This statement is certainly prime evidence that the practical experiences, made in conducting the Government under the pressure of war, had about knocked the metaphysics of the year 1800 out of the Republican party, and had led the party on to a much more positive stage of political opinion.

Mr. Calhoun furthermore dismissed the question whether a "national bank would be favorable to the administration of the finances of the Government," since there was not enough doubt, he said, in the public mind upon that point to warrant a discussion of it.

He declared, finally, that the only questions which demanded consideration were those relative to the existing disorders of the currency, and the efficiency of a national bank in working their cure. Upon these two points he was distinct, decided, and thoroughly national. He said that the Constitution had without doubt placed the monetary system of the country entirely within the control of Congress; that the "States" had usurped the power of making money by chartering banks of issue in the face of the constitutional provision forbidding the "States" to emit bills of credit; that the two hundred millions of dollars of irredeemable bank-notes, paper, and credits, issued by these banks, were the cause of the financial disorders of the country; and that the remedy for this condition of things was, in his opinion, to be found in a great specie-paying national bank, sustained by the power of the general Government in the work of bringing such a pressure upon these "State" banks as would force them either to pay specie or go into liquidation. This was clear, generous, and patriotic. No one made a fairer statement of the case, and no one advocated a more national remedy in its treatment.

Webster's

objections to

the Bank Bill.

On the other hand, it was Webster who, at this time, appeared narrow and particularistic. He objected to the large amount of the capital, and to the stock feature of the proposed bank, and expressed alarm at the proposition to place it under such strong governmental control. He thought that the bills and paper of the "State" banks would be good enough, if the general Government would only force them to redeem their currency in specie by refusing to accept for Government dues the bills of banks which did not pay specie on demand.

Whatever may be thought of Webster's attitude from the point of view of political economy, it was certainly, from the point of view of political science, the attitude of a "States'-rights" man rather than that of a nationalist. Webster did not, however, call the constitutionality of the bill in question. That was conceded upon all sides.

The friends of the measure felt more anxiety in regard to Mr. Clay. He had, only five years before, as we have seen, pronounced a similar bill unconstitutional in his opinion, and he was now the Speaker of the House, with all the power over the procedure in the House which that position involved. It was generally felt that the fate of the measure would be largely determined by his attitude toward it.

Mr. Clay's

support of

the Bank Bill.

Mr. Clay did not leave the House long in doubt concerning his views. He quickly revealed and avowed that noted change of opinion upon this subject, which has been commonly accounted one of his greatest inconsistencies, but which may be very properly considered as simply manifesting that growth in patriotism and national spirit experienced by almost all the leading men of the country, outside of New England, in consequence of the vicissitudes of the period of war under which the nation suffered between the dates of Mr. Clay's two utterances. He frankly confessed that he had changed his opinion, and explained the change by saying that the power of Congress in respect to the matter was contained in the clause of the Constitution which conferred upon Congress the authority to make all laws necessary and proper for carrying the powers of the Government into operation; that, in the interpretation of the words "necessary and proper," reference must always be had to existing circumstances; that, when conditions change, the interpretation must be so modified as to meet and satisfy such change; and that the conditions obtaining in the country in 1816 were so changed from those obtaining in 1811 as to require the enlarged interpretation of the powers of Congress under this clause upon the subject of the monetary system of the country.

Passage of the

Bank Bill by

the House of

Representatives.

The eloquence and the influence of Mr. Clay counted heavily in favor of the measure, and it was passed by a substantial majority of votes. In fact, the privileges of the proposed Bank had been increased by amendment during the progress of the bill through the House. The Bank and its branches were made the depositories of the funds of the Government. This great advantage was, at least, a substantial offset to the other modifications of the original bill, whereby the clauses requiring that the president of the Bank should always be chosen from among the Government directors, and reserving to Congress the power to permit a temporary suspension of specie payment by the Bank, were stricken out.

The passage

of the Bank

Bill through

the Senate.

During the passage of the bill through the Senate only a single Senator expressed any doubts of its constitutionality, Mr. Wells, of Delaware. Mr. Wells did not deny the power of Congress to charter a national bank, but simply contended that the particular Bank proposed in the bill exceeded what was "necessary and proper" for carrying into effect the powers of Congress, and was therefore unconstitutional. On the other hand, Senators Barbour, of Virginia, Taylor, of South Carolina, and Bibb, of Georgia, supported the measure, both in principle and in details, and carried it with a larger relative majority through the Senate than it had received in the House.

The United States

Bank of 1816 a

Southern measure.

The United States Bank of 1816 was thus a Southern measure, and Calhoun was its chief author. It was in principle a great national measure, and its creation by Congress is strong evidence of the great growth in national opinion and sentiment throughout the country, away from the national indifference of the Jeffersonian metapolitics of 1800.

The Tariff of 1816.

A review of the Tariff Act of 1816 will bring us to the same conclusions concerning the great nationalizing influence of the War.

The rate of duty upon the principal articles of imported goods was, before the War, twelve and one-half per centum ad valorem. From a rate of five per centum upon these articles, imposed by the first Customs Act, that of July, 1789, the duty had been increased by about a dozen acts, passed by both Federal and Republican Congresses, until, in 1812, it had reached the above-mentioned per centum. Twelve and one-half per centum was, as a fact, nothing more than a revenue duty, and was intended for nothing more by the party in power at that date.

At the outbreak of the War double duties were imposed by the Act of July 1st, 1812, as a war measure, that is, as a measure for obtaining additional revenue for the prosecution of the War. It was not intended as a measure for the protection of manufacturers. This Act was to expire in one year, at the farthest, after the conclusion of peace with England.

The ratifications of the Treaty of Ghent were exchanged on February 17th, 1815. At the meeting of Congress, in December, 1815, the war duties were, therefore, still in force, but the Act establishing them would expire by its own limitation in less than three months. This Congress was obliged, therefore, to deal with the tariff anew.

The Bill framed by

the Committee on

Ways and Means.

The recommendations of the President in regard to the matter were referred to the committee of the House on Ways and Means, the regular revenue committee. At that moment this committee was composed of seven members, four from Commonwealths south of Maryland, and three from those north of Maryland. Mr. Lowndes, of South Carolina, was its chairman. It is fair, therefore, to call it a Southern committee, and to regard the bill which it produced as a Southern measure.

The Tariff

Bill reported.

The committee first asked for a continuation of the existing duties until the thirtieth day of the following June, in order to give proper time to mature the bill, which request was voted by both houses of Congress; and on March 20th, Mr. Lowndes announced that he was prepared to report the draft of the new Act. The measure contained virtually the continuation of the war tariff as the permanent rule and policy in time of peace. It was now manifestly a protective tariff, and it was intended to be such. Mr. Ingham of the committee said, at the beginning of the debate upon it, that "its great primary object was to make such a modification of duties upon the various articles of importation as would give the necessary and proper protection and support to the agriculture, manufactures, and commerce of the country." He went so far as to say that revenue considerations ought not to have any influence in the decision of the House upon the committee's propositions.

The character of

the Tariff Bill.

It is entirely evident, however, that the committee did not regard the bill as proposing advantages for the manufacturers only, or as having for its principal aim the increase of the wages of the employees in the manufacturing establishments, but considered it a great national measure, a measure necessary to the industrial independence of the country. It is also evident that the bill was not thought by anybody to rest upon a perfect and permanent principle. Mr. Clay himself said of it, "that the object of protecting manufacturers was, that we might eventually get articles of necessity made as cheap at home as they could be imported, and thereby to produce an independence of foreign countries;" that "in three years we could judge of the ability of our establishments to furnish those articles as cheap as they were obtained from abroad, and could then legislate with the lights of experience;" and that "he believed that three years would be sufficient to place our manufacturers on this desirable footing."

Mr. Calhoun's

speech upon

the Tariff Bill.

It was Calhoun again, however, who surpassed them all in broadness of view and in patriotic devotion to the interests of the nation. The immediate occasion of his speech was a motion made by John Randolph, which seemed to Mr. Calhoun to attack the principle of the bill. He said, that so long as the debate had been confined to questions of detail he had refrained from joining in it; but now that the general policy of the measure had been attacked he felt obliged to come forward in support of that policy, which he could do with all the more grace and sincerity since his own private interests were primarily subserved by the advancement of agriculture, as were those of his section. He began his argument with the assertions that commerce and agriculture were the chief sources of the wealth of the country at the moment, almost the only sources, and that manufactures must be added to these in order to accomplish industrial independence. In proof of this latter proposition he referred to the well known effect of war between a maritime power and the United States upon the prosperity of the latter. He simply pointed to the historic facts that such a war destroyed the commerce of the country with foreign powers, and that the destruction of commerce caused the products of agriculture, usually exported to pay for manufactured goods imported from foreign countries, to perish in the hands of the producers. Domestic manufactures, he contended, would not only relieve us from dependence upon foreign countries for manufactured goods, but would create home markets for agricultural products. Encouragement to manufactures was, therefore, a sound national, a truly American, policy. As Mr. Calhoun proceeded in his speech, his strong patriotism became more manifest. He affirmed that the policy of protection to manufactures was calculated to bind more closely together the different parts of our widely extended country, since it would increase the mutual dependence of these different sections on each other in proportion as it decreased their dependence on foreign markets. And he declared that he considered the production of this result to be the most fundamental of all our policies, for the reason that the absence of such mutual dependence would tend toward disunion, and disunion comprehended almost the sum and substance of our political dangers, against which, therefore, we ought to be perpetually guarded.

The passage of

the Tariff Bill.

Calhoun was in his thirty-fifth year when he advanced these views. The sentiments which they revealed cannot, therefore, be ascribed to the enthusiasm of youth and inexperience. They rested upon the settled convictions of a mature man. They stand in need of no comment. They speak for themselves. We shall search the reports of the debate in vain for anything wiser, nobler, or more patriotic. In comparison with them the views pronounced by the New Englanders upon the subject appear narrow and selfish. They were willing to sacrifice the industrial independence of the nation to their own interests in the carrying trade upon the sea. Even the name of Webster is not to be found among those who voted for the final passage of the bill. The majority in its favor was, however, nearly two to one. In the Senate, the vote was nearly four to one for it. Though Southern in its immediate origin, it certainly had the support of the nation, and was regarded as a great measure of national independence. The opposition made to it by Randolph and Telfair, and by the remnant of the New England Federalists, was regarded as unnational and unpatriotic. It contributed to the complete disappearance of the Federal party from the arena of national politics.

The Army and

Navy Bills.

This Congress gave, however, an even surer test of the growth of the national spirit among the people than either the Bank Act or the Tariff Act. It was the series of acts for the increase of the Army and the Navy, and for their thorough reorganization. The Republican doctrine of 1800 was, that there was no need of a national army; that the militias of the Commonwealths were a sufficient military force; and that a standing army was dangerous to liberty. By the Act of March 16th, 1802, Congress fixed the peace establishment at two regiments of infantry, and one regiment of artillerists, not more than thirty-five hundred men. No increase of this force had been permitted between 1802 and 1812.

During the War of 1812-15, the Commonwealths of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut taught the nation how much, or rather how little, reliance was to be placed upon the militias of the Commonwealths in the defence of the country against foreign attack. In spite of the plain provision of the Constitution, and the Act of Congress in accordance therewith, empowering the President to call the militias of the Commonwealths into the service of the United States, the Governors of Massachusetts and Connecticut disputed the President's authority in this respect and refused compliance with his orders. Well might the President complain that, even upon this most essential point, the military organization, the United States was not a nation. With such an experience as this, Congress and the people were thoroughly converted from the particularistic doctrinism of 1800, and now manifested their strong national spirit in the willingness to place a large standing military force in the hands of the central Government in times of peace.

By the Act of March 3rd, 1816, Congress fixed the peace footing of the Army at ten thousand men, excluding the corps of engineers; and by the Act of April 24th, of the same year, it reorganized, or rather re-created, the general staff, upon the principle that the staff should be as complete in time of peace as in time of war.

The Navy received similar attention and favor. By the Act of April 29th, 1816, Congress appropriated eight millions of dollars for the construction of nine seventy-four-gun ships, twelve forty-four-gun ships, and three steam batteries.

Evidently the fear that the President would, by virtue of his power as commander-in-chief of a large standing army and navy, declare himself emperor, and make the military and naval officers his dukes and counts, had vanished in the smoke of the burned Capitol, and, in place of this silly terror of crowns and diadems, a thoroughgoing confidence in the national Government had established itself in the brain and heart of the people and of their leaders.

These great national measures occupied the attention of Congress to such a degree, during the session of 1815-16, as to delay the consideration of the question of a system of national internal improvements to the second session, that of 1816-17.

The Bill for

National

Improvements.

At the opening of this session, Mr. Calhoun, again, came forward with a motion for the appointment of a committee, which should consider the question of setting aside the bonus to be paid by the United States Bank to the Government for its charter, and the net annual proceeds received by the Government upon its shares in the Bank, as a permanent fund for internal improvements. The motion was quickly carried, and the committee, consisting of two members from the North and two from the South, with Mr. Calhoun for chairman, was appointed. This was December 16th, 1816. In a week from this date the committee presented a bill providing for the setting apart of the funds above indicated for the construction of roads and canals.

Mr. Calhoun's

advocacy of

this Bill.

Mr. Calhoun opened the debate upon the bill, and his speech abounded with the same national ideas and patriotic sentiments which characterized his arguments in support of the Bank and Tariff measures. After asserting that the moment was most opportune for the consideration of the question, on account of the fact that all party and sectional feelings had given way to "a liberal and an enlightened regard for the general concerns of the nation," Mr. Calhoun again pronounced his warning concerning the greatest danger to which the country was exposed, namely, disunion, and declared it to be the highest duty of American statesmen so to form the policies of the Government as to counteract all tendencies toward sectionalism and disunion. He contended that from this point of view nothing could be more necessary or more advantageous than a large national system of internal improvements, establishing the great lines of commerce and intercourse for binding together all the parts of the country in interests, ideas, and sentiments.

No part of his argument, however, is so instructive to the student of American constitutional history as the observations upon the question of the constitutionality of the bill. He said that he was no advocate of refined reasoning upon the Constitution; that "the instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on; that it ought to be construed with plain good sense; and that when so construed nothing could be more express than the Constitution upon this very point." The clause to which he referred was that which confers upon Congress the power "to levy and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises; to pay the debts and provide for the common defence and general welfare of the United States." Mr. Calhoun claimed that these words were to be interpreted as vesting in Congress the power to appropriate money for the common defence and general welfare of the country at its own discretion, both as to object and amount. He insisted that a generous interpretation of the power to raise and appropriate money was absolutely required, in order to avoid the necessity of placing a forced construction upon other powers. It was all in his best strain, and showed Mr. Calhoun still as the chief advocate of national union and national development. No other person seemed to equal him in breadth of view and purity of patriotism.

The opposition

to the Internal

Improvements Bill.

The measure met, however, with more opposition than the Bank Bill or the Tariff Bill had experienced. Two years of peace had cooled the ardor of the national spirit somewhat, and the people were dropping back into the narrow spheres of ordinary life and business routine.

Moreover, the great hue and cry raised by the demagogues and the press over the bill, passed at the previous session, changing the pay of the members of Congress from a per diem of six dollars during attendance to an annual salary of fifteen hundred dollars, had made the members timid about the appropriation of money, and disinclined to obligate the Treasury to anything beyond absolutely necessary expenses.

Passage of the

Bill by Congress.

Nevertheless, the great power and earnestness with which Mr. Calhoun addressed himself to the task of carrying the bill through its different stages were crowned with success. It finally passed both Houses, in a slightly modified form, during the last week of the Fourteenth Congress and of President Madison's second term.

Veto of the

Bill by the

President.

To the great surprise of the friends of the measure, the President returned the bill to Congress on March 3rd, with his objections. These were, summed up in a single sentence, that there was no warrant in the Constitution for the exercise of the power by Congress to pass such a bill. The President held that Congress could appropriate money only to such objects as were placed by the Constitution under the jurisdiction of the general Government. He, therefore, repudiated Calhoun's latitudinarian view that Congress was referred to its own discretion merely in the appropriation of money for the advancement of the general welfare. He acknowledged the desirability of attaining the object contemplated by the bill, and indicated that an amendment to the Constitution, expressly conferring upon Congress the power in question, was the proper way to deal with the subject. He had, as we have seen, recommended the consideration of the question of internal improvements in both of his annual messages to the Fourteenth Congress, and it was chiefly for this reason that the veto was so unexpected. It is true that, in both of these messages, he had expressed some doubt in regard to the power of Congress over the subject, but it was supposed that this was only his cautious way of approaching a new thing, and that he would certainly defer to the views of the Congressional majority.

It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Madison belonged to the first generation of the Republicans, and that the principle of the party, in the period of its origin, was strict construction of the Constitution in regard to the powers of the general Government. He had been driven by the younger men into the War, and into the national policies which it occasioned and produced, and it is at least intelligible that he returned to his earlier creed as the country settled down again into the humdrum of ordinary life.

The failure

of Congress

to override

the veto.

The national Republicans looked upon his act, however, as an apostasy, and the House of Representatives repassed the bill by an increased majority and with considerable feeling. The majority was still, however, not sufficient to overcome the veto, and thus the first earnest attempt to commit the nation to a general system of internal improvements failed, failed through the resurrection of a spirit in the retiring President, which was destined soon to take possession of many who denounced it then as mean and narrow, and to lead the whole country back into those cramping tenets of particularism from which war and bloodshed alone could deliver it.