And their case was by no means hopeless. In the electoral college of
1832 these Northeastern States would cast 131 of the total 286 votes. If
the industrial forces could hold their communities together as the West
had learned to do, and regain their former hold on Ohio, their candidate
would again be successful. Losing the Presidency, they would still have,
after the apportionment of 1831, a majority of 10 in the Federal House
of Representatives, which would guarantee the protective policy against
serious modification. And the moral support of the Supreme Court was not
without value. Thus if the new President and the Senate be conceded, the
popular branch of Congress and the national judiciary would make steady
bulwarks.
If there were sections of New England, like Maine, or of the Middle
States, like western Pennsylvania, whose people would not support the
industrial program, there were dominant sections of the old South, like
eastern Virginia and all South Carolina, where the leaders either
feared or hated Jackson. Nor did all the West love the South. In the
States which bordered the Ohio River most men demanded internal
improvements at national expense, which all knew the South could not
grant. With the ablest New England and Middle States leaders in the
Senate and House, why might not the arrangement of 1825 be renewed? It
was, then, with every expectation of victory in 1832 that the sanguine
Clay came back to Congress in December, 1831; even John Quincy Adams,
who now became a member of the House, was not without hope that the
ill-selected Cabinet of Jackson would go to pieces and that a
"restoration" would follow in due time. Washington was to be the scene
of still another conflict of the sections that would threaten the very
existence of the Union, not yet accustomed to the idea of a compact
nationality.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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