United States -- History -- 1815-1861; United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
Some of the Southerners, like Colonel Hayne, frankly replied that they
could not establish manufactures with slave labor; while others, like
Mr. McDuffie, threatened ruin to the Northern manufacturers if they
succeeded in having the duties raised so high as to drive the South,
with its cheap slave labor, into manufactures.
{162} [Sidenote: The character of the bill as reflected in the
analysis of the vote upon it.]
The vote in the House of Representatives reflects quite perfectly the
character of the bill. The members from the wool- and hemp-growing
sections supported the bill; those from the manufacturing section were
indifferent; those from the shipping and commercial sections opposed
it; and those from the planting section opposed it unanimously.
In the Senate, amendments were made to the bill which altered it in
the direction of a slightly increased protection to the manufacturers.
Still, Mr. Webster, who had become a champion of protection since his
section had become a manufacturing section, claimed that the bill was
of little worth to the manufacturers, while the increased duty on hemp
would bear heavily on the shipping interests of New England. He voted
for the bill, however, while his colleague, Mr. Silsbee, voted against
it. The vote in the Senate differed only slightly, as regards
sectional distribution, from that in the House. It was finally passed
by both Houses as amended by the Senate, and was signed by the
President on the nineteenth day of May, 1828; and opposition to it
thereafter must take on the form of petition for its repeal, or that
of resistance to its execution. Before it could come to the latter,
however, three things must be accomplished. The first was the
invention of the morale of such resistance. The second was the
creation of the party of resistance. And the last was the capture of
some existing governmental organization by that party.
[Sidenote: The Tariff of 1828 not a complete party measure.]
While thus it cannot be said that the "Jackson men" voted against this
bill and the Administration men for it, still there was something
which looked like an approach toward this relation. Certainly the
Southern wing of the Jacksonians, or of the Democratic party, as the
Jacksonians now called {163} themselves in distinction from the
National Republicans, opposed the measure with something like
unanimity. Many of Jackson's Northern supporters, however, voted for
the bill, and it may be said that the Democratic party of the North
was then in favor of moderate protection to all the interests of the
country.
The party divisions of 1828 were still largely dominated by
considerations of personal partisanship, and the organization of the
two parties, which had now emerged from the all-comprehending
Republican party, upon the basis of different political creeds, still
lacked much of completion.
[Sidenote: The presidential campaign of 1828 still dominated by
personal considerations.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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