The Old Northwest: A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and BeyondOgg, Frederic Austin
History
The Old Northwest: A Chronicle of the Ohio Valley and Beyond
Ogg, Frederic Austin
Northwest, Old -- History; Ohio River Valley -- History
So with the tariff. The cry of the East for protection to infant
industries was echoed by the struggling manufacturers of Cincinnati,
Louisville, and other towns; while a protective tariff as a means of
building up the home market for foodstuffs and raw materials seemed to
the Westerner an altogether reasonable and necessary expedient. Ohio
alone in the Northwest had an opportunity to vote on the protective bill
of 1816, and gave its enthusiastic support. Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois
voted unitedly for the bills of 1820, 1824, 1828, and 1832. The
principal western champion of the protective policy was Henry Clay, a
Kentuckian; but the Northwest supported the policy more consistently
than did Clay's own State and section.
On the National Bank the position of the Northwest was no less emphatic.
The people were little troubled by the question of constitutionality;
but believing that the bank was an engine of tyranny in the hands of an
eastern aristocracy, they were fully prepared to support Jackson in his
determination to extinguish that "un-American monopoly."
There were other subjects upon which agreement was reached either with
difficulty or not at all. One of these was the form of local government
which should be adopted. Southerners and New Englanders brought to their
new homes widely differing political usages. The former were accustomed
to the county as the principal local unit of administration. It was a
relatively large division, whose affairs were managed by elective
officers, mainly a board of commissioners. The New Englanders, on the
other hand, had grown up under the town-meeting system and clung to the
notion that an indispensable feature of democratic local government is
the periodic assembling of the citizens of a community for legislative,
fiscal, and electoral purposes. The Illinois constitution of 1818 was
made by Southerners, and naturally it provided for the county system.
But protest from the "Yankee" elements became so strong that in the new
constitution of 1848 provision was made for township organization
wherever the people of a county wanted it; and this form of government,
at first prevalent only in the northern counties, is now found in most
of the central and southern counties as well.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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