But he was soon to find the incentive for his greatest speech upon the tariff. Hayne attacked the protective system with all the vigor and venom of a Nullificationist in the making; and Clay replied in the brilliant fighting protectionist speech which ranks as one of the masterful efforts of his life, and was to be used as a textbook for the advocates of the system for fifty years. Read even to-day, after the lapse of almost a century, it has a familiar sound, and transmits its pulsations from the printed page as though the reader felt the heartbeat of the orator. Among the Southerners in the Senate, this speech created the greatest excitement and the gravest forebodings, with John Tyler assailing both the principle of protection and the method of framing bills under the principle. But the most significant note struck by Tyler was the warning that the continuance of the protective policy would inevitably lead to the disruption of the Union. The speeches of both Clay and Tyler were sent broadcast over the country. That of the former delighted protectionists and impressed all. Harrison Gray Otis wrote enthusiastically from Boston, but both James Madison and James Barbour gently questioned the taste of the partisan attack on Albert Gallatin as a “foreigner.”[400] Highly complimentary letters were received by Tyler from John Marshall and James Madison, both of whom favored the reduction of the tariff.[401] And throughout it all, Clay found himself unable to maneuver Jackson or his friends into a position of opposition to the system. Amos Kendall and Blair had their hopes tied to another issue. They had no thought of sacrificing the electoral vote of the Keystone State. The leaders of the Senate opposition to the tariff were Hayne and Tyler, neither of whom was longer considered as in the confidence of the President. Clay’s speech, widely distributed in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York, proved him a champion of the system, but nothing occurred in the Senate to prove Jackson an enemy. This was the situation when the real battle was transferred to the House of Representatives. VI Through some trickery or blunder, that portion of the Presidential Message relating to “relieving the people from unnecessary taxation after the extinguishment of the public debt,” was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means a majority of whose members were hostile to the protective system; and to the Committee on Manufactures was referred that part concerning “manufactures and the modification of the tariff”--a dual reference of the same subject to rival committees. At the head of the Committee on Manufactures was John Quincy Adams--certainly not a spokesman of the Administration; and the chairman of the Committee on Ways and Means was George McDuffie of South Carolina, a protégé of Calhoun, and now an implacable foe of Jackson.