Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850Benton, Thomas Hart
History
Thirty Years' View (Vol. 2 of 2): or, A History of the Working of the American Government for Thirty Years, from 1820 to 1850
Benton, Thomas Hart
United States -- Politics and government -- 1815-1861
laws were enacted to protect--so great was the power of the then
chief magistrate, and so rapidly was that power increasing--was
in danger of being sacrificed. He saw that the protective system
was in danger of being swept away entirely, and probably at
the next session of Congress, by the tremendous power of the
individual who then filled the Executive chair; and he felt that
the greatest service that he could render it, would be to obtain
for it 'a lease for a term of years,' to use an expression that
had been heretofore applied to the compromise bill. He saw the
necessity that existed to save the protective system from the
danger which threatened it. He saw the necessity to advance
the great interests of the nation, to avert civil war, and to
restore peace and harmony to a distracted and divided country;
and it was therefore that he had brought forward this measure.
The senator from South Carolina, to betray still further and
more strikingly the characteristics which belonged to him, said,
that in consequence of his (Mr. C.'s) remarks this very day, all
obligations towards him on the part of himself (Mr. CALHOUN),
of the State of South Carolina, and the whole South, were
cancelled. And what right had the senator to get up and assume
to speak of the whole South, or even of South Carolina herself?
If he was not mistaken in his judgment of the political signs of
the times, and if the information which came to him was to be
relied on, a day would come, and that not very distant neither,
when the senator would not dare to rise in his place and presume
to speak as he had this day done, as the organ of the gallant
people of the State he represented."
The concluding remark of Mr. Clay was founded on the belief,
countenanced by many signs, that the State of South Carolina
would not go with Mr. Calhoun in support of Mr. Van Buren; but he
was mistaken. The State stood by her distinguished senator, and
even gave her presidential vote for Mr. Van Buren at the ensuing
election--being the first time she had voted in a presidential
election since 1829. Mr. Grundy, and some other senators, put an end
to this episodical and personal debate by turning the Senate to a
vote on the bill before it.
CHAPTER XXIX.
INDEPENDENT TREASURY, OR, DIVORCE OF BANK AND STATE: PASSED IN
THE SENATE: LOST IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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