This Country of OursMarshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
History
This Country of Ours
Marshall, H. E. (Henrietta Elizabeth)
United States -- History
Before, when a new President was elected, the Cabinet, secretaries
and such people were of course changed also. But Jackson was
not content with that. He thought that it was only right that his
friends who had helped him to become President should be rewarded.
So he turned out all sorts of civil servants, such as post masters,
customs officers, and clerks of all sorts. This he did, not because
they were dishonest, or useless, or unfit for their positions, but
simply because they did not think as he did in politics. And in
their places he put his own friends who did think as he did.
In the first year of his "reign" he thus removed two thousand
people, it is said. The whole of Washington too, was filled with
unrest and suspicion, no man knowing when it would be his turn to
go. Many of the government clerks were now old men who had been in
the service almost since the government was established. When they
were turned out, there was nothing for them to do, nothing but
beggary for them to look forward to. In consequence there was a
great deal of misery and poverty. But the removals went on.
In time this became known as the "spoils system," because in a speech
a senator talking of this matter said, "to the victor belongs the
spoils of the enemy."
But something much more serious soon began to call for attention.
You remember that the Tariff Bill of 1828 had been called the
Tariff of Abominations, and that the people in the South objected
to it very much. A feeling had begun to grow up that the interests
of the North and the South were different, and that the North had
too much power, and the South too little. So some Southern men began
to declare that if any state decided that a law made by Congress
was not lawful according to Constitution they might set that law
at nought in their own state and utterly disregard it.
This was called nullification because it made a law null and void.
Wise men saw at once that if this was allowed it would simply break
up the Union and every state would soon do just as it liked.
So when a Southern statesman announced this theory of delusion and
folly 'Liberty first and Union afterwards,' Daniel Webster answered
him.
Webster was a splendid looking man with a great mane of black hair
and flashing black eyes. He was, too, a magnificent speaker and a
true patriot.
As he spoke men listened in breathless silence, spellbound, by the
low clear voice. In burning words Webster called to their love of
country. He touched their hearts, he awoke their pride, he appealed
to their plain common sense.
"Let us not see upon our flag," he said, "those words of delusion
and folly 'Liberty first and Union afterwards'; but everywhere,
spread all over in characters of living light, blazing on all its
ample folds, as they float over the sea and over the land, and in
every wind under the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to
every true American heart, 'Liberty and Union,' now and for ever,
one and inseparable."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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