359. Anti-slavery Agitation.—The tariff was not destined to remain the chief grievance of the Southerners. They were soon far more concerned with the growing agitation against slavery which was being waged by determined men and women in the North. At the head of these abolitionists, as they were styled, stood William Lloyd Garrison, who in 1831 established his anti-slavery paper, The Liberator, in Boston. Up to this time many leading Southerners, including Washington and Jefferson, had deplored the existence of slavery without seeing how to get rid of it. Now, feeling outraged by the attacks made upon their section, and fearing other slave insurrections like one incited by Nat Turner in Virginia in 1831, they began to defend their institution as a property right secured to them by law, and a profitable one in view of the increased demand for cotton. Efforts for emancipation, such as those made by representatives of the mountain districts of Virginia, in a convention held in that state in 1829–1830, were abandoned. A pro-slavery literature was produced, which treated slavery not as an evil to be abated, but as a benefit to be spread. Stricter penal laws were enacted with regard to the blacks, and the abolitionists were denounced and threatened. The latter received at first similar treatment in the North, where they were frequently mobbed. They continued to make proselytes, however, and by 1836 had put the nation in a turmoil, as a result of their petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.

360. Abolitionist Petitions to Congress.—The Southerners, alarmed at the thought of the bad effects upon their interests that debate on these petitions might have, secured the passage of resolutions tabling them. But they found it hard to silence such an advocate as John Quincy Adams, who had not disdained to serve his country in the House of Representatives after having held the highest office open to a citizen. Adams was not an abolitionist, but he did believe in the right of all citizens to petition Congress, and until his death, in 1848, he championed the cause of liberty in the most eloquent way. Soon, too, the Southerners had the difficult task of disposing of the abolitionist pamphlets sent through the mails. As a result of their efforts to suppress freedom of speech and kindred rights, the cause they were opposing gained in strength. It had its martyr in E. P. Lovejoy, murdered in Alton, Illinois, in 1837, and its fiery orator in Wendell Phillips^[158] of Boston. It had the future with it also, but this only the more far-sighted of the Southerners could see. The mass of them saw only that an institution bequeathed to them by their fathers and, as they believed, essential to their comfort and prosperity, was being assailed by men who, as a rule, had had little close contact with it. In consequence, they naturally made the best resistance they could. They would have been more than human if they had not resisted, but it must be confessed that their speeches and actions were often so extreme in character as to defeat their ends. On the other hand, the abolitionists were partly responsible, in their turn, for the extreme stand taken by the Southerners, for they were very intemperate in their strictures. Because they abhorred slavery, they thought it logical to abhor slaveholders and the Constitution of the United States, which permitted slavery. They were opposed to all efforts to settle the slavery question by political action. They upheld every kind of reform, no matter how extreme, and were continually at loggerheads among themselves. In other words, they were impractical, and their methods in the early years of the agitation were abhorrent to the average American citizen. Nevertheless, they aroused the public conscience on the subject of slavery, and, as leaders of a crusade, their most influential members, men and women, have perhaps never been surpassed.

FINANCIAL DISTURBANCES.

361. Jackson and the Bank.—Meanwhile Jackson, though on the whole a Southern sympathizer, had a battle of his own to fight that interested him far more than the slavery contest. He had an agriculturist’s suspicion of capitalists, and in particular saw in the Bank of the United States a greedy monopoly worked in the interests of his political enemies.^[159] Accordingly he early declared war against that institution, which was at that time in good condition. Henry Clay, his chief rival, took up the issue, and in 1832 had a bill passed for rechartering the corporation. Jackson at once vetoed it, and the country sustained him in the campaign of 1832, in which Henry Clay, as candidate of the National Republicans,^[160] and William Wirt as candidate of the short-lived party known as the Anti-Masons,^[161] were ignominiously defeated.

362. Removal of the Deposits.—Encouraged by the popular support he had received, and believing firmly, and rightly, it would seem, that the bank was a dangerous monopoly, Jackson now resolved to deal it a crushing blow. He secured, after some trouble, a coÖperating Secretary of the Treasury in Roger B. Taney of Maryland, and through him had an order given for the withdrawal of the deposits of public money in the bank and its branches.^[162] This move might under other circumstances have been a wise one, but it was made in an impolitic manner; and by crippling the bank at a period when the nation was carried away by a craze for speculation, it probably helped to pave the way for the great financial panic of 1837. It also brought upon Jackson a vote of censure by the Senate, which he answered in a vigorous protest, and which his friends later, under the lead of Benton, by a rather farcical procedure succeeded in expunging from the Senate Journal.

363. Censure of Jackson’s Action.—Few actions of an American President have been more harshly criticised than that of Jackson toward the Bank of the United States, but it cost him little of his popularity with the masses, because they, like himself, were suspicious of corporate wealth. The wealthy classes, however, denounced him freely, and with some reason. The changes necessitated in his Cabinet in order that his wishes might be carried out suited rather a self-willed sovereign like Louis XIV. than the constitutional executive of a republic. The vindictiveness with which he pursued his policy was appropriate to a small, rather than a great, man. Besides, the whole matter was one for financiers to manage, and Jackson knew more of fighting than he did of finance. Nor was popular acquiescence in his policy a sure indication of its wisdom. On the other hand, the president of the bank, Nicholas Biddle, of Philadelphia, acted with indiscretion and injured his own cause. Clay also was premature in forcing the issue and had a partisan purpose in doing it. The bank had years before been grossly mismanaged (§ 317, note) and might be so again; and when its existence was threatened, it used money in politics. Moreover, after its charter expired, its career under the laws of Pennsylvania was discreditable. Taking all these facts into consideration, we are perhaps justified in concluding that Jackson’s methods of procedure deserve great censure in spite of his integrity, but that what he actually did was not nearly so detrimental to the interests of the country as some persons have considered it.

364. Banks and Speculation.—But the end was not yet. The funds removed from the Bank of the United States were deposited in state banks, controlled by Democrats, and afterwards known as “Jackson’s Pets.” This governmental favor caused the numbers of such banks to increase, and thus stimulated the universal desire to indulge in financial speculation. The public revenues meanwhile increased through speculation in public lands and through larger imports, and as the national debt had been paid off shortly before, it was hard to decide what to do with the accumulated funds. An outlet for this surplus was found in non-interest-bearing loans to the states in proportion to their representation in Congress. This distribution of the surplus—a favorite project of Clay’s and destined later to complicate the financial situation still more seriously—increased the tendency toward extravagant internal improvements, and thus fed the fever for speculation which, as we have just said, both supported and was supported by a loose system of banking under state control.

365. Wild-cat Banks.—The “Wild-cat Banks,” as the banks established under this system were called, were especially numerous in the South and West, and their paper notes were of such varying values that the public suffered great inconvenience.^[163] Journals were published for the special purpose of reporting from day to day the value of the various issues and for the purpose of pointing out how traders could avoid being deceived by the numerous counterfeits. There was a legitimate demand for an increase of the circulating medium, and the government had tried to meet this by enlarging the output of gold and silver coins and by arranging for notes to be issued by the deposit banks on a specie reserve of one-third of their circulation. But these measures were not sufficient. The states chartered banks recklessly, and the banks issued their notes in wild profusion.

366. The “Specie Circular.”—Jackson became alarmed, since the notes of even the specie-paying banks received by the Treasury for the purchase of public lands were declining in value. He therefore issued his famous “Specie Circular,” which announced, against the advice of the Cabinet, that thenceforth only gold and silver would be received in payment for public lands. This order naturally affected the banks in the West disastrously, forced back a mass of notes upon the East, and induced a general want of confidence, which was all the greater on account of the previous speculative want of caution.

367. Election of Van Buren.—Jackson, like Jefferson, however, was fortunate enough to lay down his office in time to leave his successor to meet the impending storm. That successor was Martin Van Buren, who by the irony of fate had helped his chief to secure two of his greatest successes. These were the opening of the ports of the British West Indies to American ships, and the acknowledgment by France of the justice of the French spoliation claims, which were based on depredations committed on American commerce during the Napoleonic rÉgime.^[164] Still, Van Buren partly deserved his fate, for he had been subservient to Jackson and had succeeded him on the distinct pledge that he would follow in his footsteps. He was the first real politician to reach the White House, but he had statesmanly qualities also. If he had not bound himself to Jackson so closely that he was often forced to act against his own judgment, he would probably rank among the greatest Presidents. But adherence to Jackson’s policy—for example, in the bullying attitude assumed toward Mexico on account of Texas—undoubtedly hurt his career and perhaps his conscience. Still, Jackson had stood by him after the Senate had unjustifiably failed to confirm his appointment to the English mission; and, first as Vice President, afterward as President, he had great cause to bless “Old Hickory’s” friendship.

References.—General Works: see Chapter XVIII.

Special Works: same as for Chapter XX., except the two books mentioned last. See also lives of leading abolitionists,—Birney, Wendell Phillips, etc., especially the biography of William Lloyd Garrison, written by his children, and A. H. Stephens, War Between the States; Jefferson Davis, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government.