Part 1087

"It was during the Twenty-third Congress, 1835, that the abolition of slavery, especially in the District of Columbia, may be said to have begun to move the public mind at the North. The first petitions presented to Congress for the abolition of slavery, at least the first to attract attention, were presented by Mr. Dickson, from the Canandaigua district, New York, who addressed the House in support of the prayer of the petitioners. Perhaps his speech, more than the petition he presented, served to stir up a feeling on the part of Southern men, and to cause other and numerous similar petitions to be gotten up at the North and sent to Congress. … The labors of the enemies of slavery, or 'Abolitionists,' had commenced, and by indefatigable men who believed they were serving God and the cause of humanity, and consequently it was with them a labor of conscience and duty, with which nothing should be allowed to interfere. Instead of petitions to Congress, they now sent large boxes of tracts, pamphlets, and various publications which the Southern people denominated 'incendiary,' to the post-office at Charleston, South Carolina, and other cities, to be distributed, as directed, to various persons. This increased the complaints and inflammatory articles in the Southern papers. The publications thus sent were stopped in the post-office, and the postmasters addressed the head of the department, Amos Kendall, on the subject, who replied that though the law authorized the transmission of newspapers and pamphlets through the mail, yet the law was intended to promote the general good of the public, and not to injure any section; and intimated that, such being the effect of these publications at the South, postmasters would be justified in withholding them."

_N. Sargent, Public Men and Events, 1817-1853, volume 1, page 294-295._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1835-1837. The inflation of credits, and Speculation. The great collapse.

"When the United States Bank lost the government deposits, late in 1833, they amounted to a little less than $10,000,000. On January 1, 1835, more than a year after the state banks took the deposits, they had increased to a little more than $10,000,000. But the public debt being then paid and the outgo of money thus checked, the deposits had by January 1, 1836, reached $25,000,000, and by June 1, 1836, $41,500,000. This enormous advance represented the sudden increase in the sales of public lands, which were paid for in bank paper, which in turn formed the bulk of the government deposits. … The increase in the sales of public lands was the result of all the organic causes and of all the long train of events which had seated the fever of speculation so profoundly in the American character of the day. … The increase of government deposits was only fuel added to the flames. The craze for banks and credits was unbounded before the removal of the deposits had taken place, and before their great increase could have had serious effect. … The insanity of speculation was in ample though unobserved control of the country while Nicholas Biddle [President of the United States Bank] still controlled the deposits, and was certain to reach a climax whether they stayed with him or went elsewhere. … The distribution of the surplus among the states by the law of 1836 was the last and in some respects the worst of the measures which aided and exaggerated the tendency to speculation. By this bill, all the money above $5,000.000 in the treasury on January 1, 1837, was to be 'deposited' with the states in four quarterly installments commencing on that day. … From the passage of the deposit bill in June, 1836, until the crash in 1837, this superb donation of thirty-seven millions was before the enraptured and deluded vision of the country. Over nine millions and a quarter to be poured into 'improvements' or loaned to the needy,—what a luscious prospect! The lesson is striking and wholesome, and ought not to be forgotten, that, when the land was in the very midst of these largesses, the universal bankruptcy set in. During 1835 and 1836 there were omens of the coming storm. Some perceived the rabid character of the speculative fever. William L. Marcy, governor of New York, in his message of January, 1836, answering the dipsomaniac cry for more banks, declared that an unregulated spirit of speculation had taken capital out of the state; but that the amount so transferred bore no comparison to the enormous speculations in stocks and in real property within the state. … The warning was treated contemptuously; but before the year was out the federal administration also became anxious, and the increase in land sales no longer signified to Jackson an increasing prosperity. … So Jackson proceeded with his sound defense of the famous specie circular, long and even still denounced as the 'causa cansans' of the crisis of 1837. By this circular, issued on July 11, 1836, the secretary of the treasury had required payment for public lands to be made in specie, with an exception until December 15, 1836, in favor of actual settlers and actual residents of the state in which the lands were sold. … Jackson's specie circular toppled over the house of cards, which at best could have stood but little longer. … An insignificant, part of the sales had been lately made to settlers. They were chiefly made to speculators. … Of the real money necessary to make good the paper bubble promises of the speculators not one tenth part really existed. Banks could neither make their debtors pay in gold and silver, nor pay their own notes in gold and silver. So they suspended. The great and long concealed devastation of physical wealth and of the accumulation of legitimate labor by premature improvements and costly personal living, became now quickly apparent. Fancied wealth sank out of sight."

_E. M. Shepard, Martin Van Buren, chapter 8._

ALSO IN: _W. G. Sumner, History of American Currency, pages 102-161._

_F. A. Walker, Money, chapter 21._

_C. Juglar, Brief History of Panics, page 58._

{3374}

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1835-1843. The Second Seminole War.

See FLORIDA: A. D. 1835-1843.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836. The Atherton Gag.

"At this time [1835-36], the Northern abolitionists sent petitions to Congress for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. They contended that as this territory was under the control of the United States' Government, the United States was responsible for slavery there; and that the Free States were bound to do what they could to have slavery brought to an end in that District. But the Slave States were not willing to have anything said on the subject, so they passed what was called a 'gag' law in the House of Representatives, and ruled that all petitions which had any relation to slavery should be laid on the table without being debated, printed or referred. John Quincy Adams opposed this rule resolutely, maintaining that it was wrong and unconstitutional. … He continued to present petitions, as before, for the abolition of slavery in the District. When the day came for petitions he was one of the first to be called upon; and he would sometimes occupy nearly the whole hour in presenting them, though each one was immediately laid on the table. One day he presented 511."

_J. F. Clarke, Anti-Slavery Days, page 45._

The gag-law has sometimes taken the name of the Atherton gag from its New Hampshire author.

_W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, Popular History of the United States, volume 4, page 338._

ALSO IN: _J. H. Gidding, History of the Rebellion, pages 104-124._

_J. T. Morse, Jr., John Quincy Adams, pp. 246-280._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836. Admission of Arkansas into the Union.

See ARKANSAS: A. D. 1819-1836.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836. Jackson's administration reviewed.

"What of the administration as a whole? Parton's view is as follows: 'I must avow explicitly the belief that, notwithstanding the good done by General Jackson during his presidency, his elevation to power was a mistake on the part of the people of the United States. The good which he effected has not continued, while the evil which he began remains.' Sumner, in commenting on 'Jackson's modes of action in his second term,' says: 'We must say of Jackson that he stumbled along through a magnificent career, now and then taking up a chance without really appreciating it; leaving behind him disturbed and discordant elements of good and ill just fit to produce turmoil and dis·aster in the future.' Later he adds: 'Representative institutions are degraded on the Jacksonian theory just as they are on the divine-right theory, or on the theory of the democratic empire. There is not a worse perversion of the American system of government conceivable than to regard the President as the tribune of the people.' The view of von Holst may be inferred from the following passages: 'In spite of the frightful influence, in the real sense of the expression, which he exercised during the eight years of his presidency, he neither pointed out nor opened new ways to his people by the superiority of his mind, but only dragged them more rapidly onward on the road they had long been travelling, by the demoniacal power of his will.' The meaning of the bank struggle is thus defined: 'Its significance lay in the elements which made Jackson able actually and successfully to assert his claims, in conflict both with the constitution and with the idea of republicanism, to a position between Congress and the people as patriarchal ruler of the republic.' Elsewhere he tells us that the 'curse of Jackson's administration' is that it weakened respect for law; that 'the first clear symptom' of 'the decline of a healthy political spirit' was the election and re-election of Jackson to the presidency; that his administration paved a 'broad path for the demoralizing transformation of the American democracy'; and that 'his "reign" receives the stamp which characterizes it precisely from the fact that the politicians knew how to make his character, with its texture of brass, the battering-ram with which to break down the last ramparts which opposed their will.' According to Parton, Sumner, and von Holst, as I understand them, the net result of Jackson's influence upon the American people was to hasten their progress toward political ruin. I think this conclusion erroneous. The gravest accusation against Jackson is, that his influence undermined respect for law. It is plausibly argued that, since he himself was impatient of authority, his example must have stimulated lawlessness in his followers. It may be urged, in reply, that the history of the country does not support the charge. The worst exhibitions of general lawlessness which have disgraced the United States were the anti-abolitionist mobs of Jackson's own day—for which he was not responsible. Since then, the American people, in spite of the demoralizations of the war and reconstruction periods, have steadily grown in obedience to law. … It is a curious circumstance that the relation of Jackson to sectionalism has received very little attention; and yet the growth of sectionalism, i. e., the tendency to divide the Union into two portions, politically separate and independent, is the fact which, from the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the ordinances of secession in 1860, gives our political history its distinctive character. The one important question concerning Jackson, as indeed concerning every public man during the forty years which precede the Civil War, is: What did he do towards saving the Union from sectionalism? … Jackson came before the country as a disciple of Jefferson, and therefore as a believer in state rights. There was, it is true, much in his temper and situation which favored centralization; nevertheless, he was an honest, though moderate and somewhat inconsistent Jeffersonian, and he won and retained the confidence of the state-rights element in the democratic party. Moreover, he identified himself with the newly enfranchised and poorer citizens just rising to political self-consciousness. In these ways, his following came to include a large majority of his fellow-citizens, and, what was of the utmost importance, by far the larger proportion of those whose political character and opinions were as yet plastic. … Jackson became, to a degree never realized by any other man in our history, the trusted leader and teacher of the masses. … This intimate relation to the people, and this unparalleled power over the people, Jackson used to impress upon them his own love of the Union and his own hatred of sectionalism. … His character was altogether national. It is easy to think of Calhoun as a southerner and a South Carolinian; but it would not be easy to think of Jackson as belonging to Tennessee or to the border states. {3375} The distribution of his support in the election of 1832 is instructive. New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania, as well as Tennessee, Georgia, Missouri, were Jackson's states. He was not looked upon as the representative of any particular section. His policy as President showed no trace of sectionalism. Its aim was the welfare of the masses irrespective of section. To him state lines had little meaning; sectional lines, absolutely none. There is another way in which he rendered great though unconscious service to the cause of national unity: he made the government, hitherto an unmeaning abstraction, intelligible and attractive to the people. … The chief value, then, of Jackson's political career, was its educational effect. His strong conviction of the national character of the Union, his brave words and acts in behalf of the rights of the Union, sank deep into the hearts of followers and opponents."

_A. D. Morse, Political Influence of Andrew Jackson (Political Science Quarterly, June, 1886)._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1836. Thirteenth Presidential Election. Martin Van Buren chosen.

"As Vice-president, Van Buren was at the side of Jackson during his second term as President. It was the period of the first experiment in producing panics; of reckless expansions of the currency; of extravagant speculation; of an accumulating surplus revenue; of the last struggles of the Bank of the United States for the continuance of its powers. There was not a difficult question on which Jackson did not open his mind to the Vice-president with complete and affectionate confidence. He has often been heard to narrate incidents illustrating the prompt decision and bold judgment of his younger friend; and in those days of vehement conflicts between the power of the people and interests embodied against that power, the daring energy of the one was well united with the more tranquil intrepidity of the other. How fully this was recognized by the people appears from the action of the Democratic party of the Union. In May, 1835, it assembled in convention at Baltimore, and by a unanimous vote placed Van Buren in nomination as their candidate for the Presidency. … The Democracy of the Union supported Van Buren with entire unanimity. Out of two hundred and eighty-six electoral votes he received one hundred and seventy; and, for the first time, the Democracy of the North saw itself represented in the Presidential chair. Electoral votes were given for Van Buren without regard to geographical divisions: New York and Alabama, Missouri and Maine, Virginia and Connecticut, were found standing together. His election seemed friendly to the harmony and the perpetuity of the Union."

_G. Bancroft, Martin Van Buren. chapter 5._

Mr. Van Buren received a clear majority of the popular vote cast at the election, namely, 762,678, against 735,651 cast in opposition, but divided between four Whig candidates, namely, William H. Harrison, who received 73 electoral votes, Hugh L. White, who received 26, Daniel Webster who received 14, and Willie P. Mangum, who received 11. Richard M. Johnson was chosen Vice President.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1837. Admission of Michigan into the Union.

See MICHIGAN: A. D. 1837.

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1837. The introduction of the Sub-treasury system.

"When the banks went down, they had the government deposits: this was in May, 1837. Van Buren's administration was only two months old. The President was a warm admirer of Jackson, and had formally announced that he would continue his predecessor's policy with respect to the management of the deposits. But the 'experiment' had suddenly culminated. The government deposits were not in its control, and could not be regained; their transfer from one part of the country to another had ceased. … Once more, therefore, the government was confronted with a grave question touching its deposits and the circulating medium. It now essayed a brand-new experiment. This was nothing less than keeping the deposits itself, and transferring and paying them as occasion required; while the people were left to regulate the currency themselves. This was a very wide departure from any former policy. The mode proposed of keeping the public deposits may be briefly described. The treasury building at Washington was to constitute the treasury of the United States, and the public money was to be kept within its vaults. The mint at Philadelphia, the branch at New Orleans, the new custom-houses in New York and Boston, were also to contain branch treasury vaults. Places were also to be prepared at Charleston, St. Louis, and elsewhere. The treasurer of the United States at Washington, and the treasurers of the mints at Philadelphia and New Orleans, were to be 'receivers-general,' to keep the public money. … At the extra session of Congress in 1837, the Executive recommended the sub-treasury experiment. Congress refused to try it, although a majority in both Houses belonged to the same political party as the President. Nevertheless, the system was continued, without legislative sanction, until 1840, when Congress finally passed a bill legalizing the measure. At the presidential election in 1840 a party revolution occurred, and the sub-treasury system, which had formed a prominent issue in the campaign, was unqualifiedly condemned by the people. Congress repealed the law, and passed a bill creating another national bank," which President Tyler vetoed.

See UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1841.

"Thus the keeping of the public money remained in the hands of the government officials, without legislative regulation, until the passage of the sub-treasury bill, in 1846. The system established at that time has been maintained ever since."

_A. S. Bolles, Financial History of the United States, 1789-1860, book 3, chapter 2._

ALSO IN: _T. H. Benton, Thirty Years' View, volume 2, chapters 29, 41, 64-65._

_D. Kinley, The Independent Treasury of the United States._

UNITED STATES OF AMERICA: A. D. 1837-1838. Antislavery Petitions in the Senate. Calhoun's Resolutions, forcing the issue.