304. Jackson's Conception of the Presidency. The fathers of the American Revolution in their long contest against the royal governors in the colonies had come to regard a strong executive as the greatest menace to freedom. Therefore in the first form of government that they devised (the Articles of Confederation) they created no executive department at all. The improved Constitution of 1787 made provision for a president, but gave Congress, especially the Senate, a very considerable control over his policies. During the first forty years of our national history our presidents had respected the spirit of the framers of the Constitution and regarded themselves as the agents chosen by the people to execute the will of the people's representatives in Congress. But with Andrew Jackson a new type of president appeared. Jackson considered himself in no way bound to defer to Congress. He thought of himself rather as the champion of the great mass of the American people. Congress and the courts, he feared, had become corrupted by association with the moneyed men of the country and by too long a tenure of power. The favorite historical analogy of Jackson and his supporters was the Roman tribune, an officer chosen by the common folk of Rome to protect them from oppressive legislation by the rich and high-born patricians.

305. His Absolutism of Character. Jackson interpreted his election in 1828 as a rebuke to the "corrupt" manipulation of Congress, which had seated Adams in the presidential chair in 1825. He came into the office with the vindictive elation of a man who had been kept out of his rightful inheritance for four years. His strong will, doubly steeled by long years of military command, refused to bend to entreaty or threat. From his own intense devotion to his country

he drew the hasty and unwarranted conclusion that all who were opposed to him were enemies of that country. He was seldom without a personal quarrel, and, like all combative natures, he often lacked the judgment to know what causes were worth a controversy and what were not. His partisan temperament acted like a strong chemical reagent, bringing out the political color of every mind with which it came into contact. Everybody had to take sides for or against Andrew Jackson. Least of all our presidents-less even than Lincoln or Roosevelt-did he sink his personality in his office. He dominated the office and even scouted its traditions. He made it Jacksonian. With all his rancor against the "effete dynasties" and "pampered minions" of Europe, he often conducted himself more like a monarch than like the sworn defender of a democratic constitution; so that his presidency has been called "the reign of Andrew Jackson."

306. His Lack of Consistency. A will so absolute as Jackson's could have little regard for consistency. In 1816 he had written to President-elect Monroe that party spirit was a monstrous thing, unworthy of a great and free nation; yet when he himself came into office in 1829 he showed himself the most partisan president our country has ever had. Between his inauguration in March and the meeting of his first Congress in December he removed over a thousand government officials in order to make places for men who had supported his campaign, whereas all the previous presidents had together made less than a hundred political removals. He had protested vigorously against allowing any member of Congress to be appointed to an executive office, yet he himself chose four out of the six members of his first cabinet from Congress. In each of his annual messages he advised against a second term, yet he allowed himself, after his first year of office, to be announced through the administration newspapers at Washington and elsewhere as a candidate for reëlection in 1832. He poured out his wrath on the leaders of the preceding administration for "crooked politics," "corrupt bargains," jobbery, and underhand methods; yet he himself carried on his government almost exclusively with the help of shrewd newspaper editors and devoted partisans in minor public offices. Even the official cabinet, with the exception of Van Buren, was ignored in favor of a group of unofficial advisers called the kitchen cabinet.

307. His Indifference to the Tariff. As for the antitariff men of the South, they got small comfort from Jackson. In his first message he scarcely mentioned the tariff, and in his next one (December, 1830), while admitting that the tariff was "too high on some of the comforts of life," he nevertheless declared both that Congress had ⚫ the right to levy a protective tariff and that the policy of protection was desirable. Meanwhile an event had occurred in the United States Senate which greatly inflamed the hostile feelings of North and South and hastened South Carolina into a policy of defiance.

308. The Debate on the Public Lands. The sale of public lands in the West was an important source of income to the national government. The low price of these lands tempted speculators to buy them up and hold them for a rise in price. Accordingly Senator Foote of Connecticut, in December, 1829, proposed a resolution to the effect that no more public land should be put on the market for a time. The Southern and Western members of Congress attributed this motion to the selfish spirit of the Eastern merchants, who, they said, wanted to stop migration to the West in order to keep a mass of cheap laborers for their factories, just as they wanted high duties to protect the output of those factories. During the debate Robert Hayne of South Carolina left the specific subject under discussion, namely, the land sales, to rebuke the attitude of the North in general and of Massachusetts in particular. He accused the Bay State of having shown a narrow, selfish, sectional spirit from the earliest days of the republic. He declared that the only way to preserve the Union of free republics, which the "fathers" wished this country to be, was to resist the economic tyranny of the manufacturing states, which had got control of Congress. The proper method of resistance had already been set forth by Calhoun in his "Exposition.".

309. Daniel Webster's Reply to Hayne. Daniel Webster replied to Hayne in an oration which is considered the greatest speech ever delivered in the halls of Congress (January 26-27, 1830). After defending Massachusetts against the charge of sectionalism, Webster went on to develop the theory of the national government as opposed to the mere league of states which the Southern orators advocated. Not the states, he claimed, but the people of the nation had made the Union. "It is, sir, the people's Constitution, the people's government, made for the people, made by the people, answerable to

the people." If Congress exceeded its powers, there was an arbiter appointed by the Constitution itself, namely, the Supreme Court, which had the authority to declare laws null and void. This authority could not be vested in a state or a group of states. Pennsylvania would annul one law, Alabama another, Virginia a third, and so on. Our national legislature would then become a mockery, and our Constitution, instead of a strong instrument of government, would be a mere collection of topics for endless dispute between the sections of our country. The Union would fall apart. The states would return to the frightful condition of anarchy which followed the Revolutionary War, and our flag, "stained with the blood of fratricidal war," would float over "the dismembered fragments of our once glorious empire." 310. Jackson defends the Union. The echoes of Webster's speech were still ringing through the land when President Jackson gave a public and unmistakable expression of his view of nullification. At a dinner in celebration of Jefferson's birthday (April 13), Jackson responded to a call for a toast with the sentiment, "Our federal Union-it must be preserved!" The vice president, Calhoun, immediately responded with the toast, "Liberty dearer than Union!" Feeling was intense. For the party of Hayne and Calhoun the Union had become a menace to liberty; for the party of Jackson and Webster it was the only condition and guarantee of liberty. When the advocates of nullification in South Carolina were warned by the Union men that their course might bring war, they contemptuously asked these "submission men" whether the "descendants of the heroes of 1776 should be afraid of war!

311. South Carolina annuls the Tariff Acts. In the summer of 1832 a new tariff bill was passed by Congress. Its rates were somewhat lower than those of the "Tariff of Abominations," but still it was highly protective. The Southern members of Congress wrote home from Washington that no help was to be expected from that quarter. A convention met at Columbia in November, 1832, and by the decisive vote of 136 to 26 declared the tariff acts of 1828 and 1832 "null, void, and no law." The people of the state were ordered to pay no duties under these laws after February 1, 1833. At the same time the convention declared that any attempt by Congress to enforce the tariff law in South Carolina, to close her ports or destroy her commerce, would be a just cause for the secession of the state from