Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"Both charges, sir, are equally without the slightest foundation. The opinion of New England, up to 1824, was founded in the conviction, that, on the whole, it was wisest and best, both for herself and others, that manufacturers should make haste slowly. She felt a reluctance to trust great interests on the foundation of government patronage; for who could tell how long such patronage would last, or with what steadiness, skill, or perseverance, it would continue to be granted? It is now nearly fifteen years, since, among the first things which I ever ventured to say here, was the expression of a serious doubt, whether this government was fitted by its construction, to administer aid and protection to particular pursuits; whether, having called such pursuits into being by indications of its favor, it would not, afterwards, desert them, when troubles come upon them; and leave them to their fate. Whether this prediction, the result, certainly, of chance, and not of sagacity, will so soon be fulfilled, remains to be seen.

"At the same time it is true, that from the very first commencement of the government, those who have administered its concerns have held a tone of encouragement and invitation towards those who should embark in manufactures. All the Presidents, I believe, without exception, have concurred in this general sentiment; and the very first act of Congress, laying duties of impost, adopted the then unusual expedient of a preamble, apparently for little other purpose than that of declaring, that the duties, which it imposed, were imposed for the encouragement and protection of manufactures. When, at the commencement of the late war, duties were doubled, we were told that we should find a mitigation of the weight of taxation in the new aid and succor which would be thus afforded to our own manufacturing labor. Like arguments were urged, and prevailed, but not by the aid of New England votes, when the tariff was afterwards arranged at the close of the war, in 1816. Finally, after a whole winter's deliberation, the act of 1824 received the sanction of both Houses of Congress, and settled the policy of the country. What, then, was New England to do? She was fitted for manufacturing operations, by the amount and character of her population, by her capital, by the vigor and energy of her free labor, by the skill, economy, enterprise, and perseverance of her people. I repeat, what was she, under these circumstances, to do? A great and prosperous rival in her near neighborhood, threatening to draw from her a part, perhaps a great part, of her foreign commerce; was she to use, or to neglect, those other means of seeking her own prosperity which belonged to her character and her condition? Was she to hold out, forever, against the course of the government, and see herself losing, on one side, and yet making no efforts to sustain herself on the other? No, sir. Nothing was left to New England, after the act of 1824, but to conform herself to the will of others. Nothing was left to her, but to consider that the government had fixed and determined its own policy; and that policy was protection."

The question of a protective tariff had now not only become political, but sectional. In the early years of the federal government it was not so. The tariff bills, as the first and the second, that were passed, declared in their preambles that they were for the encouragement of manufactures, as well as for raising revenue; but then the duties imposed were all moderate – such as a revenue system really required; and there were no "minimums" to make a false basis for the calculation of duties, by enacting that all which cost less than a certain amount should be counted to have cost that amount; and be rated at the custom-house accordingly. In this early period the Southern States were as ready as any part of the Union in extending the protection to home industry which resulted from the imposition of revenue duties on rival imported articles, and on articles necessary to ourselves in time of war; and some of her statesmen were amongst the foremost members of Congress in promoting that policy. As late as 1816, some of her statesmen were still in favor of protection, not merely as an incident to revenue, but as a substantive object: and among these was Mr. Calhoun, of South Carolina – who even advocated the minimum provision – then for the first time introduced into a tariff bill, and upon his motion – and applied to the cotton goods imported. After that year (1816) the tariff bills took a sectional aspect – the Southern States, with the exception of Louisiana (led by her sugar-planting interest), against them: the New England States also against them: the Middle and Western States for them. After 1824 the New England States (always meaning the greatest portion when a section is spoken of) classed with the protective States – leaving the South alone, as a section, against that policy. My personal position was that of a great many others in the three protective sections – opposed to the policy, but going with it, on account of the interest of the State in the protection of some of its productions. I moved an additional duty upon lead, equal to one hundred per centum; and it was carried. I moved a duty upon indigo, a former staple of the South, but now declined to a slight production; and I proposed a rate of duty in harmony with the protective features of the bill. No southern member would move that duty, because he opposed the principle: I moved it, that the "American System," as it was called, should work alike in all parts of our America. I supported the motion with some reasons, and some views of the former cultivation of that plant in the Southern States, and its present decline, thus:

"Mr. Benton then proposed an amendment, to impose a duty of 25 cents per pound on imported indigo, with a progressive increase at the rate of 25 cents per pound per annum, until the whole duty amounted to $1 per pound. He stated his object to be two-fold in proposing this duty, first, to place the American System beyond the reach of its enemies, by procuring a home supply of an article indispensable to its existence; and next, to benefit the South by reviving the cultivation of one of its ancient and valuable staples.

"Indigo was first planted in the Carolinas and Georgia about the year 1740, and succeeded so well as to command the attention of the British manufacturers and the British parliament. An act was passed for the encouragement of its production in these colonies, in the reign of George the Second; the preamble to which Mr. B. read, and recommended to the consideration of the Senate. It recited that a regular, ample, and certain supply of indigo was indispensable to the success of British manufacturers; that these manufacturers were then dependent upon foreigners for a supply of this article; and that it was the dictate of a wise policy to encourage the production of it at home. The act then went on to direct that a premium of sixpence sterling should be paid out of the British treasury for every pound of indigo imported into Great Britain, from the Carolinas and Georgia. Under the fostering influence of this bounty, said Mr. B., the cultivation of indigo became great and extensive. In six years after the passage of the act, the export was 217,000 lbs. and at the breaking out of the Revolution it amounted to 1,100,000 lbs. The Southern colonies became rich upon it; for the cultivation of cotton was then unknown; rice and indigo were the staples of the South. After the Revolution, and especially after the great territorial acquisitions which the British made in India, the cultivation of American indigo declined. The premium was no longer paid; and the British government, actuated by the same wise policy which made them look for a home supply of this article from the Carolinas, when they were a part of the British possessions, now looked to India for the same reason. The export of American indigo rapidly declined. In 1800 it had fallen to 400,000 lbs.; in 1814 to 40,000 lbs,; and in the last few years to 6 or 8,000 lbs. In the mean time our manufactories were growing up; and having no supply of indigo at home, they had to import from abroad. In 1826 this importation amounted to 1,150,000 lbs., costing a fraction less than two millions of dollars, and had to be paid for almost entirely in ready money, as it was chiefly obtained from places where American produce was in no demand. Upon this state of facts, Mr. B. conceived it to be the part of a wise and prudent policy to follow the example of the British parliament in the reign of George II. and provide a home supply of this indispensable article. Our manufacturers now paid a high price for fine indigo, no less than $2 50 per pound, as testified by one of themselves before the Committee on Manufactures raised in the House of Representatives. The duty which he proposed was only 40 per cent. upon that value, and would not even reach that rate for four years. It was less than one half the duty which the same bill proposed to lay instanter upon the very cloth which this indigo was intended to dye. In the end it would make all indigo come cheaper to the manufacturer, as the home supply would soon be equal, if not superior to the demand; and in the mean time, it could not be considered a tax on the manufacturer, as he would levy the advance which he had to pay, with a good interest, upon the wearer of the cloth.

"Mr. B. then went into an exposition of the reasons for encouraging the home production of indigo, and showed that the life of the American System depended upon it. Neither cotton nor woollen manufactures could be carried on without indigo. The consumption of that article was prodigious. Even now, in the infant state of our manufactories, the importation was worth two millions of dollars: and must soon be worth double or treble that sum. For this great supply of an indispensable article, we were chiefly indebted to the jealous rival, and vigilant enemy, of these very manufactures, to Great Britain herself. Of the 1,150,000 lbs. of indigo imported, we bring 620,000 lbs. from the British East Indies; which one word from the British government would stop for ever; we bring the further quantity of 120,000 lbs. from Manilla, a Spanish possession, which British influence and diplomacy could immediately stop: and the remainder came from different parts of South America, and might be taken from us by the arts of diplomacy, or by a monopoly of the whole on the part of our rival. A stoppage of a supply of indigo for one year, would prostrate all our manufactories, and give them a blow from which they would not recover in many years. Great Britain could effect this stoppage to the amount of three fourths of the whole quantity by speaking a single word, and of the remainder by a slight exertion of policy, or the expenditure of a sum sufficient to monopolize for one year, the purchase of what South America sent into the market.

"Mr. B. said he expected a unanimous vote in favor of his amendment. The North should vote for it to secure the life of the American System; to give a proof of their regard for the South; to show that the country south of the Potomac is included in the bill for some other purpose besides that of oppression. The South itself, although opposed to the further increase of duties, should vote for this duty; that the bill, if it passes, may contain one provision favorable to its interests. The West should vote for it through gratitude for fifty years of guardian protection, generous defence, and kind assistance, which the South had given it under all its trials; and for the purpose of enlarging the market, increasing the demand in the South and its ability to purchase the horses, mules, and provisions which the West can sell nowhere else. For himself he had personal reasons for wishing to do this little justice to the South. He was a native of one of these States (N. Carolina) – the bones of his father and his grandfathers rested there. Her Senators and Representatives were his early and his hereditary friends. The venerable Senator before him (Mr. Macon) had been the friend of him and his, through four generations in a straight line; the other Senator (Mr. Branch) was his schoolfellow: the other branch of the legislature, the House of Representatives, also showed him in the North Carolina delegation, the friends of him and his through successive generations. Nor was this all. He felt for the sad changes which had taken place in the South in the last fifty years. Before the Revolution it was the seat of wealth as well as of hospitality. Money, and all that it commanded, abounded there. But how now? All this is reversed.

"Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in the regions north of the Potomac, and this in the midst of the fact that the South, in four staples alone, in cotton, tobacco, rice and indigo (while indigo was one of its staples), had exported produce since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred million of dollars, and the North had exported comparatively nothing. This sum was prodigious; it was nearly equal to half the coinage of the mint of Mexico since the conquest by Cortez. It was twice or thrice the amount of the product of the three thousand gold and silver mines of Mexico, for the same period of fifty years. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth; but what was the fact? In place of wealth, a universal pressure for money was felt; not enough for current expenses; the price of all property down; the country drooping and languishing; towns and cities decaying; and the frugal habits of the people pushed to the verge of universal self-denial, for the preservation of their family estates. Such a result is a strange and wonderful phenomenon. It calls upon statesmen to inquire into the cause; and if they inquire upon the theatre of this strange metamorphosis, they will receive one universal answer from all ranks and all ages, that it is federal legislation which has worked this ruin. Under this legislation the exports of the South have been made the basis of the federal revenue. The twenty odd millions annually levied upon imported goods, are deducted out of the price of their cotton, rice and tobacco, either in the diminished price which they receive for these staples in foreign ports, or in the increased price which they pay for the articles they have to consume at home. Virginia, the two Carolinas and Georgia, may be said to defray three fourths of the annual expense of supporting the federal government; and of this great sum annually furnished by them, nothing, or next to nothing, is returned to them in the shape of government expenditure. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction; it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted and perennial stream; it takes the course of trade and of exchange; and this is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this; it does it by the simple process of eternally taking away from the South, and returning nothing to it. If it returned to the South the whole, or even a good part of what it exacted, the four States south of the Potomac might stand the action of this system, as the earth is enabled to stand the exhausting influence of the sun's daily heat by the refreshing dews which are returned to it at night; but as the earth is dried up, and all vegetation destroyed in regions where the heat is great, and no dews returned, so must the South be exhausted of its money and its property by a course of legislation which is for ever taking from it, and never returning any thing to it.

"Every new tariff increases the force of this action. No tariff has ever yet included Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, within its provisions, except to increase the burdens imposed upon them. This one alone, presents the opportunity to form an exception, by reviving and restoring the cultivation of one of its ancient staples, – one of the sources of its wealth before the Revolution. The tariff of 1828 owes this reparation to the South, because the tariff of 1816 contributed to destroy the cultivation of indigo; sunk the duty on the foreign article, from twenty-five to fifteen cents per pound. These are the reasons for imposing the duty on indigo, now proposed. What objections can possibly be raised to it? Not to the quality; for it is the same which laid the foundation of the British manufactures, and sustained their reputation for more than half a century; not to the quantity; for the two Carolinas and Georgia alone raised as much fifty years ago as we now import, and we have now the States of Louisiana, Alabama, and Mississippi, and the Territories of Florida and Arkansas, to add to the countries which produce it; not to the amount of the duty; for its maximum will be but forty per cent., only one half of the duty laid by this bill on the cloth it is to dye; and that maximum, not immediate, but attained by slow degrees at the end of four years, in order to give time for the domestic article to supply the place of the imported. And after all, it is not a duty on the manufacturer, but on the wearer of the goods; from whom he levies, with a good interest on the price of the cloths, all that he expends in the purchase of materials. For once, said Mr. B., I expect a unanimous vote on a clause in the tariff. This indigo clause must have the singular and unprecedented honor of an unanimous voice in its favor. The South must vote for it, to revive the cultivation of one of its most ancient and valuable staples; the West must vote for it through gratitude for past favors – through gratitude for the vote on hemp this night[2 - "The vote on hemp this night." In rejecting Mr. Webster's motion to strike out the duty on hemp, and a vote in which the South went unanimously with the West. —Note by Mr. B.]– and to save, enlarge, and increase the market for its own productions; the North must vote for it to show their disinterestedness; to give one proof of just feeling towards the South; and, above all, to save their favorite American System from the deadly blow which Great Britain can at any moment give it by stopping or interrupting the supplies of foreign indigo; and the whole Union, the entire legislative body, must vote for it, and vote for it with joy and enthusiasm, because it is impossible that Americans can deny to sister States of the Confederacy what a British King and a British Parliament granted to these same States when they were colonies and dependencies of the British crown."

Mr. Hayne, of South Carolina, seconded my motion in a speech of which this is an extract:

"Mr. Hayne said he was opposed to this bill in its principles as well as in its details. It could assume no shape which would make it acceptable to him, or which could prevent it from operating most oppressively and unjustly on his constituents. With these views, he had determined to make no motion to amend the bill in any respect whatever; but when such motions were made by others, and he was compelled to vote on them, he knew no better rule than to endeavor to make the bill consistent with itself. On this principle he had acted in all the votes he had given on this bill. He had endeavored to carry out to its legitimate consequences what gentlemen are pleased to miscall the 'American System.' With a fixed resolution to vote against the bill, he still considered himself at liberty to assist in so arranging the details as to extend to every great interest, and to all portions of the country, as far as may be practicable, equal protection, and to distribute the burdens of the system equally, in order that its benefits as well as its evils may be fully tested. On this principle, he should vote for the amendment of the gentleman from Missouri, because it was in strict conformity with all the principles of the bill. As a southern man, he would ask no boon for the South – he should propose nothing; but he must say that the protection of indigo rested on the same principles as every other article proposed to be protected by this bill, and he did not see how gentlemen could, consistently with their maxims, vote against it. What was the principle on which this bill was professedly founded? If there was any principle at all in the bill, it was that, whenever the country had the capacity to produce an article with which any imported article could enter into competition, the domestic product was to be protected by a duty. Now, had the Southern States the capacity to produce indigo? The soil and climate of those States were well suited to the culture of the article. At the commencement of the Revolution our exports of the article amounted to no less than 1,100,000 lbs. The whole quantity now imported into the United States is only 1,150,000 lbs.; so that the capacity of the country to produce a sufficient quantity of indigo to supply the wants of the manufacturers is unquestionable. It is true that the quantity now produced in the country is not great.

"In 1818 only 700 lbs. of domestic indigo were exported.

"In 1825 9,955 do.

"In 1826 5,289 do.

"This proves that the attention of the country is now directed to the subject. The senator from Indiana, in some remarks which he made on this subject yesterday, stated that, according to the principles of the American System (so called), protection was not extended to any article which the country was not in the habit of exporting. This is entirely a mistake. Of the articles protected by the tariff of 1824, as well as those included in this bill, very few are exported at all. Among these are iron, woollens, hemp, flax, and several others. If indigo is to be protected at all, the duties proposed must surely be considered extremely reasonable, the maximum proposed being much below that imposed by this bill on wool, woollens, and other articles. The duty on indigo till 1816, was 25 cents per pound. It was then (in favor of the manufacturers) reduced to 15 cents. The first increase of duty proposed here, is only to put back the old duty of 25 cents per pound, equal to an ad valorem duty of from 10 to 15 per cent. – and the maximum is only from 40 to 58 per cent. ad valorem, and that will not accrue for several years to come. With this statement of facts, Mr. H. said he would leave the question in the hands of those gentlemen who were engaged in giving this bill the form in which it is to be submitted to the final decision of the Senate."

The proposition for this duty on imported indigo did not prevail. In lieu of the amount proposed, and which was less than any protective duty in the bill, the friends of the "American System" (constituting a majority of the Senate) substituted a nominal duty of five cents on the pound – to be increased five cents annually for ten years – and to remain at fifty. This was only about twenty per centum on the cost of the article, and that only to be attained after a progression of ten years; while all other duties in the bill were from four to ten times that amount – and to take effect immediately. A duty so contemptible, so out of proportion to the other provisions of the bill, and doled out in such miserable drops, was a mockery and insult; and so viewed by the southern members. It increased the odiousness of the bill, by showing that the southern section of the Union was only included in the "American System" for its burdens, and not for its benefits. Mr. McDuffie, in the House of Representatives, inveighed bitterly against it, and spoke the general feeling of the Southern States when he said:

"Sir, if the union of these States shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, the historian who records these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century, under such a system of legislation. Its inevitable tendency is to corrupt, not only the public functionaries, but all those portions of the Union and classes of society who have an interest, real or imaginary, in the bounties it provides, by taxing other sections and other classes. What, sir, is the essential characteristic of a freeman? It is that independence which results from an habitual reliance upon his own resources and his own labor for his support. He is not in fact a freeman, who habitually looks to the government for pecuniary bounties. And I confess that nothing in the conduct of those who are the prominent advocates of this system, has excited more apprehension and alarm in my mind, than the constant efforts made by all of them, from the Secretary of the Treasury down to the humblest coadjutor, to impress upon the public mind, the idea that national prosperity and individual wealth are to be derived, not from individual industry and economy, but from government bounties. An idea more fatal to liberty could not be inculcated. I said, on another occasion, that the days of Roman liberty were numbered when the people consented to receive bread from the public granaries. From that moment it was not the patriot who had shown the greatest capacity and made the greatest sacrifices to serve the republic, but the demagogue who would promise to distribute most profusely the spoils of the plundered provinces, that was elevated to office by a degenerate and mercenary populace. Every thing became venal, even in the country of Fabricius, until finally the empire itself was sold at public auction! And what, sir, is the nature and tendency of the system we are discussing? It bears an analogy, but too lamentably striking, to that which corrupted the republican purity of the Roman people. God forbid that it should consummate its triumph over the public liberty, by a similar catastrophe, though even that is an event by no means improbable, if we continue to legislate periodically in this way, and to connect the election of our Chief Magistrate with the question of dividing out the spoils of certain States – degraded into Roman provinces – among the influential capitalists of the other States of this Union! Sir, when I consider that, by a single act like the present, from five to ten millions of dollars may be transferred annually from one part of the community to another; when I consider the disguise of disinterested patriotism under which the basest and most profligate ambition may perpetrate such an act of injustice and political prostitution, I cannot hesitate, for a moment, to pronounce this very system of indirect bounties, the most stupendous instrument of corruption ever placed in the hands of public functionaries. It brings ambition and avarice and wealth into a combination, which it is fearful to contemplate, because it is almost impossible to resist. Do we not perceive, at this very moment, the extraordinary and melancholy spectacle of less than one hundred thousand capitalists, by means of this unhallowed combination, exercising an absolute and despotic control over the opinions of eight millions of free citizens, and the fortunes and destinies of ten millions? Sir, I will not anticipate or forebode evil. I will not permit myself to believe that the Presidency of the United States will ever be bought and sold, by this system of bounties and prohibitions. But I must say that there are certain quarters of this Union in which, if a candidate for the Presidency were to come forward with the Harrisburg tariff in his hand, nothing could resist his pretensions, if his adversary were opposed to this unjust system of oppression. Yes, sir, that bill would be a talisman which would give a charmed existence to the candidate who would pledge himself to support it. And although he were covered with all the "multiplying villanies of nature," the most immaculate patriot and profound statesman in the nation could hold no competition with him, if he should refuse to grant this new species of imperial donative."

Allusions were constantly made to the combination of manufacturing capitalists and politicians in pressing this bill. There was evidently foundation for the imputation. The scheme of it had been conceived in a convention of manufacturers in the State of Pennsylvania, and had been taken up by politicians, and was pushed as a party measure, and with the visible purpose of influencing the presidential election. In fact these tariff bills, each exceeding the other in its degree of protection, had become a regular appendage of our presidential elections – coming round in every cycle of four years, with that returning event. The year 1816 was the starting point: 1820, and 1824, and now 1828, having successively renewed the measure, with successive augmentations of duties. The South believed itself impoverished to enrich the North by this system; and certainly a singular and unexpected result had been seen in these two sections. In the colonial state, the Southern were the rich part of the colonies, and expected to do well in a state of independence. They had the exports, and felt secure of their prosperity: not so of the North, whose agricultural resources were few, and who expected privations from the loss of British favor. But in the first half century after Independence this expectation was reversed. The wealth of the North was enormously aggrandized: that of the South had declined. Northern towns had become great cities: Southern cities had decayed, or become stationary; and Charleston, the principal port of the South, was less considerable than before the Revolution. The North became a money-lender to the South, and southern citizens made pilgrimages to northern cities, to raise money upon the hypothecation of their patrimonial estates. And this in the face of a southern export since the Revolution to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars! – a sum equal to the product of the Mexican mines since the days of Cortez! and twice or thrice the amount of their product in the same fifty years. The Southern States attributed this result to the action of the federal government – its double action of levying revenue upon the industry of one section of the Union and expending it in another – and especially to its protective tariffs. To some degree this attribution was just, but not to the degree assumed; which is evident from the fact that the protective system had then only been in force for a short time – since the year 1816; and the reversed condition of the two sections of the Union had commenced before that time. Other causes must have had some effect: but for the present we look to the protective system; and, without admitting it to have done all the mischief of which the South complained, it had yet done enough to cause it to be condemned by every friend to equal justice among the States – by every friend to the harmony and stability of the Union – by all who detested sectional legislation – by every enemy to the mischievous combination of partisan politics with national legislation. And this was the feeling with the mass of the democratic members who voted for the tariff of 1828, and who were determined to act upon that feeling upon the overthrow of the political party which advocated the protective system; and which overthrow they believed to be certain at the ensuing presidential election.

CHAPTER XXXV.

THE PUBLIC LANDS – THEIR PROPER DISPOSITION – GRADUATED PRICES – PRE-EMPTION RIGHTS – DONATIONS TO SETTLERS

About the year 1785 the celebrated Edmund Burke brought a bill into the British House of Commons for the sale of the crown lands, in which he laid down principles in political economy, in relation to such property, profoundly sagacious in themselves, applicable to all sovereign landed possessions, whether of kings or republics – applicable in all countries – and nowhere more applicable and less known or observed, than in the United States. In the course of the speech in support of his bill he said:

"Lands sell at the current rate, and nothing can sell for more. But be the price what it may; a great object is always answered, whenever any property is transferred from hands which are not fit for that property, to those that are. The buyer and the seller must mutually profit by such a bargain; and, what rarely happens in matters of revenue, the relief of the subject will go hand in hand with the profit of the Exchequer. * * * The revenue to be derived from the sale of the forest lands will not be so considerable as many have imagined; and I conceive it would be unwise to screw it up to the utmost, or even to suffer bidders to enhance, according to their eagerness, the purchase of objects, wherein the expense of that purchase may weaken the capital to be employed in their cultivation. * * * The principal revenue which I propose to draw from these uncultivated wastes, is to spring from the improvement and population of the kingdom; events infinitely more advantageous to the revenues of the crown than the rents of the best landed estate which it can hold. * * * It is thus I would dispose of the unprofitable landed estates of the crown: throw them into the mass of private property: by which they will come, through the course of circulation and through the political secretions of the State into well-regulated revenue. * * * Thus would fall an expensive agency, with all the influence which attends it."

I do not know how old, or rather, how young I was, when I first took up the notion that sales of land by a government to its own citizens, and to the highest bidder, was false policy; and that gratuitous grants to actual settlers was the true policy, and their labor the true way of extracting national wealth and strength from the soil. It might have been in childhood, when reading the Bible, and seeing the division of the promised land among the children of Israel: it might have been later, and in learning the operation of the feudal system in giving lands to those who would defend them: it might have been in early life in Tennessee, in seeing the fortunes and respectability of many families derived from the 640 acre head-rights which the State of North Carolina had bestowed upon the first settlers. It was certainly before I had read the speech of Burke from which the extract above is taken; for I did not see that speech until 1826; and seventeen years before that time, when a very young member of the General Assembly of Tennessee, I was fully imbued with the doctrine of donations to settlers, and acted upon the principle that was in me, as far as the case admitted, in advocating the pre-emption claims of the settlers on Big and Little Pigeon, French Broad, and Nolichucky. And when I came to the then Territory of Missouri in 1815, and saw land exposed to sale to the highest bidder, and lead mines and salt springs reserved from sale, and rented out for the profit of the federal treasury, I felt repugnance to the whole system, and determined to make war upon it whenever I should have the power. The time came round with my election to the Senate of the United States in 1820: and the years 1824, '26, and '28, found me doing battle for an ameliorated system of disposing of our public lands; and with some success. The pre-emption system was established, though at first the pre-emption claimant was stigmatized as a trespasser, and repulsed as a criminal; the reserved lead mines and salt springs, in the State of Missouri, were brought into market, like other lands; iron ore lands, intended to have been withheld from sale, were rescued from that fate, and brought into market. Still the two repulsive features of the federal land system – sales to the highest bidder, and donations to no one – with an arbitrary minimum price which placed the cost of all lands, good and bad, at the same uniform rate (after the auctions were over), at one dollar twenty-five cents per acre. I resolved to move against the whole system, and especially in favor of graduated prices, and donations to actual and destitute settlers. I did so in a bill, renewed annually for a long time; and in speeches which had more effect upon the public mind than upon the federal legislation – counteracted as my plan was by schemes of dividing the public lands, or the money arising from their sale, among the States. It was in support of one of these bills that I produced the authority of Burke in the extract quoted; and no one took its spirit and letter more promptly and entirely than President Jackson. He adopted the principle fully, and in one of his annual messages to Congress recommended that, as soon as the public (revolutionary) debt should be discharged (to the payment of which the lands ceded by the States were pledged), that they should CEASE TO BE A SUBJECT OF REVENUE, AND BE DISPOSED OF CHIEFLY WITH A VIEW TO SETTLEMENT AND CULTIVATION. His terms of service expired soon after the extinction of the debt, so that he had not an opportunity to carry out his wise and beneficent design.

Mr. Burke considered the revenue derived from the sale of crown lands as a trifle, and of no account, compared to the amount of revenue derivable from the same lands through their settlement and cultivation. He was profoundly right! and provably so, both upon reason and experience. The sale of the land is a single operation. Some money is received, and the cultivation is disabled to that extent from its improvement and cultivation. The cultivation is perennial, and the improved condition of the farmer enables him to pay taxes, and consume dutiable goods, and to sell the products which command the imports which pay duties to the government, and this is the "well-regulated revenue" which comes through the course of circulation, and through the "political secretions" of the State, and which Mr. Burke commends above all revenue derived from the sale of lands. Does any one know the comparative amount of revenue derived respectively from the sales and from the cultivation of lands in any one of our new States where the federal government was the proprietor, and the auctioneer, of the lands? and can he tell which mode of raising money has been most productive? Take Alabama, for example. How much has the treasury received for lands sold within her limits? and how much in duties paid on imports purchased with the exports derived from her soil? Perfect exactitude cannot be attained in the answer, but exact enough to know that the latter already exceeds the former several times, ten times over; and is perennial and increasing for ever! while the sale of the land has been a single operation, performed once, and not to be repeated; and disabling the cultivator by the loss of the money it took from him. Taken on a large scale, and applied to the whole United States, and the answer becomes more definite – but still not entirely exact. The whole annual receipts from land sales at this time (1850) are about two millions of dollars: the annual receipts from customs, founded almost entirely upon the direct or indirect productions of the earth, exceed fifty millions of dollars! giving a comparative difference of twenty-five to one for cultivation over sales; and triumphantly sustaining Mr. Burke's theory. I have looked into the respective amounts of federal revenue, received into the treasury from these two sources, since the establishment of the federal government; and find the customs to have yielded, in that time, a fraction over one thousand millions of dollars net – the lands to have yielded a little less than one hundred and thirty millions gross, not forty millions clear after paying all expenses of surveys, sales and management. This is a difference of twenty-five to one – with the further difference of endless future production from one, and no future production from the land once sold; that is to say, the same acre of land is paying for ever through cultivation, and pays but once for itself in purchase.

Thus far I have considered Mr. Burke's theory only under one of its aspects – the revenue aspect: he presents another – that of population – and here all measure of comparison ceases. The sale of land brings no people: cultivation produces population: and people are the true wealth and strength of nations. These various views were presented, and often enforced, in the course of the several speeches which I made in support of my graduation and donation bills: and, on the point of population, and of freeholders, against tenants, I gave utterance to these sentiments:

"Tenantry is unfavorable to freedom. It lays the foundation for separate orders in society, annihilates the love of country, and weakens the spirit of independence. The farming tenant has, in fact, no country, no hearth, no domestic altar, no household god. The freeholder, on the contrary, is the natural supporter of a free government; and it should be the policy of republics to multiply their freeholders, as it is the policy of monarchies to multiply tenants. We are a republic, and we wish to continue so: then multiply the class of freeholders; pass the public lands cheaply and easily into the hands of the people; sell, for a reasonable price, to those who are able to pay; and give, without price, to those who are not. I say give, without price, to those who are not able to pay; and that which is given, I consider as sold for the best of prices; for a price above gold and silver; a price which cannot be carried away by delinquent officers, nor lost in failing banks, nor stolen by thieves, nor squandered by an improvident and extravagant administration. It brings a price above rubies – a race of virtuous and independent laborers, the true supporters of their country, and the stock from which its best defenders must be drawn.

"'What constitutes a State?
Not high-rais'd battlements, nor labored mound,
Thick wall, nor moated gate;
Nor cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd,
Nor starr'd and spangled courts,
Where low-born baseness wafts perfume to pride:
But MEN! high-minded men,
Who their duties know, but know their RIGHTS,
And, knowing, dare maintain them.'"

In favor of low prices, and donations, I quoted the example and condition of the Atlantic States of this Union – all settled under liberal systems of land distribution which dispensed almost (or altogether in many instances) with sales for money. I said:

"These Atlantic States were donations from the British crown; and the great proprietors distributed out their possessions with a free and generous hand. A few shillings for a hundred acres, a nominal quitrent, and gifts of a hundred, five hundred, and a thousand acres, to actual settlers: such were the terms on which they dealt out the soil which is now covered by a nation of freemen. Provinces, which now form sovereign States, were sold from hand to hand, for a less sum than the federal government now demands for an area of two miles square. I could name instances. I could name the State of Maine – a name, for more reasons than one, familiar and agreeable to Missouri, and whose pristine territory was sold by Sir Ferdinando Gorges to the proprietors of the Massachusetts Bay, for twelve hundred pounds, provincial money. And well it was for Maine that she was so sold; well it was for her that the modern policy of waiting for the rise, and sticking at a minimum of $1 25, was not then in vogue, or else Maine would have been a desert now. Instead of a numerous, intelligent, and virtuous population, we should have had trees and wild beasts. My respectable friend, the senator from that State (Gen. Chandler), would not have been here to watch so steadily the interest of the public, and to oppose the bills which I bring in for the relief of the land claimants. And I mention this to have an opportunity to do justice to the integrity of his heart, and to the soundness of his understanding – qualities in which he is excelled by no senator – and to express my belief that we will come together upon the final passage of this bill: for the cardinal points in our policy are the same – economy in the public expenditures, and the prompt extinction of the public debt. I say, well it was for Maine that she was sold for the federal price of four sections of Alabama pine, Louisiana swamp, or Missouri prairie. Well it was for every State in this Union, that their soil was sold for a song, or given as a gift to whomsoever would take it. Happy for them, and for the liberty of the human race, that the kings of England and the "Lords Proprietors," did not conceive the luminous idea of waiting for the rise, and sticking to a minimum of $1 25 per acre. Happy for Kentucky, Tennessee, and Ohio, that they were settled under States, and not under the federal government. To this happy exemption they owe their present greatness and prosperity. When they were settled, the State laws prevailed in the acquisition of lands; and donations, pre-emptions, and settlement rights, and sales at two cents the acre, were the order of the day. I include Ohio, and I do it with a knowledge of what I say: for ten millions of her soil, – that which now constitutes her chief wealth and strength, – were settled upon the liberal principles which I mention. The federal system only fell upon fifteen millions of her soil; and, of that quantity, the one half now lies waste and useless, paying no tax to the State, yielding nothing to agriculture, desert spots in the midst of a smiling garden, "waiting for the rise," and exhibiting, in high and bold relief, the miserable folly of prescribing an arbitrary minimum upon that article which is the gift of God to man, and which no parental government has ever attempted to convert into a source of revenue and an article of merchandise."

Against the policy of holding up refuse lands until they should rise to the price of good land, and against the reservation of saline and mineral lands, and making money by boiling salt water, and digging lead ore, or holding a body of tenantry to boil and dig, I delivered these sentiments:

"I do trust and believe, Mr. President, that the Executive of this free government will not be second to George the Third in patriotism, nor an American Congress prove itself inferior to a British Parliament in political wisdom. I do trust and believe that this whole system of holding up land for the rise, endeavoring to make revenue out of the soil of the country, leasing and renting lead mines, salt springs, and iron banks, with all its train of penal laws and civil and military agents, will be condemned and abolished. I trust that the President himself will give the subject a place in his next message, and lend the aid of his recommendation to the success of so great an object. The mining operations, especially, should fix the attention of the Congress. They are a reproach to the age in which we live. National mining is condemned by every dictate of prudence, by every maxim of political economy, and by the voice of experience in every age and country. And yet we are engaged in that business. This splendid federal government, created for great national purposes, has gone to work among the lead mines of Upper Louisiana, to give us a second edition, no doubt, of the celebrated "Mississippi Scheme" of John Law. For that scheme was nothing more nor less than a project of making money out of the same identical mines. Yes, Mr. President, upon the same identical theatre, among the same holes and pits, dug by John Law's men in 1720; among the cinders, ashes, broken picks, and mouldering furnaces, of that celebrated projector, is our federal government now at work; and, that no circumstance should be wanting to complete the folly of such an undertaking, the task of extracting "revenue" from these operations, is confided, not to the Treasury, but to the War Department.

"Salines and salt springs are subjected to the same system – reserved from sale, and leased for the purpose of raising revenue. But I flatter myself that I see the end of this branch of the system. The debate which took place a few weeks ago on the bill to repeal the existing duty upon salt, is every word of it applicable to the bill which I have introduced for the sale of the reserved salt springs. I claim the benefit of it accordingly, and shall expect the support of all the advocates for the repeal of that tax, whenever the bill for the sale of the salines shall be put to the vote."

Argument and sarcasm had their effect, in relation to the mineral and saline reserves in the State in which I lived – the State of Missouri. An act was passed in 1828 to throw them into the mass of private property – to sell them like other public lands. And thus the federal government, in that State, got rid of a degrading and unprofitable pursuit; and the State got citizen freeholders instead of federal tenants; and profitably were developed in the hands of individuals the pursuits of private industry which languished and stagnated in the hands of federal agents and tenants. But it was continued for some time longer (so far as lead ore was concerned) on the Upper Mississippi, and until an argument arrived which commanded the respect of the legislature: it was the argument of profit and loss – an argument which often touches a nerve which is dead to reason. Mr. Polk, in his message to Congress at the session of 1845-'46 (the first of his administration), stated that the expenses of the system during the preceding four years – those of Mr. Tyler's administration – were twenty-six thousand one hundred and eleven dollars, and eleven cents; and the whole amount of rents received during the same period was six thousand three hundred and fifty-four dollars, and seventy-four cents: and recommended the abolition of the whole system, and the sale of the reserved mines; which was done; and thus was completed for the Upper Mississippi what I had done for Missouri near twenty years before.

The advantage of giving land to those who would settle and cultivate it, was illustrated in one of my speeches, by reciting the case of "Granny White" – well known in her time to all the population of Middle Tennessee, and especially to all who travelled south from Nashville, along the great road which crossed the "divide" between the Cumberland and Harpeth waters, at the evergreen tree which gave name to the gap – the Holly Tree Gap. The aged woman, and her fortunes, were thus introduced into our senatorial debates and lodged on a page of our parliamentary history, to enlighten, by her incidents, the councils of national legislation:

"At the age of sixty, she had been left a widow, in one of the counties in the tide-water region of North Carolina. Her poverty was so extreme, that when she went to the county court to get a couple of little orphan grandchildren bound to her, the Justices refused to let her have them, because she could not give security to keep them off the parish. This compelled her to emigrate; and she set off with the two little boys, upon a journey of eight or nine hundred miles, to what was then called "the Cumberland Settlement." Arrived in the neighborhood of Nashville, a generous-hearted Irishman (his name deserves to be remembered – Thomas McCrory) let her have a corner of his land, on her own terms, – a nominal price and indefinite credit. It was fifty acres in extent, and comprised the two faces of a pair of confronting hills, whose precipitous declivities lacked a few degrees, and but a few, of mathematical perpendicularity. Mr. B. said he knew it well, for he had seen the old lady's pumpkins propped and supported with stakes, to prevent their ponderous weight from tearing up the vine, and rolling to the bottom of the hills. There was just room at their base for a road to run between, and not room for a house, to find a level place for its foundation; for which purpose a part of the hill had to be dug away. Yet, from this hopeless beginning, with the advantage of a little piece of ground that was her own, this aged widow, and two little grandchildren, of eight or nine years old, advanced herself to comparative wealth: money, slaves, horses, cattle; and her fields extended into the valley below, and her orphan grandchildren, raised up to honor and independence: these were the fruits of economy and industry, and a noble illustration of the advantage of giving land to the poor. But the federal government would have demanded sixty-two dollars and fifty cents for that land, cash in hand; and old Granny White and her grandchildren might have lived in misery and sunk into vice, before the opponents of this bill would have taken less."

I quoted the example of all nations, ancient and modern, republican and monarchical, in favor of giving lands, in parcels suitable to their wants, to meritorious cultivators; and denied that there was an instance upon earth, except that of our own federal government, which made merchandise of land to its citizens – exacted the highest price it could obtain – and refused to suffer the country to be settled until it was paid for. The "promised land" was divided among the children of Israel – the women getting a share where there was no man at the head of the family – as with the daughters of Manasseh. All the Atlantic States, when British colonies, were settled upon gratuitous donations, or nominal sales. Kentucky and Tennessee were chiefly settled in the same way. The two Floridas, and Upper and Lower Louisiana, were gratuitously distributed by the kings of Spain to settlers, in quantities adapted to their means of cultivation – and with the whole vacant domain to select from according to their pleasure. Land is now given to settlers in Canada; and £30,000 sterling, has been voted at a single session of Parliament, to aid emigrants in their removal to these homes, and commencing life upon them. The republic of Colombia now gives 400 acres to a settler: other South American republics give more or less. Quoting these examples, I added:

"Such, Mr. President, is the conduct of the free republics of the South. I say republics: for it is the same in all of them, and it would be tedious and monotonous to repeat their numerous decrees. In fact, throughout the New World, from Hudson's Bay to Cape Horn (with the single exception of these United States), land, the gift of God to man, is also the gift of the government to its citizens. Nor is this wise policy confined to the New World. It prevails even in Asia; and the present age has seen – we ourselves have seen – published in the capital of the European world, the proclamation of the King of Persia, inviting Christians to go to the ancient kingdom of Cyrus, Cambyses and Darius, and there receive gifts of land – first rate, not refuse – with a total exemption from taxes, and the free enjoyment of their religion. Here is the proclamation: listen to it.

The Proclamation

"'Mirza Mahomed Saul, Ambassador to England, in the name, and by the authority of Abbas Mirza, King of Persia, offers to those who shall emigrate to Persia, gratuitous grants of land, good for the production of wheat, barley, rice, cotton, and fruits, – free from taxes or contributions of any kind, and with the free enjoyment of their religion; THE KING'S OBJECT BEING TO IMPROVE HIS COUNTRY.

"'London, July 8th, 1823.'"

The injustice of holding all lands at one uniform price, waiting for the cultivation of the good land to give value to the poor, and for the poorest to rise to the value of the richest, was shown in a reference to private sales, of all articles; in the whole of which sales the price was graduated to suit different qualities of the same article. The heartless and miserly policy of waiting for government land to be enhanced in value by the neighboring cultivation of private land, was denounced as unjust as well as unwise. The new States of the West were the sufferers by this federal land policy. They were in a different condition from other States. In these others, the local legislatures held the primary disposal of the soil, – so much as remained vacant within their limits, – and being of the same community, made equitable alienations among their constituents. In the new States it was different. The federal government held the primary disposition of the soil; and the majority of Congress (being independent of the people of these States), was less heedful of their wants and wishes. They were as a stepmother, instead of a natural mother: and the federal government being sole purchaser from foreign nations, and sole recipient of Indian cessions, it became the monopolizer of vacant lands in the West: and this monopoly, like all monopolies, resulted in hardships to those upon whom it acted. Few, or none of our public men, had raised their voice against this hard policy before I came into the national councils. My own was soon raised there against it: and it is certain that a great amelioration has taken place in our federal land policy during my time: and that the sentiment of Congress, and that of the public generally, has become much more liberal in land alienations; and is approximating towards the beneficent systems of the rest of the world. But the members in Congress from the new States should not intermit their exertions, nor vary their policy; and should fix their eyes steadily upon the period of the speedy extinction of the federal title to all the lands within the limits of their respective States; – to be effected by pre-emption rights, by donations, and by the sale (of so much as shall be sold), at graduated prices, – adapted to the different qualities of the tracts, to be estimated according to the time it has remained in market unsold – and by liberal grants to objects of general improvement, both national and territorial.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CESSION OF A PART OF THE TERRITORY OF ARKANSAS TO THE CHEROKEE INDIANS

Arkansas was an organized territory, and had been so since the year 1819. Her western boundary was established by act of Congress in May 1824 (chiefly by the exertions of her then delegate, Henry W. Conway), – and was an extension of her existing boundary on that side; and for national and State reasons. It was an outside territory – beyond the Mississippi – a frontier both to Mexico (then brought deep into the Valley of the Mississippi by the Florida treaty which gave away Texas), and to the numerous Indian tribes then being removed from the South Atlantic States to the west of the Mississippi. It was, therefore, a point of national policy to make her strong – to make her a first class State, – both for her own sake and that of the Union, – and equal to all the exigencies of her advanced and frontier position. The extension was on the west – the boundaries on the other three sides being fixed and immovable – and added a fertile belt – a parallelogram of forty miles by three hundred along her whole western border – and which was necessary to compensate for the swamp lands in front on the river, and to give to her certain valuable salt springs there existing, and naturally appurtenant to the territory, and essential to its inhabitants. Even with this extension the territory was still deficient in arable land – not as strong as her frontier position required her to be, nor susceptible (on account of swamps and sterile districts) of the population and cultivation which her superficial contents and large boundaries would imply her to be. Territorially, and in mere extent, the western addition was a fourth part of the territory: agriculturally, and in capacity for population, the addition might be equal to half of the whole territory; and its acquisition was celebrated as a most auspicious event for Arkansas at the time that it occurred.

In the month of May, 1828, by a treaty negotiated at Washington by the Secretary at War, Mr. James Barbour, on one side, and the chiefs of the Cherokee nation on the other, this new western boundary for the territory was abolished – the old line re-established: and what had been an addition to the territory of Arkansas, was ceded to the Cherokees. On the ratification of this treaty several questions arose, all raised by myself – some of principle, some of expediency – as, whether a law of Congress could be abolished by an Indian treaty? and whether it was expedient so to reduce, and thus weaken the territory (and future State) of Arkansas? I was opposed to the treaty, and held the negative of both questions, and argued against them with zeal and perseverance. The supremacy of the treaty-making power I held to be confined to subjects within its sphere, and quoted "Jefferson's Manual," to show that that was the sense in which the clause in the constitution was understood. The treaty-making power was supreme; but that supremacy was within its proper orbit, and free from the invasion of the legislative, executive, or judicial department. The proper objects of treaties were international interests, which neither party could regulate by municipal law, and which required a joint consent, and a double execution, to give it effect. Tried by this test, and this Indian treaty lost its supremacy. The subject was one of ordinary legislation, and specially and exclusively confined to Congress. It was to repeal a law which Congress had made in relation to territory; and to reverse the disposition which Congress had made of a part of its territory. To Congress it belonged to dispose of territory; and to her it belonged to repeal her own laws. The treaty avoided the word "repeal," while doing the thing: it used the word "abolish" – which was the same in effect, and more arrogant and offensive – not appropriate to legislation, and evidently used to avoid the use of a word which would challenge objection. If the word "repeal" had been used, every one would have felt that the ordinary legislation of Congress was flagrantly invaded; and the avoidance of that word, and the substitution of another of the same meaning, could have no effect in legalizing a transaction which would be condemned under its proper name. And so I held the treaty to be invalid for want of a proper subject to act upon, and because it invaded the legislative department.

The inexpediency of the treaty was in the question of crippling and mutilating Arkansas, reducing her to the class of weak States, and that against all the reasons which had induced Congress, four years before, to add on twelve thousand square miles to her domain; and to almost double the productive and inhabitable capacity of the Territory, and future State, by the character of the country added. I felt this wrong to Arkansas doubly, both as a neighbor to my own State, and because, having a friendship for the delegate, as well as for his territory, I had exerted myself to obtain the addition which had been thus cut off. I argued, as I thought, conclusively; but in vain. The treaty was largely ratified, and by a strong slaveholding vote, notwithstanding it curtailed slave territory, and made soil free which was then slave. Anxious to defeat the treaty for the benefit of Arkansas, I strongly presented this consequence, showing that there was, not only legal, but actually slavery upon the amputated part – that these twelve thousand square miles were inhabited, organized into counties, populous in some parts, and with the due proportion of slaves found in a southern and planting State. Nothing would do. It was a southern measure, negotiated, on the record, by a southern secretary at war, in reality by the clerk McKinney; and voted for by nineteen approving slaveholding senators against four dissenting. The affirmative vote was: Messrs. Barton, Berrien, Bouligny, Branch, Ezekiel Chambers, Cobb, King of Alabama, McKinley, McLane of Delaware, Macon, Ridgely, Smith of Maryland, Smith of South Carolina, John Tyler of Virginia, and Williams of Mississippi. The negative was, Messrs. Benton, Eaton, Rowan, and Tazewell. – Mr. Calhoun was then Vice-President, and did not vote; but he was in favor of the treaty, and assisted its ratification through his friends. The House of Representatives voted the appropriations to carry it into effect; and thus acquiesced in the repeal of an act of Congress by the President, Senate, and Cherokee Indians; and these appropriations were voted with the general concurrence of the southern members of the House. And thus another slice, and a pretty large one (twelve thousand square miles), was taken off of slave territory in the former province of Louisiana; which about completed the excision of what had been left for slave State occupation after the Missouri compromise of 1820, and the cession to Texas of contemporaneous date, and previous cessions to Indian tribes. And all this was the work of southern men, who then saw no objection to the Congressional legislation which acted upon slavery in territories – which further curtailed, and even extinguished slave soil in all the vast expanse of the former Louisiana – save and except the comparative little that was left in the State of Missouri and in the mutilated Territory of Arkansas. The reason of the southern members for promoting this amputation of Arkansas in favor of the Cherokees, was simply to assist in inducing their removal by adding the best part of Arkansas, with its salt springs, to the ample millions of acres west of that territory already granted to them; but it was a gratuitous sacrifice, as the large part of the tribe had already emigrated to the seven millions of acres, and the remainder were waiting for moneyed inducements to follow. And besides, the desire for this removal could have no effect upon the constitutional power of Congress to legislate upon slavery in territories, or upon the policy which curtails the boundaries of a future slave State.