|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Book, page 49 / 326 the ruin to those efforts which arises from the malice of the abolitionists. To all this you make some answer with your tongue that is hardly true--for in such a matter courtesy forbids the plain truth. But your heart within answers truly, "Madam, dear madam, your sorrow is great; but that sorrow is the necessary result of your position." As to those official reasons, in what fewest words I can use I will endeavor to show that they come to nothing. The tariff--and a monstrous tariff it then was--was the ground put forward by South Carolina for secession when General Jackson was President and Mr. Calhoun was the hero of the South. Calhoun bound himself and his State to take certain steps toward secession at a certain day if that tariff were not abolished. The tariff was so absurd that Jackson and his government were forced to abandon it--would have abandoned it without any threat from Calhoun; but under that threat it was necessary that Calhoun should be defied. General Jackson proposed a compromise tariff, which was odious to Calhoun--not on its own behalf, for it yielded nearly all that was asked, but as being subversive of his desire for secession. The President, however, not only insisted on his compromise, but declared his purpose of preventing its passage into law unless Calhoun himself, as Senator, would vote for it. And he also declared his purpose-- not, we may presume, officially--of hanging Calhoun, if he took that step toward secession which he had bound himself to take in the event of the tariff not being repealed. As a result of all this Calhoun voted for the compromise, and secession for the time was beaten down. That was in 1832, and may be regarded as the commencement of the secession movement. The tariff was then a convenient reason, a ground to be assigned with a color of justice because it was a tariff admitted to be bad. But the tariff has been modified again and again since that, and the tariff existing when South Carolina seceded in 1860 had been carried by votes from South Carolina. The absurd Morrill tariff could not have caused secession, for it was passed, without a struggle, in the collapse of Congress occasioned by secession. The bounty to fishermen was given to create sailors, so that a marine might be provided for the nation. I need hardly show that the national benefit would accrue to the whole nation for whose
|
Knowledgerush Search
|
|
Contact Us
| Privacy Statement & Terms of Use
|