The Boss and the Machine | Page 6

anti-Jacksonians, and he promptly vetoed the bill extending the charter.

The second issue was the tariff. Protection was not new; but Clay
adroitly renamed it, calling it "the American system." It was popular in
the manufacturing towns and in portions of the agricultural
communities, but was bitterly opposed by the slave-owning States.
A third issue dealt with internal improvements. All parts of the country
were feeling the need of better means of communication, especially
between the West and the East. Canals and turnpikes were projected in
every direction. Clay, whose imagination was fervid, advocated a vast
system of canals and roads financed by national aid. But the doctrine of
states-rights answered that the Federal Government had no power to
enter a State, even to spend money on improvements, without the
consent of that State. And, at all events, for Clay to espouse was for
Jackson to oppose.
These were the more important immediate issues of the conflict
between Clay's Whigs and Jackson's Democrats, though it must be
acknowledged that the personalities of the leaders were quite as much
an issue as any of the policies which they espoused. The Whigs,
however, proved unequal to the task of unhorsing their foes; and, with
two exceptions, the Democrats elected every President from Jackson to
Lincoln. The exceptions were William Henry Harrison and Zachary
Taylor, both of whom were elected on their war records and both of
whom died soon after their inauguration. Tyler, who as Vice-President
succeeded General Harrison, soon estranged the Whigs, so that the
Democratic triumph was in effect continuous over a period of thirty
years.
Meanwhile, however, another issue was shaping the destiny of parties
and of the nation. It was an issue that politicians dodged and candidates
evaded, that all parties avoided, that publicists feared, and that
presidents and congressmen tried to hide under the tenuous fabric of
their compromises. But it was an issue that persisted in keeping alive
and that would not down, for it was an issue between right and wrong.
Three times the great Clay maneuvered to outflank his opponents over
the smoldering fires of the slavery issue, but he died before the repeal
of the Missouri Compromise gave the death-blow to his loosely

gathered coalition. Webster, too, and Calhoun, the other members of
that brilliant trinity which represented the genius of Constitutional
Unionism, of States Rights, and of Conciliation, passed away before
the issue was squarely faced by a new party organized for the purpose
of opposing the further expansion of slavery.
This new organization, the Republican party, rapidly assumed form and
solidarity. It was composed of Northern Whigs, of anti-slavery
Democrats, and of members of several minor groups, such as the
Know-Nothing or American party, the Liberty party, and included as
well some of the despised Abolitionists. The vote for Fremont, its first
presidential candidate, in 1856, showed it to be a sectional party,
confined to the North. But the definite recognition of slavery as an
issue by an opposition party had a profound effect upon the Democrats.
Their Southern wing now promptly assumed an uncompromising
attitude, which, in 1860, split the party into factions. The Southern
wing named Breckinridge; the Northern wing named Stephen A.
Douglas; while many Democrats as well as Whigs took refuge in a
third party, calling itself the Constitutional Union, which named John
Bell. This division cost the Democrats the election, for, under the
unique and inspiring leadership of Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans
rallied the anti-slavery forces of the North and won.
Slavery not only racked the parties and caused new alignments; it
racked and split the Union. It is one of the remarkable phenomena of
our political history that the Civil War did not destroy the Democratic
party, though the Southern chieftains of that party utterly lost their
cause. The reason is that the party never was as purely a Southern as
the Republican was a Northern party. Moreover, the arrogance and
blunders of the Republican leaders during the days of Reconstruction
helped to keep it alive. A baneful political heritage has been handed
down to us from the Civil War--the solid South. It overturns the
national balance of parties, perpetuates a pernicious sectionalism, and
deprives the South of that bipartizan rivalry which keeps open the
currents of political life.
Since the Civil War the struggle between the two dominant parties has

been largely a struggle between the Ins and the Outs. The issues that
have divided them have been more apparent than real. The tariff, the
civil service, the trusts, and the long list of other "issues" do not denote
fundamental differences, but only variations of degree. Never in any
election during this long interval has there been definitely at stake a
great national principle, save for the currency issue of 1896 and the
colonial question following the