USA > Massachusetts > Commonwealth history of Massachusetts, colony, province and state, volume 4 > Part 27
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supported the censure of Jackson, ridiculed its deletion from the records, and when (December, 1836) a resolution was introduced to rescind the "Specie Circular," he delivered a speech which was important both as a theory of public finance and as a rebuke to currency manipulators.
DISTRIBUTION OF THE SURPLUS (1836-1837)
There was still, however, another act in the drama. Under the compromise tariff of 1833, a gradual reduction of duties over a ten-year period had been arranged, but only as pro- vided in the act. The result was a large revenue with which the government paid off the final installment of the national debt in 1835, but which left, nevertheless, a large surplus (close to $30,000,000 in January, 1836) to accumulate over the following years. Jackson's well known opposition to in- ternal improvements at federal expense limited the use of the money; and the principal alternatives, although many plans were proposed, seemed to be either deposit in the "pet banks" or distribution among the States. The latter course was followed, and three quarterly payments were made on the basis of the federal ratio of representation in Congress, when the panic of 1837 put an end to both distribution and surplus.
Again it was the strength of Webster that cast the influence of Massachusetts into the scales. Clay had brought forward a land bill (described by Abbot Lawrence as the "most judicious .. yet . . . presented to Congress") which set aside the net proceeds of land sales for the ten new States, and pro- vided a distribution of the residue. Calhoun, in opposition, asked for a constitutional amendment to sanction the distribu- tion, and introduced a bill to regulate public deposits to which, through Webster's influence, an amendment was proposed for the distribution of excessive revenue among the States accord- ing to population. While the measure was subsequently amended in the House (June 21, 1836) to provide for deposit only, it was still regarded as a victory for the "distribution- ists," and no one appears to have imagined that the money would ever be returned.
The fall and winter months found the State legislatures
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busy disposing of the prospective funds under this act. In Massachusetts the question was discussed at length, and the lower house of the legislature voted (421 to 1) to distribute the surplus among the cities and towns. The rural sections were especially in favor of this proceeding, and it seemed that most of the newspapers of the Commonwealth approved it. At all events the deposit was accepted on January 19, 1837, and on March 21 the first two installments were ordered to be distributed among the towns in proportion to their popula- tion by the last census, and the last two in accordance with the new census of May, 1837. Should any town refuse or neglect for six months to accept the money, it was subse- quently provided that such sums should remain in the State treasury, subject to the disposal of the General Court. The total amount received was $1,338,173.58, and it was used by the local communities in various ways: the majority applied it to town expenses, but a large number (some eighty towns) devoted it in varying amounts to educational purposes.
INTERNAL IMPROVEMENTS (1817-1830)
The distribution of the surplus had in a way been due to the unfavorable attitude of Jackson towards internal improve- ments. This matter (the first phase of federal aid) had been a disputed question from the earliest days of the Constitu- tion, but during the Federalist period problems of organiza- tion had so occupied the administration that the subject re- ceived scant attention. Hamilton was skeptical regarding its constitutionality. Gallatin, however, included a provision, in the act admitting Ohio to the Union, that one twentieth of the net proceeds from the sale of public lands within the new State should be applied "to the laying out and making public roads" from the navigable waters emptying into the Atlantic westward through the State, "under the authority of Congress, with the consent of the several States through which the road shall pass." Subsequent acts providing for the survey and protection of the coasts, for river and harbor improvements, and further national highways developed this policy, only to be temporarily suspended by the War of 1812. The auspicious
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start of the second United States Bank, with the prospects of increased federal funds, gave a new impetus to the move- ment; but both Madison and Monroe (like Hamilton) ex- pressed doubts of its constitutionality. The former vetoed Calhoun's "Bonus Bill," a proposal to set aside the bonus and dividends to be paid to the government by the bank as a fund for building roads and canals; and all New England, includ- ing the Massachusetts delegation by a vote of eight to three, was opposed to the measure. Five years later Monroe, in vetoing "An Act for the Preservation and Repair of the Cumberland Road" (from Cumberland, Maryland, to near Wheeling, Virginia), approved the policy of internal im- provements but doubted its constitutionality-a bill on which the Massachusetts delegates had tied on a four-to-four vote when it had been passed by the House the preceding April. But when John Quincy Adams became President and made Clay-who had accepted internal improvements as a cardinal feature of his policy under the caption of the "Amer- ican System"-Secretary of State, a sympathetic encourage- ment was again given the movement. In his first message to Congress, Adams referred to the policy of his predecessor in regard to this matter "with peculiar satisfaction," and gave the movement his heartiest indorsement. But opposition seems to have softened his views, for subsequent messages dealt solely with surveys, plans and estimates; and, while federal funds and subsidies were made available for roads and canals, the actual administration went little farther than Monroe's ideas had suggested.
This question had always been more or less connected with the tariff. The South was at first in less need of roads and canals than the North; and, since the proposed aid was chiefly a northern matter, or rapidly becoming such, the South was prone to regard the policy as simply another burden on its section. Both protective tariff and improvements, moreover, rested for their constitutional basis on the "implied powers" clause, and to be consistent it was necessary to approve both. Indeed, each of these issues was inextricably interwoven with the question of public lands and surplus revenue, the whole
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making an interpretation of the nature of the Union a neces- sity before action could be taken.
As is well known, Jackson arrayed himself staunchly against the "American System"; and the climax came when a bill authorizing the government to subscribe to the stock of "Maysville, Washington, Paris and Lexington Turnpike Road Company" was passed by both Houses of Congress, only to be vetoed by the President, May 27, 1830, the Massa- chusetts delegates being strongly in favor of its passage. The expenditures for national improvements in the Common- wealth had risen to a total of over $207,000 by 1829 (ex- clusive of a million and a quarter dollars for fortifications and lighthouses), which was exceeded only by amounts al- lotted to Ohio and the cost of the Cumberland Road project. But Jackson's hostility was fatal to the practice, and a land transportation system at federal expense was stopped for a generation.
SLAVERY (1831-1844)
By 1840 there was a partial culmination in political matters as they affected Massachusetts and the national government. The tariff had been cast in a compromise measure that was satisfactory enough in its recognition of protection to remove it from the urgent issues. The second Bank of the United States had been destroyed, the general financial situation was rapidly clearing, the surplus had vanished, and proponents of internal improvements had been temporarily silenced. As acute as these matters had become, however, they were hardly more than sharp flashes against a darkening cloud that had been slowly gathering since the earliest days of the Republic, and that was to envelop an overwrought and secretly terrified country in smothering folds.
Slavery had been a national issue in one form or another since the Constitutional Convention of 1787, and until about 1830 it was commented upon by all people with the same freedom accorded other political questions. But by 1837 a strained silence was apparent. Edward Everett, in his inau- gural address of that year as Governor of the Commonwealth,
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cautioned that "the patriotism of all classes of citizens must be invoked to abstain from a discussion, which," he added with prophetic foresight, "will prove the rock on which the Union will split." His father-in-law, Peter C. Brooks, one of Boston's wealthiest men, wrote that there was nothing in such ideas "for a practical man to object to," and even Web- ster afterwards expressed himself in favor of that sentiment.
Only five years before, a member of the Virginia legis- lature referred to slavery as "the heaviest calamity which has ever befallen any portion of the human race" and a "curse upon him who inflicts as upon him who suffers it." Yet even before this protest was made, William Lloyd Garrison founded the Liberator, devoted to immediate emancipation. In Jan- uary, 1832, the New England Anti-Slavery Society was formed in Boston, numbering among a distinguished person- nel such leaders as Arnold Buffum, Samuel J. May, Wendell Phillips, John Greenleaf Whittier, C. T. Follen, Edmund Quincy, Lydia Mary Child, and William Lloyd Garrison. In December, 1833, the American Anti-Slavery Society was or- ganized, and by October, 1835, there were some three hun- dred branches, with a membership close to one hundred thousand. By 1836 the South had carried the fight into Con- gress, and demanded a law excluding inflammatory publica- tions from the mails and prohibiting abolitionist petitions to Congress. Daniel Webster, in the Senate, and John Quincy Adams, in the House of Representatives, were the members chiefly concerned in this latter offense. Both congressmen presented petitions from antislavery advocates in batches of fifties and hundreds-indeed, on one occasion, Adams intro- duced five hundred and eleven. The dignified ex-President became a veritable clarion of publicity. It was impossible to stop him; and in the face of vituperation and threatened ex- pulsion from southern members he stood steadfastly for free- dom of speech and the right of petition.
Not that the Commonwealth was at this time by any means wholly abolitionist or even wholly antislavery. Even while excited petitioners were flooding Congress with their prayers, a great mass meeting (August, 1835) of 1500 citizens, pre- sided over by Mayor Lyman of Boston and attended by the
From the photograph by Brady
Courtesy of Harvard College Library
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS
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MEXICAN WAR
town's leading citizens, listened to Harrison Gray Otis as he warned the audience that slaveholders would regard any attempt at abolition as "war in disguise, upon their lives, their property, their rights and institutions, an outrage upon their pride and honor, and the faith of contracts." But grad- ually opinion swung to the antislavery view: the murder of Elijah P. Lovejoy in Alton, Illinois (1837), introduced Wen- dell Phillips as an orator in defense of human freedom; the excitement of the George Latimer case in Boston (1842) brought letters of protest from John Quincy Adams, George Bancroft, Samuel Hoar, and W. B. Calhoun to an excited meeting in Faneuil Hall; and the treatment accorded by South Carolina in 1844 to a Massachusetts official sent to re- dress abuses against free negroes of the Commonwealth, brought sharp resolutions of censure from the General Court and left a rapidly mounting sentiment against the visible cause of their grievances.
MEXICAN WAR (1846-1848)
As the economic issues had been closely bound with the tariff question, so sectional and territorial questions were shot through and through with the blighting rays of slavery. Texas had been a current question for ten years before it was the leading issue in the presidential election of 1844. Massachusetts had opposed recognition of the new Republic in 1836, the entire delegation under the leadership of Adams, ex- cepting Cushing and W. B. Calhoun, voting against it. It was clear to everyone that annexation would be the next move and, although the step was rejected under Van Buren's adminis- tration, Tyler openly favored the plan and urged it in his message of December, 1843. Thirteen antislavery Whig members of the Congress, led by John Quincy Adams, de- nounced the proposal in an address to the non-slaveholding states (March 3, 1843), and a treaty concluded for the pur- pose of annexation was rejected by the Senate in June of the following year.
Massachusetts was bitterly opposed to the step, and with amazing unanimity declared that it would never be completed
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with her consent. Three times-once each in 1843, 1844, and 1845-the General Court left a formal record of its opposi- tion, basing its objections largely on constitutional grounds ; but on March 15, 1845, in a final declaration, it openly defined the motives as the "perpetuation of the right to hold men in slavery," and after Texas was formally annexed declared the process unconstitutional and not legally binding upon the States.
In spite of such evidence of opposition, the Commonwealth was no more solidly against the admission of Texas than she was against slavery. Both parties (Whigs and Democrats) contained members who favored the step on one ground or another. But the aftermath of the controversy was the Mexi- can War; and the feeling engendered by the earlier dispute was greatly increased in the presence of the new crisis, and sentiment correspondingly solidified against the administra- tion. The Liberator and Herald of Freedom were bitter in their denunciation. In a constant stream of resolves the legis- lature of the Commonwealth demanded that Congress put an end to the struggle. "In the name of the people of Massa- chusetts," reads a resolution, "who are unwilling that innocent blood should defile their garments,-we protest against the further perpetuation of a great nation's crime." Webster denounced it as a "war of pretexts"; the Boston Atlas called in "Polk's war"; the Whig Convention meeting in Boston, September 23, 1846, declared it "executive usurpation"; and Lowell wrote his famous rime in the Bigelow Papers:
"They jest want this Californy So's to lug new slave-states in To abuse ye, an' to scorn ye, And to plunder ye like sin."
It was about this time that Charles Sumner came forcefully into public life. He had already won prominence as an aboli- tionist, although keeping firm hold of constitutional remedies. In the autumn of 1846, he sharply criticised Robert C. Win- throp, the exceptionally able but conservative Whig, through whom he alleged that "the Bostonians have been made to de- clare an unjust and cowardly war with falsehood in the cause
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of slavery"; and in January of the following year he argued before the Supreme Court of the Commonwealth against the validity of enlistments, a constitutional question involving methods of recruitment ; and on February 4 he spoke in Fan- euil Hall, demanding the withdrawal of American troops from Mexican soil, and declaring the war unconstitutional, unjust, and "vile in its object and character."
George Bancroft, although a Democrat and Secretary of the Navy in Polk's Cabinet, refused to approve the course of the administration. Unlike the Whig leaders, he had sup- ported the annexation of Texas and an extension thereby, as he said, of the "area of freedom," and when he joined the Cabinet his view was presented in a letter to a New York friend: "You are right in supposing the disposition of this government towards Mexico to be of the most conciliatory character. . . . I hope that war is permanently out of fashion in the civilized world"; and his course was never more than that of a loyal member of the administration. Webster was absent when the preliminary steps leading to hostilities were in progress, and his official attitude is not recorded; but while he opposed the annexation of Texas, he seems to have offered no resistance to the declaration of war, although his colleague in the Senate, John Davis, voted against it. But he did oppose the volunteer system, the prosecution of the war, the acquisi- tion of territory after its close, and the treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, because he disliked the methods of its negotiation as well as its terms. With him were many of the conservative Whigs; but younger members of the party-Sumner, Palfrey, and C. F. Adams-protested with the greatest vehemence, and their violent disagreement with the older leaders marks the beginning of the Free-soil party, whose convention in Buffalo, August 4, 1848, gave the first clear platform on the constitutional aspects of slavery.
OREGON (1824-1846)
One matter that had induced Mexico to undertake so un- equal a war as the one Polk precipitated was the probability of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain.
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Through a series of eliminating treaties embracing Spain, Russia, England, and the United States, the two latter coun- tries found themselves in 1824 with joint and exclusive claims to the region called Oregon. As effective settlement by either country was impracticable at that time, they had agreed as early as 1818 to occupy the country jointly for ten years ; and the arrangement was renewed in 1827, to be termi- nated with a year's notice in advance by either party. When Webster and Lord Ashburton had been negotiating the Maine boundary dispute (1841-1842), the question of Oregon had come up, but the policy at that time seemed to be a renewal of the modus vivendi. Subsequently, however, the British felt unable to accept American offers looking towards a per- manent settlement of the title ; and President Polk, relieved of the embarrassment of the Texas question, took occasion in his inaugural to recommend the abandonment of the joint agreement, and the immediate extension of jurisdiction into the disputed territory. Congress engaged in a spirited debate on the subject, and on April 23, 1846, advised the President to give the required notice, and the proposed action was com- municated to the British government the latter part of May.
There was some fear that war might result, but Polk re- mained firm, and the English people were in no mood for hostilities over so remote an issue. Upon a hint from Edward Everett (then minister to England), the British suggested the forty-ninth parallel from the Rocky Mountains to the middle of the channel between the continent and Vancouver's Island as the dividing line, with the proviso that the Hudson Bay Company should enjoy free navigation of the Columbia River. After the broad claims of his inaugural, describing "fifty-four forty" as the northern boundary of his claims, Polk felt it expedient to throw the onus of compromise on the Senate; and upon submitting the matter to the Upper House he was advised, after two days' debate, to accept the terms, and three days later the treaty was signed (June 15, 1846).
INTEREST OF MASSACHUSETTS (1792-1846)
For many years Massachusetts had taken an important part
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in the fur trade of the Northwest, and the State has had contacts with the Oregon region from the beginning. The ship Columbia, fitted out by a group of Boston merchants, was the first to enter (1792) the river that bears its name. The first white men to attempt a permanent settlement in the Oregon country were Abiel and Jonathan Winship of Boston, who on June 4, 1810 sailed some forty miles up the river and started a small settlement; the Indians forced them to desist. United States citizens in the western trade were known by the natives as "Boston men." One of the first American merchants to open trade on the Columbia was the father of Caleb Cushing, destined to defend the United States claims with unequalled vigor ; and when Hall J. Kelly, Boston school- master, founded the unsuccessful Oregon Colonization Society (1829) to people the region with Yankee stock, Edward Everett and others of equal prominence supported the project.
NORTHWESTERN BOUNDARY (1844-1846)
The issue, however, was not primarily settlement or devel- opment-it was the fixing of the boundary. Overtures from time to time had come to nothing, and the Democratic plat- form of 1844 contained a strong statement of the American position. Polk stamped the claims as "clear and unquestion- able," and jingoes raised the cry of "fifty-four forty [the extreme northern line] or fight." Caleb Cushing was the foremost congressional defender of the President's view from the Commonwealth, and his deep interest and wide information made him a worthy proponent. He demanded the farthest boundary, hurled defiance at Great Britain, and approved the "notice" of February, 1846, whereby the joint agreement was terminated. Webster led the conservative position and, while objecting to the "notice," he pointed to a solution-a compromise on the forty-ninth parallel. Winthrop, as usual, followed his great leader with a plea for peaceful settlement. Although recognizing the claims of the United States, he thought them too complicated to justify the dogmatism of the administration, and urged arbitration proceedings.
There were, however, two merchants of the Common-
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wealth who, while holding no official position during the con- troversy, did much to shape the opinion of both citizens and statesmen on the subject. The first of these was William Sturgis. Born a native of Cape Cod and son of a shipmaster, he was early turned by family adversities to his natural call- ing, the sea. His first voyages took him to the northwest coast and, having by 1844 attained a prominent position in the mercantile enterprise of Boston-indeed, he was one of the most famous merchants of that port,-he was able to throw much light on the character of the Oregon country as well as on the merits of the dispute. He prepared an elabo- rate treatise in 1845 upon the subject, the substance of which was printed in a pamphlet and widely circulated not only among the statesmen of Washington but throughout official England as well, where, because of its intelligence and frank- ness, it met with much approbation. "Some of the objec- tions," he wrote, "made by the British commissioners to our claims to the exclusive possession of the whole territory cannot be easily and satisfactorily answered; and some of their objections are unfounded or frivolous,-the mere skir- mishing of diplomacy, and unworthy of high-minded diploma- tists : but it must, I think, be evident, to any one who looks carefully into the whole matter, that some of the pretensions of each party are, to say the least, plausible; and that, ac- cording to the rules established among civilized nations in similar cases, each has some rights, which should be adjusted and settled by compromise and mutual concession."
ADJUSTMENT OF THE BOUNDARY (1845)
At the time that Sturgis wrote his pamphlet, Joshua Bates, as a member of Baring Brothers & Company (the celebrated head of which was Lord Ashburton himself), was in direct personal communication with influential members of the Brit- ish ministry, and at the same time in constant correspondence with Sturgis. His residence in London placed him in a favorable position as an adviser to urge the adoption of the compromise that it recommended. It is rare when private persons, holding no authorized connection with negotiators in a delicate international matter, are instrumental in solving
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the perplexing problems under discussion; but there is evi- dence that the line finally accepted was determined, at least in part, through the efforts of William Sturgis and Joshua Bates.
The result is well known: the subsequent treaty of June 15, 1846, was based on the forty-ninth parallel as the bound- ary line. The slavery question, more or less in abeyance dur- ing the dispute so far as Oregon was concerned, flamed to red heat when in August of the same year a bill was introduced into Congress to organize the new region as a territory. It passed the House but, because it contained a provision exclud- ing slavery, received no action in the Senate. In the next ses- sion (1848) a similar move was gone through in the Senate and precipitated a long debate. Not that the South feared for slavery in the Northwest, but there was great danger in the precedent for exclusion that might injure her case in dispos- ing of New Mexico and California. The lower House was unable to accept the Senate's proposal; but after considerable discussion and several false starts a bill was prepared and sent to the Senate, prohibiting slavery in Oregon. After an unsuccessful attempt to add an amendment carrying the Mis- souri Compromise line of thirty-six degrees and thirty min- utes from the hundredth meridian to the Pacific, the Senate passed the bill, and the result was the exclusion of slavery from Oregon without prejudice to the situation in New Mexico and California.
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