of 1812. A commission was then engaged in apportioning the losses. A Northern Minister, Mr. Gallatin, under instructions from a Northern President, had been successful in pressing a claim which England had resisted during Mr. Monroe's peaceful Presidency. In the Treaty of Ghent stipulations looking to this indemnity had been made, and three of the five plenipotentiaries were Northern men, two of whom were the very men who now did accomplish for the South what she could not bring about by an Administration on which there rested no slaveholder's suspicion. The amount of indemnity to be paid more than covered the real loss to the slave-owners; and yet there is no doubt that the deep-seated, secret source of opposition and hatred toward Mr. Adams in the South was in the fact of his being a Northern man.

It was not his internal improvement doctrines; and if his protective tariff theories were beginning to be distasteful to the South, the suspicion resting upon him as an Adams and a Northern man outweighed every other consideration. Other things were the outward pretenses, but the real cause it was not then politic to avow. Under no President was the "institution of slavery" safer than under John Quincy Adams. He was as conscientious as to the Constitutional status of slavery as of anything else in the Government. His deep and unalterable hatred of slavery, based upon the noblest of sentiments, was unknown, or little known, and instinct hardly exhibited him to the South as destined to be the most able, law-abiding, and unconquerable enemy of the thing dignified by the title of "peculiar institution."

The most important act of Congress at this time,

and one which has always been unjustly used to mark the Administration, is known as the "Tariff of 1828." This measure was taken as the basis of nullification in South Carolina, and was materially revised in 1832 to appease that State and the generally excited South. One of the principles on which the Government is founded is protection to the material interests of its citizens. But for many years protective legislation was approached with great caution, and not until 1816 was any very decided step taken in this direction. What had been done before that date, was, at all events, of no considerable moment, and had not assumed a sectional or geographical aspect. The Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. Dallas, reported a bill to Congress in 1816 for a tariff on imports, which with some modification, became a law, and was really the beginning of protective legislation. The most zealous advocate, perhaps, of this measure at that time was John C. Calhoun. The duties imposed upon cotton by England made it appear an object for the South to favor legislation which would encourage home manufacturing.

In his last messages Mr. Monroe strongly recommended a revision of the tariff with a view to further satisfying the urgent demands for additional protection to home manufactures, the matter having received little attention from Congress since 1816. The stimulus derived from foreign wars was now lost, and both manufacturing and agricultural interests were languishing in this country. Prices for grain did not pay for transportation, and many manufactories were unable to sustain themselves. State Legislatures took hold of the matter, and public meetings petitioned Congress for

relief. A new tariff bill had been passed in the House and defeated in the Senate in the winter of 1819, and nothing was reached until 1824. The Southern States had now mainly lost their interest in the matter, or changed their sentiments. The extreme northern States, engaged in the fisheries, were also opposed to a protective tariff; while the manufacturing and grainproducing States were loud in their demands for protection. In the summer of 1824 a bill finally passed both Houses increasing the tariff duties, which was signed by Mr. Monroe. Among the supporters of this bill were General Jackson, Martin Van Buren, and James Buchanan.

Although the matter now rested for a time, yet England still controlled the American markets. The surplus from the British factories was sent over here and disposed of at a great sacrifice, but contributing to foreign interests by seriously embarrassing American manufactures. In January, 1827, a bill was brought before Congress for altering the acts imposing duties on imports. This bill had in it some utterly erroneous features, and led to a long and able discussion of the whole subject in its principles and practical applications; but no conclusion was reached that session.

In the meantime Pennsylvania manufacturers had taken the matter in hand, and called a convention to meet at Harrisburg. New York and. other States joined in the movement. At the Harrisburg convention there were about a hundred delegates representing thirteen States, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Kentucky being among them. Congress was memorialized, and a plan presented for a tariff of duties on wool and woolen goods, and other articles of home

production. On the last day of January, 1828, the committee on manufactures, to which the subject had been submitted in the House, brought in a report and a bill. And after a long discussion, on the 22d of April this bill was passed by a vote of 109 to 91. The Senate made some amendments in which the House concurred, and the President signed the bill.

Of the seven members composing the committee on manufactures only two were supporters of the Administration, and six were supporters of the measure. Still it was held that there were doubts as to the real sentiments of the four opposition supporters, and as it was known that Mr. Adams was fully committed to a protective system, the extravagant and foolish features of the bill had been introduced for electioneering purposes against him. The friends of the Administration saw the faults and evils of the act, but considered it better to submit to them than to risk the chances of contending against them.

It is, however, clear enough now, as it was then, perhaps, that the "tariff of 1828" was not a measure of Mr. Adams's Administration, nor of the supporters of his re-election. Nearly the whole body of Pennsylvania politicians went for it, as did those of other strong Jackson States. Yet it was artfully brought into the Presidential contest to the interest of General Jackson, who had voted for the tariff of 1824, and whose principles, mainly, on all public matters were yet to be formed. The "tariff of 1828" started a furious excitement in the South, which was only checked by the proclamation of General Jackson, and the revision of the law, in 1832. On the 26th of May, Congress closed its useless labors.

CHAPTER XXIII.

GOSSIP-CABINET TROUBLES AND CHANGES THE PRESIDENT MAKES THE FIRST LICK ON THE CHESAPEAKE AND

A

OHIO CANAL "THE FOX OF KINDERHOOK."

CCORDING to what appeared then an established

custom, for each President to serve two terms. it was taken for granted at the outset that Mr. Adams's re-election would be sustained by the general sentiment of the country. Although Mr. Adams finally submitted to the plans of his friends for his re-election, it does not appear that he ever felt sanguine about it, or considered his success probable. About the middle of May, 1827, he wrote in his Diary: "My own career is closed. My hopes, such as are left me, are centered upon my children. My capacity to write. fails me from day to day. My duties are to prepare for the end with a grateful heart and unwavering mind."

There was, however, nothing in the matter of two terms or any number of terms which conflicted with Mr. Adams's principles. During the disorders that arose concerning the Presidency when he was a member of Mr. Monroe's Cabinet he remarked on this point:

"I see them with pain, but they are sown in the practice which the Virginia Presidents have taken so much pains to