JAMES KNOX POLK ZACHARY TAYLOR From the paintings by G. P. A. Healy, in the Corcoran Gallery, Washington. VOLUME THIRTEEN THE GROWTH OF THE NATION, 1837 TO 1860 BY ENOCH WALTER SIKES, PH. D. Author of: From Colony to Commonwealth; Nathanael Macon; James Iredell; Talleyrand the Diplomat; The Confederate Congress, etc., etc. AND WILLIAM MORSE KEENER, LL. B. Associate editor of McSherry's History of Maryland. PRINTED AND PUBLISHED FOR SUBSCRIBERS ONLY BY GEORGE BARRIE & SONS, PHILADELPHIA Твото 33143 EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION THERE are few years in our national history that more properly deserve the epithet transitional than those between 1837 and 1860. The first of these dates marks the close of the stormy but vivifying terms of the sturdy patriot and turbulent politician, Andrew Jackson. The second date closes those years during which James Buchanan, the man of high intention but weak performance, strove to guide the progress of affairs that were rapidly becoming too stupendous and assertive to be controlled by him, or, indeed, by any man who could have been elected to the presidential office. The times were not for weak men, because they were swept along in the current of events; they were such as to wreck strong men, because effective personal followings seemed to have passed with the great triumvirate, Clay, Webster, and Calhoun, and without a personal following stronger than the strongest possessed by these leaders, no man could have directed, much less controlled, the forces that were moving to an inevitable climax. In writing of these transitional years our authors have produced the second of the two volumes which in THE HISTORY OF NORTH AMERICA compass the span from the period of ferment and adjustment, in which the Constitution became in truth the Instrument of Government, to the beginning of the Civil War period. In these two volumes our authors have described the steps by which the North and the South moved toward that predestined collision which |