Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/221

Rh attempted to show that there must have been some secret and reprehensible understanding be- tween Tyler and Clay ; but this scheme failed completely. In the senate Mr. Tyler took a con- spicuous stand against the so-called " tariff of abominations" enacted in 1828, which Benton, Van Buren, and other prominent Jacksonians, not yet quite clear as to their proper attitude, were in- duced to support. There was thus some ground for the opinion entertained at this time by Tyler, that the Jacksonians were not really strict con- structionists. In February, 1830, after taking part in the Virginia convention for revising the state constitution, Mr. Tyler returned to his seat in the senate, and found himself first drawn toward Jack- son by the veto message of the latter, 27 May, upon the Maysville turnpike bill. He attacked the irreg- ularity of Jackson s appointment of commissioners to negotiate a commercial treaty with Turkey with- out duly informing the senate. On the other hand, he voted in favor of confirming the appointment of Van Buren as minister to Great Britain. In the presidential election of 1832 he supported Jack- son as a less objectionable candidate than the others, Clay, Wirt, and Floyd. Mr. Tyler disap- proved of nullification, and condemned the course of South Carolina as both unconstitutional and impolitic. At the same time he objected to Presi- dent Jackson's famous proclamation of 10 Dec, 1832, as a " tremendous engine of federalism," tend- ing to the "consolidation" of the states into a single political body. Under the influence of these feel- ings he undertook to play the part of mediator be- tween Clay and Calhoun, and in that capacity ear- nestly supported the compromise tariff introduced by the former in the senate, 12 Feb., 1833. On the so-called " force bill," clothing the president with extraordinary powers for the purpose of en- forcing the tariff law, Mr. Tyler showed that he had the courage of his convictions. When the bill was put to vote, 20 Feb., 1833, some of its oppo- nents happened to be absent; others got up and went out in order to avoid putting themselves on record. The vote, as then taken, stood : yeas, thirty-two ; nay, one (John Tyler).

As President Jackson's first term had witnessed a division in the Democratic party between the nullifiers led by Calhoun and the unconditional upholders of the Union, led by the president him- self, with Benton, Blair, and Van Buren, so his second term witnessed a somewhat similar division arising out of the war upon the United States bank. The tendency of this fresh division was to bring Mr. Tyler and his friends nearer to co-opera- tion with Mr. Calhoun, while at the same time it furnished points of contact that might, if occasion should offer, be laid hold of for the purpose of forming a temporary alliance with Mr. Clay and the National Republicans. The origin of the name " Whig," in its strange and anomalous application to the combination in 1834, is to be found in the fact that it pleased the fancy of President Jackson's op- ponents to represent him as a kind of arbitrary ty- rant. On this view it seemed proper that they should be designated "Whigs," and at first there were some attempts to discredit the supporters of the admin- istration by calling them "Tories." On the ques- tion of the bank, when it came to the removal of the deposits, Mr. Tyler broke with the administra- tion. Against the bank he had fought, on every fitting occasion, since the beginning of his public career. In 1834 he declared emphatically : " I be- lieve the bank to be the original sin against the constitution, which, in the progress of our history, has called into existence a numerous progeny of usurpations. Shall I permit this serpent, however bright its scales or erect its mien, to exist by and through my vote?" Nevertheless, strongly as he disapproved of the bank, Mr. Tyler disapproved still more strongly of the methods by which Presi- dent Jackson assailed it. There seemed at that time to be growing up in the United States a spirit of extreme unbridled democracy quite foreign to the spirit, in which our constitutional govern- ment, with its carefully arranged checks and limi- tations, was founded. It was a spirit that prompted mere majorities to insist upon having their way, even at the cost of overriding all constitutional checks and limits. This spirit possessed many members of Jackson's party, and it found expres- sion in what Benton grotesquely called the "demos krateo" principle. A good illustration of it was to be seen in Benton's argument, after the election of 1824, that Jackson, having received a plurality of electoral votes, ought to be declared president, and that the house of representatives, in choosing Adams, was " defying the will of the people."

In similar wise President Jackson, after his triumphant re-election in 1832, was inclined to interpret his huge majorities as meaning that the people were ready to uphold him in any course that he might see fit to pursue. This feeling no doubt strengthened him in his determined attitude toward the nullifiers, and it certainly contributed to his arbitrary and overbearing method of dealing with the bank, culminating in 1833 in his removal of the deposits. There was ground for maintaining that in this act the president exceeded his powers, and it seemed to illustrate the tendency of unbridled democracy toward despotism, under the leadership of a headstrong and popular chief. Mr. Tyler saw in it such a tendency, and he believed that the only safeguard for constitutional government, whether against the arbitrariness of Jackson or the latitudinarianism of the National Republicans, lay in a most rigid adherence to strict constructionist doctrines. Accordingly, in his speech of 24 Feb., 1834, he proposed to go directly to the root of the matter and submit the question of a national bank to the people in the shape of a constitutional amendment, either expressly forbidding or expressly allowing congress to create such an institution. According to his own account, he found Clay and Webster ready to co-operate with him in this course, while Calhoun held aloof. Nothing came of the project ; but it is easy to see in Mr. Tyler's attitude at this time the basis for a short-lived alliance with the National Republicans, whenever circumstances should suggest it. On Mr. Clay's famous resolution to censure the president he voted in the affirmative. In the course of 1835 the seriousness of the schism in the Democratic party was fully revealed. Not only had the small body of nullifiers broken away, under the lead of Calhoun, but a much larger party was formed in the southern states under the appellation of " state-rights Whigs." They differed with the National Republicans on the fundamental questions of tariff, bank, and internal improvements, and agreed with them only in opposition to Jackson as an alleged violator of the constitution. Even in this opposition they differed from the party of Webster and Clay, for they grounded it largely upon a theory of state rights which the latter statesmen had been far from accepting. The "state-rights Whigs" now nominated Hugh L. White, of Tennessee, for president, and John Tyler for vice-president. The National Republicans wishing to gather votes from the other parties, nominated for president Gen. William H.