Page:Cambridge Modern History Volume 7.djvu/440

 408 Condition of the South. [isso statesmen thenceforth counted for less, and popular conventions for more. Delegations of local politicians were substituted for Congressional committees; the influence of unknown men displaced the authority of responsible leaders. But, even after that notable break-up, the South kept her place of authority in party counsels, in cabinets, and even in the choice and policy of Presidents. Men drawn from her school of privilege were as prominent as ever, and ruled conventions as they had ruled groups of consulting statesmen. Their initiative was not daunted or discouraged. No one could deny that the South had all along played a part in the control of parties which was altogether out of proportion to her importance in wealth or population. But every year relaxed her hold upon affairs and more definitely and obviously threatened her mastery with destruction. The country was growing away from her. It had grown away from her in the years which preceded the coming-in of Jackson and the rough western democracy which despised tradition; but the fact had not been upon the surface in those days. In 1850 it was plain to see. During the twenty years which had passed, the country had grown at an infinitely quickened pace, and in ways which could escape no man's observation, while the South had almost stood still. Her order of life was fixed and unchangeable. She could not expect manufacturers to make their home with her ; she could not induce immigrants to settle on her untilled lands. Diversification of industry was for her, it seemed, out of the question. She had begun to perceive this twenty years ago, and had been deeply moved by the discovery. She could not forget the controversies which had raged about the tariff legislation of 1828 and 1832, or rid herself of the painful impression of what had been done and said and threatened when South Carolina made her attempt at "nullification." Time had but made the issues of that conflict more distressingly plain and significant. The South could not compete with the North in the establishment of manufactures because she could not command or maintain the sort of labour necessary for their successful development; nor could she compete with the North in the establishment of agricultural communities and the building of new States in the West, if her people were to be forbidden to take their slaves with them into the national Territories. Her statesmen had felt a great enthusiasm for national expansion at the first, had favoured moderate tariffs and the diversification of industry, had spoken like men of a race, not like men of a section, until they saw at last how the very organisation of the communities they loved best and most passionately seemed to shut them out from sharing in the great change and growth which were to command the future. Then, as was but natural, they began to -draw back and to doubt as to the course they had taken. To put tariff-charges on imports in order that manu- facturers might get higher prices for their goods in the markets of the