Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 40.djvu/26

22 Ah—here we have the milk in the cocoanut; or perhaps it would be appropriate to say, the African in the fuel heap. In the framing of the federal constitution, the North and the South—rather, New England and the far Southern States—arranged a quid pro quo, (38) by which the shipping interests of New England obtained control, and permanent control, of commercial regulations by a mere majority vote, instead of a two-thirds vote, in the Congress, and the South (together with the slave-importing shippers of this same New England) defeated the possibility of prohibition of the continued importation of Negroes, temporarily, or for some nineteen years. And now, her darling of sectional customs "protection" in danger from South Carolina's firm stand, New England, through John Quincy Adams as her spokesman, gave warning, in 1833, that tariff "protection," although not guaranteed by the constitution, and slavery protection, which was expressly guaranteed by that instrument, must be held as twin special interests, to stand or fall together.

In this light, then, these remarks of Adams, of Massachusetts, should be carefully marked and constantly borne in mind in connection with the subsequent growth and course of anti-Southern agitation, under the guise of an anti-slavery crusade, from the time—this time of South Carolina's Nullification stand and the resultant tariff reduction of 1833—that a definite check was placed upon high tariff, North-favoring legislation. And this is the same Mr. Adams who shortly thereafter began to make his declining years renowned by pouring into the House of Representatives at Washington his broadsides of "anti-slavery" or anti-Southern petitions.

Finally, a new party was formed, with its primary object, as professed, the exclusion of the South with her constitution-guaranteed property from the common territories that had been acquired by the common blood and the common treasure of the South and the North. And, significantly, early in its history, or as soon (1860) as it had acquired material growth and substantial prestige, (39) this new political party, already thus avowedly sectional in its principles, made a sectional "protective"