often able to coerce reluctant congressmen into being "good" by threatening not to approve their recommendations.

573. Famous among the tricks of the game, as professional politicians came to play it, was the gerrymander. It is the custom to choose congressmen by districts. A State, therefore, is partitioned by its legislature into as many congressional districts as it has congressmen. Frequently, the party in power shapes these districts with shameful unfairness. If it cannot control them all for itself, it can usually pack hostile majorities into two or three of many districts, leaving the rest "safe"; or it can add a strongly favorable county to a doubtful district.

State constitutions usually require that a county shall not be divided (unless of itself it makes more than one district) and that each district must be made up of "contiguous territory." But such restrictions amount to little in the absence of popular opinion to resent and punish trickery.

The first notorious use of this device was in Massachusetts in 1812. The Republicans were in power, but could not. hope to retain it against Federalist feeling regarding the War. To keep a part, the legislature, with the approval of Governor Gerry, constructed a congressional district of atrocious unfairness. A Federalist editor drew a map of this and hung it over his desk, to feed his wrath. Gilbert Stuart, the famous painter, noticed the monstrosity one day, and with ready pencil added wings and claws, exclaiming, "There's your salamander!" "Better say Gerrymander," growled the editor, a bitter hater of Governor Gerry; and the uncouth name passed into current use.

CHAPTER LI

THE JACKSON PERIOD, 1829-1841

574. JACKSON had two thirds of the electoral votes, every one south of the Potomac and west of the Appalachians, together with those of Pennsylvania and New York. The question for his opponents was whether the alliance of West and South could be broken. Those two sections were still united against the capitalistic East by their bitterness toward the Bank and the Supreme Court; but neither Bank nor Court at this time was in "practical politics." The pressing problems concerned protection, nullification, and the public lands.

The North Atlantic section insisted on a continuance of high protection, and (under the old apportionment of 1820) it still had a powerful vote in Congress. But in the South, college boys formed associations to wear homespun, as a protest against the Northern manufactures; and during 1828-1829 every legislature from Virginia to Mississippi had declared for secession or nullification if the tariff policy were not radically changed. (Review §§ 506–511.)

The West, not very insistent either way on the tariff,' was devoted to the Union, which the South threatened; but, in opposition to the East, it was even more devoted to securing a freer public land policy, to attract new settlers and to protect old settlers against tribute to Eastern speculators.

575. This land reform was championed in Congress especially by Thomas H. Benton, Senator from Missouri (§ 503), and the devoted follower of Jackson. The other great leaders of the time were the trio Calhoun, Webster, and Clay, who had filled the public eye since 1816.

1 These two manufacturing States the labor vote carried for Jackson. 2 The tariff favored wool and some other raw products of the West.

Calhoun, of strict Calvinistic training, keen in logic, austere in morals, was no longer the ardent young enthusiast for nationality that he had been just before and after the War of 1812. He had reversed his stand on the tariff, to go with his

section. He was the chief spokesman of the planters, and the most powerful advocate of the right of nullification. He still loved the Union, but he believed it could be preserved only by making it elastic enough so that the States might nullify Federal laws.

§ 576]

CALHOUN, WEBSTER, CLAY

487

Webster was a majestic intellect and a master in oratory. He, too, had reversed his stand both on the tariff and the Bank, to go with his section. He was the leading champion in Congress of the manufacturing capitalists; and, from an advocate of States Rights in the War of 1812, he had become the great defender of the Union.

Clay, impetuous, versatile, winning, was the only one of the three who still held his old positions on leading questions. Until 1820 he had been absolutely supreme in the West. After that time he had lost influence because of his support of the Bank; and his alliance with Adams in 1824 had still further undermined his popularity. However, he remained the only leader who could at all withstand Jackson in his own section; and not even Jackson won such devoted personal enthusiasm.

576. The National Bank, like its predecessor of 1791, was a huge monopoly one of the two or three greatest money monopolies in the world at that time. It had special privileges not open to other individuals or corporations. It had vast power, too, over State Banks and over the business of the country: at a word it could contract the currency in circulation by a third. The Bank had used its tremendous power for the advantage of the country in ways that Jackson could not appreciate; but at any time it might use its power in politics, and Jackson felt this danger vividly.

The Bank's charter was not to expire until 1836, and Jackson's term ended in 1833; but in his first message to Congress (December, 1829) he called attention to the fact that within a few years the Bank must ask for a new charter, and asserted that "both the constitutionality and the expediency" of the institution were "questioned by a large part of our fellow citizens." Clay seized the chance to array the Bank against Jackson, and persuaded Biddle (the Bank's president) to ask

1 Under the system of the past half-century, any body of men with a few thousand dollars can open a "national bank." This is a situation wholly different from that of 1816–1835.

[8 577 Congress at once for a new charter. The bill passed, and Jackson vetoed it (July, 1831), declaring the Bank's control of the country's money a menace to business and to democratic government. Again, too, despite the decision of the Supreme Court in 1819, he called the Bank charter unconstitutional.

577. Jackson's foes were jubilant. Webster and Adams both declared that the "old Indian fighter" was in his dotage; and Clay and Biddle printed and circulated 30,000 copies of the veto as a campaign document to defeat his reëlection.

It proved an admirable campaign document-for Jackson. In the election of 1832 the foremost question was Jackson or the Bank. The president was a novice in politics, but he had outplayed the politicians and selected the one issue that could keep his old following united. The West and Southwest hated the Bank and loved Jackson; the old South at least hated the Bank; and once more the workingmen of the Eastern cities declared vehemently against all monopolies. The Bank went into politics with all its resources, open and secret. In particular it made loans on easy terms to fifty members of Congress; it secured the support of the leading papers; and it paid lavish sums to political writers all over the country to attack Jackson.

578. Jackson was reelected by 219 electoral votes, to 49 for Clay, and he received a larger popular vote, in proportion to population, than any president had ever had. For the first time, a President had appealed to the Nation over the head of Congress; and the Nation sustained him.

In this campaign the National Republicans (§ 520), complaining of Jackson's attempts to dominate Congress, took the name. Whig-which in England had long indicated opposition to royal control over parliament.

579. Meantime the question of protection or nullification was pressing to the front. In the summer of 1828, while the South was seething with talk of secession, Calhoun had brought forward what he thought a milder remedy for the injustice of the tariff. This was his theory of nullification, presented in his famous Exposition.