Identifying Those Earliest Southern Whigs and Where That Has Led Me

This is post number seven in a series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts.

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The proof is in the pudding, and by that I mean the “truth” is in the pudding—in the taste, not in the pretty picture on the box. Calhoun and his fellow nullifiers from South Carolina were the Whigs and the original anti-Jackson “party” as opposed to a mere “faction” of the Old Jeffersonians. If the Whig Party had looked at the beginning like what it evolved into (over a relatively short period) there would have been no reason to involve the Southern state righters. The National Republican faction (which already contained Southerners) would have simply broken with the Jacksonian Democrats (which had a lot more Southerners) and life would have continued pretty much as it eventually did anyway. Ah, but Henry Clay would have had no more Southern support in 1836, 1840, or whenever, looking into the then unforeseeable future, than he’d had in 1832 when Andrew Jackson smashed him in his second win of the presidency. Southern Whiggery, at its inception, was not an endorsement of Clay’s policies, but was anti-Jacksonian in its own right. The National Republicans and the state righters making up the new “Whig Party” were allies operating on opposite ends of the spectrum regarding Constitutional interpretation and were personified in the beings of Clay and Calhoun.

From the very beginning, there were Americans in the young Republic, in then much less polarized sections, who fought liberal interpretation of the Constitution. But with the end of the War of 1812, a spirit of nationalism swept the country and found a home in the hearts of many Southerners, Calhoun among them. Recall that Federalist New England had opposed the war because, simply put, blockades and embargoes declared necessary by the central government hurt her interests. As a result, focus was placed on the interests of the nation as a whole, which meant using the powers of the central government for the “general welfare” of all. By the 1830s the “revenue” only tariff had morphed into a high protective tariff benefiting New England (and Midwestern) mercantilists to the detriment of everyone else, in particular the agrarian South. The by now more pragmatic ex-young nationalist John C. Calhoun had stopped second-guessing what had gone wrong and was determined to set things right. Funny thing about setting precedents, once that cat is out of the bag, it’s hard to get him back in. A generation of American leaders had failed to heed what the political theorists of the founding generation had warned against, utilization of a centralized state to promote self-aggrandizing, un-republican values. Folks tend to cite Thomas Jefferson here, and I certainly have no problem with that, but he did support ratification of the Constitution. My favorite is Patrick Henry who warned us not to ratify the thing with its nominally limited central government...the first and biggest precedent of all.

Another, who was still around and kicking at the time, was North Carolina’s Nathaniel Macon, who also opposed ratification, but represented his state in the House and later the Senate almost from the inception of the new government. The focus of his career of thirty-seven years was keeping the central government limited as decreed by its charter. An original opponent of the Federalist Party, Macon never fell under the spell of its brand of economic nationalism, forwarded in turn by Clay and the National Republicans. The fact remained that a central government had been created and what would follow would be generations of self-serving men seeking to control it. Their weapon of choice and, not coincidentally the one most conducive to wheedling power and money from the people in the name of common good, was the general welfare clause.

By the time the nationalistic ardor created by the War of 1812 had cooled and the stark reality of having fallen victim to its passion struck home, dramatic action was called for. President Andrew Jackson, an ardent nationalist of the Jacksonian mold (I’m being facetious, but I can’t think of a better way to say it—he was an anti-New England Unionist) struck against Biddle’s National Bank to the cheers of the common folk in the South and the West and the jeers of the National Republicans regardless of section. Calhoun (and South Carolina) struck against the tariff. Ah, but a strike against the tariff was a strike against the national government, which the nationalist Jackson could not tolerate. Jackson’s counter was to propose a military strike against South Carolina. That was something the Jacksonian-Democrat state righters—even those not in sympathy with Calhoun—could not sit idly by and abide. The nullifiers were limited in number and weak, but Southerners were plentiful, and Jackson was pushing the envelope (and Southerners made up a good chunk of his base).

But the Nullification Crisis didn’t occur in a vacuum. Many wealthy and powerful Southerners (the sugar planters of Louisiana, Kentucky hemp-growers, the mining industries of western Virginia) supported a protective tariff, but also of significance in the abandonment of Jackson by some state righters was the issue of the U.S. National Bank, an entity which had Southern supporters in the aforementioned sugar merchants, miners, and hemp-growers as well as black-belt cotton planters. These men were primarily of the National Republican variety, but the existence of nominal supporters of a national bank among state righters does have purchase. A national bank stabilized the money and banking in general. The problem with Biddle’s bank was its partisanship; it catered to and was supported by, a certain, finite, class of people.

[I believe an argument could be made that support of Biddle’s bank was not necessarily the same as support for a national bank for which, at a number of junctures in our early history, an amendment to the Constitution was suggested to accommodate.]

To rehash, Dr. Michael Holt in the Rise and Fall of the American Whig Party states that at the opening of Congress, December 1833, there were twenty National Republicans and twenty Jacksonians squaring off in the U.S. Senate along with two nullifiers and six Southern state-rights senators who had abandoned the Jackson camp in the wake of Jackson’s overt threat to South Carolina. These eight senators held the balance of power in the Senate. Neither Holt nor Arthur Cole in History of the Whig Party of the South identified precisely who these men were. South Carolina’s nullifiers, of course, are easy to identify: John C. Calhoun and William C. Preston. I’m not absolutely sure who the other six were, but having done a little research, I hereby take a stab at identification: Gabriel Moore of Alabama, John Black and George Poindexter of Mississippi, Willie P. Mangum of North Carolina, John Tyler of Virginia, and Joseph Kent of Maryland.

Originally a Jacksonian, Mangum is on record for warning his fellow Southerners to trust no administration forcing the South to wear the chains of the American System, and in 1833, he broke with Jackson for doing what he perceived as that very thing.

Just for the record, at the same time the anti-Jacksonians seized control of the Senate, the House gained an additional eleven Southern anti-Jacksonians and five additional nullifiers—four of the latter from South Carolina and one from Alabama. Of course, it made no difference in the House, where Jacksonian Democrats had things locked up.

In the course of searching for the identity of those six senators, I came across a 1954 article by Princetonian Charles Grier Sellers in The American Historical Review titled “Who Were the Southern Whigs.” From the title, as you may have guessed, I had hoped for specific identities of those six men, but his article didn’t deal with the U. S. Senate, but rather focused broadly on the House and on state legislatures. Mr. Sellers’ argues it was the Bank War, not state rights, that shaped the Southern Whig Party. He appears to be challenging the prevailing belief 63 years ago that state rights shaped Southern Whiggery. Perhaps this is still the prevailing academic position, particularly among Southerners. I admit that I have trouble seeing the Southern Whigs as state righters, but I have less of a problem seeing them as strict constructionists, and therein might be the problem—using the term “strict constructionist” interchangeably with “state righter”. Swap nullifier and secessionist for strict constructionist and the problem increases. Those latter were definitely strict constructionists, but does it follow that all strict constructionists were secessionists?

[Now, in my mind, if you apply strict construction to the Tenth Amendment, then you believe in the right to secede—how could you not? Whether you’re in favor of secession or not is a different question. But that’s me.]

Throughout their history, Southern Whigs compromised their strict-constructionist stance, condoning violation of the Constitution only in “certain situations.” But who determines what constitutes those “situations”? One cannot simply qualify what is necessary and proper under certain conditions, then proceed with the violation in the name of an arbitrary, so-called good. Not, that is, and remain a strict constructionist. A “so-called good” is relative, all too often, to one’s self-interest, and the basest form of self-interest is greed. This is a classic un-republican concept. Further, one can’t advocate the sanctity of Union, then vote for secession, which is what a lot of them eventually did, indicating the Union wasn’t quite so sacred after all. Pondering that, when push came to shove, sounds like the Southern Whigs’ state-right colors bled through.

I’m gonna close the post at this juncture because the story of Southern Whiggery is as much about what the Southern Whigs were as it is about who they were. Throughout its evolution, the character of Southern Whiggery varied from state to state and was shaped not only by the interests of the individual states, but by the interests of different sections within each state. The story is as rich and varied as everything else about the South and goes hand in hand with what can be detailed about the opposition Southern Democrats. Each state had a healthy, viable two-party system before sectionalism (and nationalism, darn it) clouded the political horizon. I think it’s a story worth telling and is, in my humble opinion, critical to understanding what led to sectionalism, war, discord within the Confederacy, Reconstruction, Redemption, and eventually the solid “Democratic” South.

So, my anticipated “brief” junket into the history of Southern Whiggery has taken on a life of its own. I will continue with who/what were the Southern Whigs next time. At the same time I plan to return to Alcorn and the dark days of Reconstruction, and the two series will parallel each other.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

The Nullification Crisis: Sowing the Soil That Produced the Whig Party

This is post number four related to Southern Whiggery and constitutes an overview of the Nullification Crisis, an unexpected distraction (contradictory in substance) intricately woven into Jackson’s war on the American System. The Nullification Crisis was intimately related to the ongoing battle between the principles of strict construction and nationalism. See the sidebar for earlier posts.

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What discontent Jackson engendered among adherents to the American System when he vetoed re-charter of the Second National Bank, he soothed by tacitly supporting the protective Tariff of 1832, a modification of the 1828 Tariff of Abominations. The National Bank had friends among Southern planters, too, but the tariff had far fewer. Jackson’s acceptance of a “protective” tariff frustrated predominately strict-constructionist/state rights Southrons weary of carrying the load for what they considered an unconstitutional measure. These had hoped by electing the nominally state-rights Jackson to the presidency that he would do something about the tariff—beyond mere modification of a monstrosity they’d dubbed abominable. Jackson, however, did support a protective tariff to protect “American labor,” and he was actually a Southern nationalist for whom the “Union,” not federalism, was sacrosanct. Such creatures did exist, I guess. His adherence to the state-rights doctrine was “qualified” by (this is me talking) how important the issue was to the Federal government, or in his case, the man leading it. With such a leader, state rights becomes arbitrary—sorta like directing who of what sex can use the other gender’s restrooms and school showers. See the problem?

[Granted, contemporary abuse has become ridiculous, but the point is, and as our current situation proves, one cannot “qualify” such a doctrine, which is why strict constructionists are...well, “strict constructionists” to prevent such foolishness.]

As far as South Carolina was concerned, the protective tariff was unconstitutional, and in November of that year, she challenged the Tariffs of 1828 and 1832 by passing an Ordinance of Nullification—the same tactic Virginia and Kentucky had used in response to President John Adams’ unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts back in 1798. South Carolina had put the Federal government (as well as the rest of the nation) on notice that she would not allow collection of the Federal tariff within her boundaries after 1 February 1833. The state’s intermediary with the Jackson Administration was her senator, John C. Calhoun. Man and state were challenging what in less than fifty years into the new Republic had become standard procedure: sovereign states subverting themselves to an overreaching Federal government in support of “private interests.” Jackson considered nullification tantamount to treason against the “Union.” 

Outside the Federal government, the primary benefactors of the protective tariff were the Northeast and its spawn in the Midwest where the measure guarded America’s fledging industries. Well, they had been “fledging” twenty years earlier, but were holding their own by 1832, and the self-serving “protection of American labor” had displaced the euphemistic “protection of fledgling industries.” 

Except for some pockets of protection, a good example being Louisiana’s sugar industry, the protective tariff was unpopular across the South, but not enough so to outweigh Jackson’s popularity. Though lip service was given in support of Calhoun, the South outside of South Carolina wished he’d stand down. He didn’t. Neither did Jackson, and on this matter, Jackson had plenty of support in the Northeast. In December, Jackson issued his Proclamation to the people of South Carolina, menacing in tone and condescending in manner. Massachusetts Senator Daniel Webster, whose interests were centered in the protectionist stronghold of New England, applauded the proclamation. His praise did not go unnoticed by the White House. One month later in January 1833, when it became apparent Jackson might require additional powers to subdue the recalcitrant Carolinians and collect his revenues, the president requested Webster’s support in framing the Force Bill which authorized the use of military force against South Carolina.  

The Nullification Crisis was the iconic event that ultimately gave birth to the Whig Party. South Carolina responded to Jackson’s threat of force by denouncing Jackson as King Andrew, and it was the nullifiers and state righters of South Carolina who revived the term Whig, not in reference to the English opposition party, but rather to the Southern Patriots who had assumed the name during the American Revolution, highlighting their opposition to King George and distinguishing themselves from their Tory/Loyalist neighbors. Laying out the crisis’ play-by-play in tandem with the values and principles that drove the state righters from the Jackson camp, one ascertains that the basic principles of the Southern Whig did not falter throughout the remainder of the Party’s twenty-some-odd-years existence as a national entity. That is why during Reconstruction one reads statements by old-line Southern Whigs (by then identified as independents, born-again Democrats, and even treacherous Scalawags) referring to state rights and “constitutionality” when denouncing the tyranny exercised by the Radical Republicans in the North. Such comments, which keep popping up in my research on Reconstruction, are what set me on this Whig junket. To a Southern Whig, state rights and strict construction were the principles that gave birth to the Party. Not so for their Northern counterparts where the future “Whig-Party principles” would focus on the protective tariff, the Bank, protection, and the allocation of the resulting Federal largesse for internal improvements. Those people’s  platform represented nothing more than the original National Republican agenda warmed over. It was Clay, in sore need of Southern support given his disastrous showing in the election of 1832, who (metaphorically speaking) rode in on his white charger and saved the Republic from civil war. But the South had more than electoral support to offer Henry Clay, something he desperately needed: the core of a new party with Southern support already built in.  

Next time I will hit the highpoints driving the compromise that ended the Nullification Crisis.

Thanks for reading,

Charlsie

Jacksonian Democracy, the National Republicans, and the American System

This is my third in a sub-series detailing Southern Whiggery. See the sidebar for earlier posts. 

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In his singular study Whig Party in the South (1913), historian Arthur Charles Cole outlined five stages of development of the Party in the South from its birth in the 1830s to its demise after its disappointing performance in the 1852 election. First and foremost, Cole stated unequivocally that the Whigs evolved from a disaffected group of Jacksonians turned anti-Jacksonians, the direct result of Andrew Jackson’s reaction to John C. Calhoon’s Nullification of the Tariff of 1832. Though not “nullifiers” per se—indeed, most of these men adamantly opposed the concept as well as Calhoun’s tactic—these state-rights leaders abandoned the Jackson camp in the wake of Jackson’s threatened military action against the state of South Carolina. Their numbers reflected a fair proportion of the South’s planting class. Briefly, for the sake of future reference, the other four stages were the Southern Whigs’ acceptance of Clay’s American System, realized by the year 1844; after 1844, a period of cautious interaction with their Northern counterparts, the result of the slavery issue; a growing rift between not only Southern and Northern Whigs, but increased distrust by the Party’s Southern constituents given the Northern faction’s reaction to abolitionism, making the Party an unfit champion for Southern interests; the demise of the National Party following the disastrous election of 1852; and an attempt to revive the Party on the part of the South until the War Between the States swept all pretense aside. I argue that there is yet another stage, that being during Reconstruction and Redemption.  

In my last post I referenced Henry Clay’s need for a cause strong enough to wrest the hearts and minds of the American people from the popular Andrew Jackson. Two highly charged issues, one the National Bank, the second the Nullification Crisis—the two intricately linked by the American System—partially filled Clay’s need. 

The American System, so named by its chief partisan, Clay, and the very essence of the National Republican platform, was a government-assisted economic program the roots of which go back to our first Secretary of the Treasury, Alexander Hamilton. Nationalistic in concept, it is characterized by:

(1) a high protective tariff, initially put into effect to protect burgeoning American industry...

Okay, belay that. Initially it was put into place, with Southern support, in 1816 to protect and strengthen this young nation’s security against Britain following the War of 1812. Lasting peace with mother England arrived in the short-term, then came the argument to protect America’s infant manufacturers. Try as those manufacturers could to deny it [okay, this is me talking], their infant could remain an infant only so long, so the pro-tariff argument again morphed, this time into the protection of “American labor” [yeah, right, more like those who employed the labor]. The Tariff of 1816 didn’t go away; in fact, tariffs kept getting more protective.

(2) A national bank supported by investments from the Federal government and private investors, its purpose to stabilize the currency and reign in risky state banks; and

(3) Federal subsidies for internal improvements, primarily roads and canals meant to link the nation and foster industry as well as security.  

They all sound great, don’t they? We have them today and much, much more. One problem, though: such programs can’t be managed (then as now) without centralization. Popular in New England and Pennsylvania and even the Midwest where industry/manufacturing blossomed, The American System was out of sync with the Founder’s federalism. Strict constructionists/state righters, residing mostly in the South, knew it. State righters, astute victims of the protective tariff, understood the reason the Founders went to the lengths they did in framing the Constitution to prevent such shenanigans, and were aware of the Anti-Federalists pre-ratification warnings as to why the Constitution wouldn’t. This brings us back full circle to the Old-Jeffersonian concerns about the nation’s direction in the wake of the War of 1812. The American System opened the door to Federal interference in the states as well as to political corruption. It was, as those old Jeffersonians of the day repeatedly warned, a looming threat to our [now] long-lost Federal Republic. 

The matter of the Second National Bank, key to the American System, can be divided into two events, one being Jackson’s veto of its re-charter in 1832 followed one year later by his removal of government deposits from the Bank. Event one, I will relate here. Though an obvious attack on the American System, Jackson’s veto was within his purview and constitutional; the removal of the deposits, far more egregious, I will detail in a future post.  

Riding high on the wave of good feeling that accompanied Jackson’s re-election in 1832 and very much aware that Andrew Jackson was no friend of the National Bank, Nicholas Biddle, the Bank’s president, decided the time was favorable to present the Bank’s re-charter to the president, despite the charter’s not expiring for another two years. Considering the popularity of the bank in the Northeast and among the rich planters in many Southern states, Biddle was certain Jackson would not dare veto the measure whereas two years down the road he might. Henry Clay, a bitter foe of Jackson, and Daniel Webster of Massachusetts encouraged Biddle’s decision for early re-charter because they were certain Jackson would veto it, and they were desperate for any conflict that might decrease Jackson’s popularity with the people. Given Jackson’s antagonism to the banking elite, Clay considered the man and his administration a threat to the American System.  

As Clay and Webster anticipated, Jackson declared the Bank outside the scope of national authority and unconstitutional. He vetoed the bill, foiling Biddle. In North Carolina, W. R. Hinton, a Jackson elector, ceased to back Jackson after the veto, but despite protests such as that presented by Hinton and others belonging to the wealthy banking elite, Jackson had foiled Clay and Webster as well. The common folk, regarding the bank a corrupt engine of aristocratic privilege, did not protest the veto, and the National Republicans did not have the votes to override it. The National Republicans had lost the National Bank, a serious blow to the “American System,” and they had nothing to show for it.  

On the subject of the National Republicans’ economic agenda, the American System was about to receive yet another challenge.  

An introduction to the Nullification Crisis next time and thanks for reading,

Charlsie