In the presidential election of 1796 John Adams, the Federalist candidate, received the largest number of electoral votes, and Jefferson, the Republican candidate, the next largest number, and under the law as it then existed the former became president and the latter vice-president. Jefferson re-entered public life with reluctance, though doubtless with keen enough interest and resolution. He had rightly measured the strength of his followers, and was waiting for the government to "drift into unison" with the republican sense of its constituents, predicting that President Adams would be "overborne" thereby. This prediction was speedily fulfilled. At first the reign of terror and the X. Y. Z. disclosures strengthened the Federalists, until these, mistaking the popular resentment against France for a reaction against democracy--an equivalence in their own minds--passed the alien and sedition laws. In answer to those odious measures Jefferson and Madison prepared and procured the passage of the Kentucky and Virginia resolutions. These resolutions later acquired extraordinary and pernicious prominence in the historical elaboration of the states'-rights doctrine. It is, however, unquestionably true, that as a startling protest against measures "to silence," in Jefferson's words, "by force and not by reason the complaints or criticisms, just or unjust, of our citizens against the conduct of our agents," they served, in this respect, a useful purpose; and as a counterblast against Hamiltonian principles of centralization they were probably, at that moment, very salutary; while even as pieces of constitutional interpretation it is to be remembered that they did not contemplate nullification by any single state, and, moreover, are not to be judged by constitutional principles established later by courts and war. The Federalist party had ruined itself, and it lost the presidential election of 1800. The Republican candidates, Jefferson and Aaron Burr (q.v.), receiving equal votes, it devolved upon the House of Representatives, in accordance with the system which then obtained, to make one of the two president, the other vice-president. Party feeling in America has probably never been more dangerously impassioned than in the three years preceding this election; discount as one will the contrary obsessions of men like Fisher Ames, Hamilton and Jefferson, the time was fateful. Unable to induce Burr to avow Federalist principles, influential Federalists, in defiance of the constitution, contemplated the desperate alternative of preventing an election, and appointing an extra-constitutional (Federalist) president _pro tempore_. Better counsels, however, prevailed; Hamilton used his influence in favour of Jefferson as against Burr, and Jefferson became president, entering upon his duties on the 4th of March 1801. Republicans who had affiliated with the Federalists at the time of the X. Y. Z. disclosures returned; very many of the Federalists themselves Jefferson placated and drew over. "Believing," he wrote, "that (excepting the ardent monarchists) all our citizens agreed in ancient whig principles"--or, as he elsewhere expressed it, in "republican forms"--"I thought it advisable to define and declare them, and let them see the ground on which we can rally." This he did in his inaugural, which, though somewhat rhetorical, is a splendid and famous statement of democracy.[16] His conciliatory policy produced a mild schism in his own party, but proved eminently wise, and the state elections of 1801 fulfilled his prophecy of 1791 that the policy of the Federalists would leave them "all head and no body." In 1804 he was re-elected by 162 out of 176 votes. Entry: JEFFERSON
The practical result of the conflict over the tariff was a compromise. Congress passed an act gradually reducing the duties to a revenue basis, and South Carolina repealed her nullification measures. As the result of the conflict, Calhoun was greatly strengthened in his position as the leader of his party in the South. Southern leaders generally were now beginning to perceive, as Calhoun had already seen, that there was a permanent conflict between the North and the South, not only a divergence of interests between manufacturing and agricultural sections, but an inevitable struggle between free and slave labour. Should enough free states be admitted into the Union to destroy the balance of power, the North would naturally gain a preponderance in the Senate, as it had in the House, and might, within constitutional limits, legislate as it pleased. The Southern minority recognized, therefore, that they must henceforth direct the policy of the government in all questions affecting their peculiar interests, or their section would undergo a social and economic revolution. The Constitution, if strictly interpreted according to Calhoun's views, would secure this control to the minority, and prevent an industrial upheaval. Entry: CALHOUN
LEGARÉ, HUGH SWINTON (1797-1843), American lawyer and statesman, was born in Charleston, South Carolina, on the 2nd of January 1797, of Huguenot and Scotch stock. Partly on account of his inability to share in the amusements of his fellows by reason of a deformity due to vaccine poisoning before he was five (the poison permanently arresting the growth and development of his legs), he was an eager student, and in 1814 he graduated at the College of South Carolina with the highest rank in his class and with a reputation throughout the state for scholarship and eloquence. He studied law for three years in South Carolina, and then spent two years abroad, studying French and Italian in Paris and jurisprudence at Edinburgh. In 1820-1822 and in 1824-1830 he was a member of the South Carolina legislature. In 1827, with Stephen Elliott (1771-1830), the naturalist, he founded the _Southern Review_, of which he was the sole editor after Elliott's death until 1834, when it was discontinued, and to which he contributed articles on law, travel, and modern and classical literature. In 1830-1832 he was attorney-general of South Carolina, and, although a State's Rights man, he strongly opposed nullification. During his term of office he appeared in a case before the United States Supreme Court, where his knowledge of civil law so strongly impressed Edward Livingston, the secretary of state, who was himself an admirer of Roman Law, that he urged Legaré to devote himself to the study of this subject with the hope that he might influence American law toward the spirit and philosophy and even the forms and processes of Roman jurisprudence. Through Livingston, Legaré was appointed American _chargé d'affaires_ at Brussels, where from 1833 to 1836 he perfected himself in civil law and in the German commentaries on civil law. In 1837-1839, as a Union Democrat, he was a member of the national House of Representatives, and there ably opposed Van Buren's financial policy in spite of the enthusiasm in South Carolina for the sub-treasury project. He supported Harrison in the presidential campaign of 1840, and when the cabinet was reconstructed by Tyler in 1841, Legaré was appointed attorney-general of the United States. On the 9th of May 1843 he was appointed secretary of state _ad interim_, after the resignation of Daniel Webster. On the 20th of June 1843 he died suddenly at Boston. His great work, the forcing into common law of the principles of civil law, was unaccomplished; but Story says "he seemed about to accomplish [it]; for his arguments before the Supreme Court were crowded with the principles of the Roman Law, wrought into the texture of the Common Law with great success." As attorney-general he argued the famous cases, the _United States_ v. _Miranda_, _Wood_ v. _the United States_, and _Jewell_ v. _Jewell_. Entry: LEGARÉ
King Street, running north and south through the middle of the peninsula, and Market Street, crossing it about 1 m. from its lower end, are lined with stores, shops or stalls; on Broad Street are many of the office buildings and banks; the wholesale houses are for the most part on Meeting Street, the first thoroughfare east of King; nearly all of the wharves are on the east side; the finest residences are at the lower end of the peninsula on East Battery and South Battery, on Meeting Street below Broad, on Legare Street, on Broad Street and on Rutledge Avenue to the west of King. At the south-east corner of Broad and Meeting streets is Saint Michael's (built in 1752-1761), the oldest church edifice in the city, and a fine specimen of colonial ecclesiastical architecture; in its tower is an excellent chime of eight bells. Beneath the vestry room lie the remains of Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, and in the churchyard are the graves of John Rutledge, James Louis Petigru (1789-1863), and Robert Young Hayne. At the intersection of the same streets are also the massive United States post office building (Italian Renaissance in style), with walls of granite; the county court house, the city hall and Washington Square--in which stand a statue of William Pitt (one arm of which was broken off by a cannon shot during the British bombardment in 1780), and a monument to the memory of Henry Timrod (1829-1867), the poet. At the foot of Broad Street is the Colonial Exchange in which the South Carolina convention organized a new government during the War of Independence; and at the foot of Market Street is the large modern custom house of white marble, built in the Roman-Corinthian style. Saint Philip's church, with admirable architectural proportions, has a steeple nearly 200 ft. in height, from which a beacon light shines for the guidance of mariners far out at sea. In the west cemetery of this church are the tombs of John C. Calhoun, and of Robert James Turnbull (1775-1833), who was prominent locally as a nullifier and under the name of "Brutus" wrote ably on behalf of nullification, free trade and state's rights. The French Protestant Church, though small, is an attractive specimen of Gothic architecture; and the Unitarian, which is in the Perpendicular style and is modelled after the chapel of Edward VI. in Westminster, has a beautiful fan-tracery ceiling. Entry: CHARLESTON
Livingston was again a representative in Congress during 1823-1829, a senator in 1829-1831, and for two years (1831-1833) secretary of state under President Jackson. In this last position he was one of the most trusted advisers of the president, for whom he prepared a number of state papers, the most important being the famous anti-nullification proclamation of the 10th of December 1832. From 1833 to 1835 Livingston was minister plenipotentiary to France, charged with procuring the fulfilment by the French government of the treaty negotiated by W. C. Rives in 1831, by which France had bound herself to pay an indemnity of twenty-five millions of francs for French spoliations of American shipping chiefly under the Berlin and Milan decrees, and the United States in turn agreed to pay to France 1,500,000 francs in satisfaction of French claims. Livingston's negotiations were conducted with excellent judgment, but the French Chamber of Deputies refused to make an appropriation to pay the first instalment due under the treaty in 1833, relations between the two governments became strained, and Livingston was finally instructed to close the legation and return to America. He died on the 23rd of May 1836 at Montgomery Place, Dutchess county, New York, an estate left him by his sister, to which he had removed in 1831. Livingston was twice married. His first wife, Mary McEvers, whom he married on the 10th of April 1788, died on the 13th of March 1801. In June 1805 he married Madame Louise Moreau de Lassy (d. 1860), a widow nineteen years of age, whose maiden name was Davezac de Castera, and who was a refugee in New Orleans from the revolution in Santo Domingo. She was a woman of extraordinary beauty and intellect, and is said to have greatly influenced her husband's public career. Entry: LIVINGSTON
HAYNE, ROBERT YOUNG (1791-1839), American political leader, born in St Paul's parish, Colleton district, South Carolina, on the 10th of November 1791. He studied law in the office Of Langdon Cheves (1776-1857) in Charleston, S.C., and in November 1812 was admitted to the bar there, soon obtaining a large practice. For a short time during the War of 1812 against Great Britain, he was captain in the Third South Carolina Regiment. He was a member of the lower house of the state legislature from 1814 to 1818, serving as speaker in the latter year; was attorney-general of the state from 1818 to 1822, and in 1823 was elected, as a Democrat, to the United States Senate. Here he was conspicuous as an ardent free-trader and an uncompromising advocate of "States Rights," opposed the protectionist tariff bills of 1824 and 1828, and consistently upheld the doctrine that slavery was a domestic institution and should be dealt with only by the individual states. In one of his speeches opposing the sending by the United States of representatives to the Panama Congress, he said, "The moment the federal government shall make the unhallowed attempt to interfere with the domestic concerns of the states, those states will consider themselves driven from the Union." Hayne is best remembered, however, for his great debate with Daniel Webster (q.v.) in January 1830. The debate arose over the so-called "Foote's Resolution," introduced by Senator Samuel A. Foote (1780-1846) of Connecticut, calling for the restriction of the sale of public lands to those already in the market, but was concerned primarily with the relation to one another and the respective powers of the federal government and the individual states, Hayne contending that the constitution was essentially a compact between the states, and the national government and the states, and that any state might, at will, nullify any federal law which it considered to be in contravention of that compact. He vigorously opposed the tariff of 1832, was a member of the South Carolina Nullification Convention of November 1832, and reported the ordinance of nullification passed by that body on the 24th of November. Resigning from the Senate, he was governor of the state from December 1832 to December 1834, and as such took a strong stand against President Jackson, though he was more conservative than many of the nullificationists in the state. He was intendant (mayor) of Charleston, S.C., from 1835 to 1837, and was president of the Louisville, Cincinnati & Charleston railway from 1837 to 1839. He died at Asheville, N.C., on the 24th of September 1839. His son, Paul Hamilton Hayne (1830-1886), was a poet of some distinction, and in 1878 published a life of his father. Entry: HAYNE
In 1832 South Carolina, acting in substantial accordance with Calhoun's theories, "nullified" the tariff acts passed by Congress in 1828 and 1832 (see NULLIFICATION; SOUTH CAROLINA; and UNITED STATES). On the 28th of December 1832 Calhoun resigned as vice-president, and on the 4th of January 1833 took his seat in the Senate. President Jackson had, in a special message, taken strong ground against the action of South Carolina, and a bill was introduced to extend the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and clothe the president with additional powers, with the avowed object of meeting the situation in South Carolina. Calhoun, in turn, introduced resolutions upholding the doctrine held by South Carolina, and it was in the debate on the first-named measure, termed the "Force Bill," and on these resolutions, that the first intellectual duel took place between Daniel Webster and Calhoun. Webster declared that the Federal government through the Supreme Court was the ultimate expounder and interpreter of its own powers, while Calhoun championed the rights of the individual state under a written contract which reserved to each state its sovereignty. Entry: CALHOUN
The events of Benton's political life are associated primarily with three things: the second United States Bank, westward expansion and slavery. In the long struggles over the bank, the deposits and the "expunging resolution" (i.e. the resolution to expunge from the records of the Senate the vote of censure of President Jackson for his removal of the government deposits from the bank), Benton led the Jackson Democrats. His opposition to a national bank and insistence on the peculiar virtues of "hard money," whence his sobriquet of "Old Bullion," went back to his Tennessee days. In all that concerned the expansion of the country and the fortunes of the West no public man was more consistent or more influential than Benton, and none so clear of vision. Reared on the border, and representing a state long the farthermost outpost across the Mississippi in the Indian country, he held the ultra-American views of his section as regarded foreign relations generally, and the "manifest destiny" of expansion westward especially. It was quite natural that he should advocate the removal westward of the Indian tribes, should urge the encouragement of trade with Sante Fé (New Mexico), and should oppose the abandonment in the Spanish treaty of 1819 of American claims to Texas. He once thought the Rocky Mountains the proper western limit of the United States (1824), but this view he soon outgrew. He was the originator of the policy of homestead laws by which the public lands were used to promote the settlement of the west by home-seekers. No other man was so early and so long active for transcontinental railways. But Benton was not a land-grabber, whether in the interest of slavery or of mere jingoism. In the case of Oregon, for instance, he was firmly against joint occupation with Great Britain, but he was always for the boundary of 49° and never joined in the campaign-jingo cry of "Fifty-four Forty or Fight." It was he who chiefly aided Polk in withdrawing from that untenable position. He despised pretexts and intrigues. Both in the case of Oregon and in that of Texas, though one of the earliest and most insistent of those who favoured their acquisition, yet in the face of southern and western sentiment he denounced the sordid and devious intrigues and politics connected with their acquisition, and kept clear of these. For the same reason he opposed the Mexican War, though not its prosecution once begun. In the Texas question slavery was prominent. Toward slavery Benton held a peculiarly creditable attitude. A southerner, he was a slaveholder; but he seems to have gradually learned that slavery was a curse to the South, for in 1844 he declared that he would not introduce it into Texas lands "where it was never known," and in 1849 proclaimed that his personal sentiments were "against the institution of slavery." In the long struggle over slavery in the territories, following 1845, he was for the extreme demands of neither section; not because he was timorous or a compromiser,--no man was less of either,--but because he stood unwaveringly for justice to both sections, never adopting exaggerated views that must or even could be compromised. The truth is that he was always a westerner before he was a southerner and a union man before all things else; he was no whit less national than Webster. Hence his distrust and finally hatred of Calhoun, dating from the nullification episode of 1832-1833. As the South under Calhoun's lead became increasingly sectional and aggressive, Benton increasingly lost sympathy with her. Though he despised political inaction Abolitionists, and hated their propaganda as inimical to the Union, he would not therefore close the national mails to Abolition literature, nor abridge the right of petition. No statesman was more prescient of the disunion tendencies of Calhoun's policies, and as early as 1844 he prophetically denounced the treason to the Union toward which the South was drifting. He would not drift with her for the sake of slavery, and this was his political undoing. In 1851 Missouri rejected him in his sixth candidacy for the Senate, after he had been an autocrat in her politics for thirty years. In 1852 he was elected to the House of Representatives, but his opposition to the repeal of the Missouri Compromise caused his defeat in 1854. An unsuccessful campaign for the governorship of Missouri in 1856 ended his political career. He died at Washington on the 10th of April 1858. Entry: BENTON
His earliest championship of protection was a resolution introduced by him in the Kentucky legislature (1808) which favoured the wearing by its members of home-made clothes; and one in the United States Senate (April 1810), on behalf of home-grown and home-made supplies for the United States navy, but only to the point of making the nation independent of foreign supply. In 1816 he advocated the Dallas tariff, in which the duties ranged up to 35% on articles of home production, the supply of which could satisfy the home demand; the avowed purpose being to build up certain industries for safety in time of war. In 1824 he advocated high duties to relieve the prevailing distress, which he pictured in a brilliant and effective speech. Although the distress was caused by the reactionary effect of a disordered currency and the inflated prices of the war of 1812, he ascribed it to the country's dependence on foreign supply and foreign markets. Great Britain, he said, was a shining example of the wisdom of a high tariff. No nation ever flourished without one. He closed his principal speech on the subject in the House of Representatives with a glowing appeal in behalf of what he called "The American System." In spite of the opposition of Webster and other prominent statesmen, Clay succeeded in enacting a tariff which the people of the Southern states denounced as a "tariff of abominations." As it overswelled the revenue, in 1832 he vigorously favoured reducing the tariff rates on all articles not competing with American products. His speech in behalf of the measure was for years a protection text-book; but the measure itself reduced the revenue so little and provoked such serious threats of nullification and secession in South Carolina, that, to prevent bloodshed and to forestall a free trade measure from the next Congress, Clay brought forward in 1833 a compromise gradually reducing the tariff rates to an average of 20%. To the Protectionists this was "like a crash of thunder in winter"; but it was received with such favour by the country generally, that its author was hailed as "The Great Pacificator," as he had been thirteen years before at the time of the Missouri Compromise (see below). As, however, the discontent with the tariff in the South was only a symptom of the real trouble there--the sensitiveness of the slave-power,--Clay subsequently confessed his serious doubts of the policy of his interference. Entry: CLAY
COOPER, THOMAS (1759-1840), American educationalist and political philosopher, was born in London, England, on the 22nd of October 1759, and educated at Oxford. Threatened with prosecution at home because of his active sympathy with the French Revolution, he emigrated to America about 1793, and began the practice of law in Northumberland county, Pennsylvania. He was president-judge of the Fourth District of Pennsylvania in 1806-1811. Like his friend Joseph Priestley, who was then living in Northumberland, he sympathized with the Anti-Federalists, and took part in the agitation against the Sedition Act, and for a newspaper attack in 1799 on President John Adams, Cooper was convicted, fined and imprisoned for libel. Like Priestley, Cooper was very highly esteemed by Thomas Jefferson, who secured for him the appointment as first professor of natural science and law in the University of Virginia--a position which Cooper was forced to resign under the fierce attack made on him by the Virginia clergy. After filling the chair of chemistry in Dickinson College, Carlisle, Pa. (1811-1814), and in the University of Pennsylvania (1818-1819), he became professor of chemistry in South Carolina College, at Columbia, in 1819, and afterwards gave instruction in political economy also. In 1820 he became acting president of this institution, and was president from 1821 until 1833, when he resigned owing to the opposition within the state to his liberal religious views. In December 1834, owing to continued opposition, he resigned his professorship. He had been formally tried for infidelity in 1832. He was a born agitator: John Adams described him as "a learned, ingenious, scientific and talented madcap." Before his college classes, in public lectures, and in numerous pamphlets, he constantly preached the doctrine of free trade, and tried to show that the protective system was especially burdensome to the South. His remedy was state action. Each state, he contended, was a sovereign power and was in duty bound to protest against the tyrannical acts of the Federal government. He exercised considerable influence in preparing the people of South Carolina for nullification and secession; in fact he preceded Calhoun in advocating a practical application of the state sovereignty principle. The last years of his life were spent in preparing an edition of the Statutes at Large of the state, which was completed by David James McCord (1797-1855) and published in ten volumes (1836-1841). Dr Cooper died in Columbia on the 11th of May 1840. As a philosopher he was a follower of Hartley, Erasmus Darwin, Priestley and Broussais; he was a physiological materialist, and a severe critic of Scotch metaphysics. Among his publications are _Political Essays_ (1800); _An English Version of the Institutes of Justinian_ (1812); _Lectures on the Elements of Political Economy_ (1826); _A Treatise on the Law of Libel and the Liberty of the Press_ (1830); and a translation of Broussais' _On Irritation and Insanity_ (1831), with which were printed his own essays, "The Scripture Doctrine of Materialism," "View of the Metaphysical and Physiological Arguments in favour of Materialism," and "Outline of the Doctrine of the Association of Ideas." Entry: COOPER