represented to their minds simply the price, none too large, of commercial and industrial independ

ence.

These young aggressive spirits seemed at times quite indifferent to nice questions of constitutional law. Calhoun dismissed constitutional objections to a national bank with a wave of the hand: he thought discussion of such abstract themes "a useless consumption of time." On introducing his bill for internal improvements, in December, 1816, he intimated that he did not propose to indulge in metaphysical subtleties respecting the Constitution. "The instrument was not intended as a thesis for the logician to exercise his ingenuity on; . . . it ought to be construed with plain good sense." If Clay exhibited more sensitiveness to constitutional limitations, it was because he had to clear himself from the charge of inconsistency. In supporting the Bank Bill in 1816 he frankly confessed that he had changed his mind on the point of constitutionality. He had believed the incorporation of a bank in 1811 unwarranted by the Constitution; but conditions had changed. What was then neither necessary nor proper was now both necessary and proper. The interpretation of the Constitution must always take existing circumstances into account. If Clay did not add to his reputation as an expounder of the Constitution by this speech, he represented admirably, nevertheless, the changes which circumstances had wrought in the convictions of his associates.

Against these new tendencies John Randolph set himself stark and grim. "The question is," said he,

replying to Calhoun's new nationalism, "whether or not we are willing to become one great consolidated nation, or whether we have still respect enough for those old, respectable institutions [the States] to regard their integrity and preservation as a part of our policy." Randolph spoke for a generation which was passing away; but his words touched a responsive chord in the breast of President Madison. On March 3, 1817, as he was about to leave office, he sent to Congress a message vetoing the Internal Improvements Bill and warning his party associates of the danger of latitudinarian views of the Constitution. This message was Madison's farewell address. It was thoroughly characteristic of the man and the

statesman.

The relaxing of Republican doctrines, and of party ties generally, divested the presidential election of any real political significance. The Federalists were thoroughly discredited. As a party they made no concerted effort to nominate candidates. Virtually, therefore, the selection of a President rested with the congressional caucus of the Republican party. The choice lay between two members of the President's Cabinet: James Monroe, Secretary of State, and William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury. Governor Tompkins, of New York, was put forward by enthusiastic partisans from that State, but he was not a national figure in any sense and commanded no support outside of his State. Intrigue played a part in this caucus, if contemporary testimony may be believed. Tradition has it that Martin Van Buren and Peter B. Porter prevented their New York delega

tion from voting for Crawford and thus threw the nomination to Monroe. Governor Tompkins was the choice of the caucus for Vice-President. No one could safely affirm that these nominees were the choice of the rank and file of the party. Here and there public meetings were held to protest against the dictation of the congressional caucus; but no organized opposition developed. The campaign proved to be a tame affair. Nowhere was there a real contest. Only three States, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Delaware, chose Federalist electors. Not a ripple of excitement stirred the public when announcement was finally made that Monroe had received 183 electoral votes and Rufus King, 34. For the fourth time a Virginian had been raised to the Presidency.

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Of the general histories, only that by McMaster contains any great amount of information bearing on the economic changes wrought by war and the preceding period of commercial restriction. Adams summarizes the economic results of war in a single chapter in the last volume of his work. K. C. Babcock, The Rise of American Nationality (in The American Nation, vol. 13, 1906), attempts the same task. Besides the manuals on economic history which have already been mentioned, there are several excellent volumes dealing with various phases of national life: such as, D. R. Dewey, Financial History of the United States (1903); F. W. Taussig, Tariff History of the United States (rev. ed., 1913); R. C. H. Catterall, The Second Bank of the United States (1903); J. L. Bishop, History of American Manufactures from 1608–1860 (2 vols., 1861-64); C. W. Wright, Wool-Growing and the Tariff (1910). Among the biographies of statesmen of the new generation, the best are: G. T. Curtis, Life of Daniel Webster (2 vols., 1869); W. W. Story, Life and Letters of Joseph Story (2 vols., 1851); G. Hunt, John C. Calhoun (1908).

CHAPTER XIV

THE WESTWARD MOVEMENT

At the end of the second decade of the nineteenth century, the people of the United States were still in the main a homogeneous folk, native-born descendants of native-born ancestors. The tide of immigration which was by the end of the century to inundate the nation and transform its character was just beginning to flow. Its volume between the close of the Revolution and the year 1820, when the first official statistics were collected, must remain a matter of conjecture. In 1817, the painstaking Niles, in his Register, estimated that about twenty-two thousand immigrants had arrived in that year in the ports of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston, of whom four thousand were Germans and the rest inhabitants of the British Isles. Fully one half of these British subjects were brawny Irishmen, often a turbulent lot, but always in demand for hard labor on the roads and canals which were projected in every part of the Union. Among these newcomers, however, were many undesirables. Not a few English parishes emptied their poorhouses by sending the helpless inmates to the New World. Some of these deported paupers, no doubt, found a a livelihood and became respectable citizens; but the records of almshouses in the Eastern States indicate that many of these unfortunates had only exchanged one asylum for another. In the Philadelphia poor.

houses in the early thirties, from one third to one half of the inmates were foreign-born. Cargoes of redemptioners came into American ports as late as the year 1818. Of that traffic which was bringing helpless Africans into bondage in the Southern States, more will be said in a subsequent chapter.

Among the new arrivals, it goes without saying, were men and women, who, and whose descendants, contributed mightily to the building up of American Commonwealths. Entire communities seeking an asylum in the New World continued to arrive as in the early years of the seventeenth century. In 1817, a body of German separatists from Württemberg, under the leadership of Joseph Baumeler, landed at Philadelphia. Like the English Pilgrims they sought freedom from religious persecution, but the Plymouth which they founded was on a new frontier at Zoar in the wilderness of Ohio.

What particularly impressed every foreign traveler in America during these years of transition and expansion was the incessant movement of society. The earlier westward movement of population had never wholly ceased, but it had been retarded by the war. The return of peace was like the first warm days of spring. The roads leading West were fairly inundated by a swelling stream of emigrants. An observer at the Genesee turnpike noted a train of some twenty wagons and one hundred and sixteen persons on their way to Indiana from a single town in Maine. A traveler on his way from Nashville to Georgia, in January, 1817, met an astonishing number of people from the Carolinas and Georgia who were bound for