So the Democrats began their new lease of life with an orgy of spoils."Anybody is good enough for any job" was the favorite watchword.But underneath this turmoil of desire for office, significant party differences were shaping themselves.Henry Clay, the alluring orator and master of compromise, brought together a coalition of opposing fragments.He and his following objected to Jackson's assumption of vast executive prerogatives, and in a brilliant speech in the Senate Clay espoused the name Whig.Having explained the origin of the term in English and colonial politics, he cried: "And what is the present but the same contest in another form? The partizans of the present Executive sustain his favor in the most boundless extent.The Whigs are opposing executive encroachment and a most alarming extension of executive power and prerogative.They are contending for the rights of the people, for free institutions, for the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws."There soon appeared three practical issues which forced the new alignment.The first was the Bank.The charter of the United States Bank was about to expire, and its friends sought a renewal.Jackson believed the Bank an enemy of the Republic, as its officers were anti-Jacksonians, and he promptly vetoed the bill extending the charter.The second issue was the tariff.
Protection was not new; but Clay adroitly renamed it, calling it "the American system." It was popular in the manufacturing towns and in portions of the agricultural communities, but was bitterly opposed by the slave-owning States.
A third issue dealt with internal improvements.All parts of the country were feeling the need of better means of communication, especially between the West and the East.Canals and turnpikes were projected in every direction.Clay, whose imagination was fervid, advocated a vast system of canals and roads financed by national aid.But the doctrine of states-rights answered that the Federal Government had no power to enter a State, even to spend money on improvements, without the consent of that State.And, at all events, for Clay to espouse was for Jackson to oppose.
These were the more important immediate issues of the conflict between Clay's Whigs and Jackson's Democrats, though it must be acknowledged that the personalities of the leaders were quite as much an issue as any of the policies which they espoused.The Whigs, however, proved unequal to the task of unhorsing their foes; and, with two exceptions, the Democrats elected every President from Jackson to Lincoln.The exceptions were William Henry Harrison and Zachary Taylor, both of whom were elected on their war records and both of whom died soon after their inauguration.Tyler, who as Vice-President succeeded General Harrison, soon estranged the Whigs, so that the Democratic triumph was in effect continuous over a period of thirty years.
Meanwhile, however, another issue was shaping the destiny of parties and of the nation.It was an issue that politicians dodged and candidates evaded, that all parties avoided, that publicists feared, and that presidents and congressmen tried to hide under the tenuous fabric of their compromises promises.But it was an issue that persisted in keeping alive and that would not down, for it was an issue between right and wrong.Three times the great Clay maneuvered to outflank his opponents over the smoldering fires of the slaver issue, but he died before the repeal of the Missouri Compromise gave the death-blow to his loosely gathered coalition.Webster, too, and Calhoun, the other members of that brilliant trinity which represented the genius of Constitutional Unionism, of States Rights, and of Conciliation, passed away before the issue was squarely faced by a new party organized for the purpose of opposing the further expansion of slavery.
This new organization, the Republican party, rapidly assumed form and solidarity.It was composed of Northern Whigs, of anti-slavery Democrats, and of members of several minor groups, such as the Know-Nothing or American party, the Liberty party, and included as well some of the despised Abolitionists.The vote for Fremont, its first presidential candidate, in 1866, showed it to be a sectional party, confined to the North.But the definite recognition of slavery as an issue by an opposition party had a profound effect upon the Democrats.Their Southern wing now promptly assumed an uncompromising attitude, which, in 1860, split the party into factions.The Southern wing named Breckinridge; the Northern wing named Stephen A.Douglas; while many Democrats as well as Whigs took refuge in a third party, calling itself the Constitutional Union, which named John Bell.
This division cost the Democrats the election, for, under the unique and inspiring leadership of Abraham Lincoln, the Republicans rallied the anti-slavery forces of the North and won.
