Struggle for National Government

The Sub-treasury.

Van Buren held manfully to the strictest construction of the powers of the Federal Government. He in sisted that the panic would best right itself without Government interference, and, after a four years' struggle, he succeeded in mak ing the "sub-treasury scheme" law (1840). It cut off all connec tion of the Government with banks, putting collecting and disburs ing officers under bonds to hold money safely and to transfer it under orders from the Treasury, and restricting payments to or by the United States to gold and silver coin. Its passage had been preceded by another commercial crisis (1839), more limited in its field, but more discouraging to the people.

Election of 1840.

Van Buren's firmness was unpopular, and the Whig Party now adopted methods which were popular if somewhat demagogical. It nominated William H. Harrison in 1840; it contrasted his homely frontier virtues with Van Buren's "ostentatious indifference to the misfortunes of the people" and after the first of the modern "campaigns" of mass meetings and processions Harrison was elected, receiving 234 electoral votes and Van Buren only 6o. He died only a month after his inaugura tion, and the vice-president, John Tyler, became President.

Tyler was of the extreme Calhoun school, which had shown some disposition to grant to Van Buren a support which it had refused to Jackson; and the Whigs had nominated Tyler to re tain his faction with them. Now he was the nominal leader of the party, while his politics were opposite to theirs, and the real leader of the party, Clay, was ready to force a quarrel upon him.

The quarrel took place ; the Whig majority in Congress was not large enough to pass any measures over Tyler's veto; and the first two years of his administration were passed in barren con flict with his party. The "sub-treasury" law was repealed (1841) ; the tariff of 1842 introduced a modified protection; and there the Whigs were forced to stop. Their dissensions made Democratic success comparatively easy. The success of the Democratic ma chinery, and the reflex of its temporary check in 1840, with the influences brought to bear on it by the returning Calhoun faction, were such as to take the control of the party out of the hands of the leaders who had formed it. They had had high regard for po litical principle, even though they were willing to use doubtful methods for its propagation; these methods had now brought out new men, who looked mainly to success, and to close connection with the controlling political element of the South as the easiest means of attaining success. When the Democratic convention of 1844 met it was expected to renominate Van Buren, but James K. Polk was nominated. The Whigs nominated Clay.

Abolitionist Movement.

The beginning of the abolitionist movement in the United States, the establishment of the Liberator (1831), and of the American Anti-slavery Society (5833), and the subsequent divisions in it, are dealt with elsewhere (see GAR