1849. TERRITORIAL ACTS POSTPONED. 119 territory with the Ordinance of 1787, a Wilmot Proviso, annexed to it. Memorials had already come in from the inhabitants of New Mexico and California, protesting against the introduction of human slavery in those regions, which protests Calhoun denounced as "insolent to Congress and unreasonable." After a vain effort to March drive the Whig representatives from this posi tion, by engrafting its own territorial plan, free of the Wilmot Proviso, upon an appropriation bill, the Democratic Senate yielded to the situation, and disagreement of the two Houses blocked all schemes for organizing those territories under the present administration. All that could be accomplished during this session was to pass a bill which extended to California the revenue laws of the United States. New Mexico and California were left in all other respects under temporary military rule as conquered provinces, and the whole perplexing subject was transmitted to a new Congress and a new administration. General Taylor had ere this arrived in Washington, making his tour to the capital from Louisiana by way of Cincinnati on river steamers, whose progress was blockaded by occasional ice, for the winter was one of unusual severity. In Kentucky he had stopped to confer with his friend Crittenden, the new governor of that State. On the morning of March 3d, the last day of the session, the President-elect, with Clayton and Ewing of his intended cabinet, called the attention of Seward to the vast importance of having some territorial government established for California before this Congress should expire. "I want," said the old hero, bluntly, "to substitute the rule of law and order for bowie-knives and revolvers." Seward was about to enter the Senate on the 4th of March as the successor of John A. Dix, having been chosen to that post by the New York legislature in the course of the winter. Webster, the foremost Whig already of that body, who, at this session, had crossed swords with Calhoun over the latter's new dogma, that the Constitution carried slavery by its own force into the annexed domains from Mexico, appears to have been author of an amendment to the stranded California bill which proposed to keep the local laws unchanged under military rule until another session of Congress should expire. With this for a basis of mutual concession, Seward visited several leading Whigs of the House, who caused its adoption with some slight change, but the Senate disagreeing in turn to the proposals, this effort for harmony failed.† A Saturday night of fog and wrangle brought the session to a close, with no territorial governments erected at all, except one for that interior region of the Louisiana purchase adjacent to the headwaters of the Mississippi River and north of the State of Iowa, now defined as the territory of Minnesota.‡ Of this territory, populated by hardy pioneers and enlarged beyond the boundaries finally assigned to it, the chief settlement was at St. Paul and near the falls of St. Anthony, and in the present bill for a temporary government no assertion of the Wilmot Proviso was deemed necessary, for the Missouri Compromise Act already gave it the exclu sive boon of freedom. The eastern rays of a Sabbath sun dispersed our inharmonious legislators and there was a long and restful calm before the inauguration of Polk's successor upon the noon of Monday. March 4 One single act of legislation left the session notable. This was the creation of a new executive department, styled the "Home Department," but formally described in the body of the act as "The Department of the Interior." § The idea of such a department was as old as President Washington's first year of office; but sixty years had elapsed before our national development justified putting the idea to practical use. Cabinet officers had at length become overburdened with concerns of a miscellaneous scope which had grown as accretions upon the functions pertaining more immediately to their several spheres of *See 2 Curtis's Webster, c. 35. ↑ Letter of W. H Seward, March 29, 1849, National Intelligencer. Act March 3, 1849, c. 121. § See vol i. P. 93. 1849. SECRETARY WALKER'S ACHIEVEMENTS. 121 action; and the late war, moreover, with the prodigious expanse of territory and national responsibilities it brought, not to add our peaceful confirmation in the Oregon country, - furnished arguments irresistible for reorganizing the executive departments. Vinton, 1849 from the Ways and Means, reported accordingly February. a bill in the House, which went through by a strong non-partisan vote, and the Senate, on the last day of the session, concurred in the measure. The Secretary of the Interior, under this new act, was to be placed upon the same general footing as the other secretaries; his sphere consisting in the supervision of patents, public lands, Indian affairs, and pensions.* March. This important act was drafted by Robert J. Walker, the Secretary of the Treasury, whose influence upon Congress throughout Polk's administration had been remarkably strong. Walker was a cunning compound of the statesman and lobbyist, and a man of busy intrigue in either capacity. Through his principal activity had been compassed that legislative iniquity of annexing Texas, by the double-headed plan of 1845, which led up to the Mexican War. While in office Walker had been the zealous promoter of schemes for building a railroad across the isthmus of Darien; the fast friend of steamship subsidies and of whatever other jobberies might tend to develop American commerce in competition with the world. For warehousing and those other improved facilities in our customs revenues, adapted from abroad, importers owed him their hearty gratitude. He had managed finances with much shrewdness through all the troubles of war, and briskly availed himself of the right moment to place his loans upon the market. Always an alert and bustling little body, moving the wires of various political activities, his feats performed in the cabinet had allayed many of the prejudices entertained against him, and remitted him to private life with something of a solid * Congressional Globe; Act March 3, 1849, c. 108. reputation. As a statesman his present hobby was to exalt commerce above all other national interests. The greatest, perhaps, of this Secretary's public achievements had been the tariff of 1846; and notwithstanding Congress had sullenly refused to alter that tariff during the pinch of war, it had worked beneficially for the people. Not even our manufacturers (as Walker could confidently assert upon leaving office) were anxious to go back to the tariff of 1842. Henry Clay did not appreciate that fact when, in a weak moment, he allowed his name to be placed upon the list of Whig candidates for a later time. than last. He had opined for the moment that the old Whig thunderbolts-protection among the rest-might be forged over for a new campaign.* But Clay was mistaken. The American people were brooding over matters quite different, the Mexican War, and the probable effect of that war and its annexations upon the perinanency of this Union and the sectional balance of power. Neither the so-called "Democratic straddle" of 1844, nor the "free-trade tariff" which followed Polk's accession, had produced thus far the grinding misery which Clay and the Whigs foreboded. Europe's need of our breadstuffs might account for it, or the Irish potato famine; but whatever the cause, there was the stubborn result.† In fact, the low tariff of 1846 served this Union through all the vicissitudes of national parties for ten long years and more; nor was it changed in 1857, except to vary some details under new conditions when a further reduction of revenue became needful in order to avoid a surplus. Not a breath of political agitation entered into that change, which was the last one ever made where members from Southern slave States voted. Might it not be claimed, then, that we had reached a resting-point on the dial of economic adjustment, a resting-point adapted best to an era of peace and when exhausting war * See Ullmann letter of August 4, 1847; 2 Schurz's Clay, 299. † See vol. iv. p. 516. Act March 3, 1857, post. 1849. THE POLK TARIFF. 123 did not strain our resources? This free-trade tendency since all such questions with us must be questions of tendency and not of final rest - gave in the first place a splendid impulse to American commerce. Our sails whitened the remotest seas. Our flag bore and then brought back. Next, agriculture prospered; and it was most of all the prospect of supplying the wide population of the British empire with American food products, as well as American cotton, that caused the Polk tariff to be enacted after Peel had swung open the gates of British ports invitingly. And had our manufactures been swamped by the interchange that followed? On the contrary they grew and prospered, for that best of all bounties. was afforded them, raw materials unburdened by taxation, and the widest possible market with the universe. If Polk's tariff act had operated favorably, so had the sub-treasury revived from Van Buren. For the past twelve months or more Europe had been convulsed by civil wars and revolution; in France, the election of Louis Napoleon as its first constitutional President presaged already the downfall of a second republican experiment, where men's minds were dazzled by names; bankruptcies and paralyzed industry marked the business situation abroad when Polk retired from office. people had suffered no revulsion; our money market was easy by comparison; not a dollar had been lost to the national treasury through depreciation of the currency, and every loan required for prosecuting our costly war had been negotiated above par.* But our Our government was at peace with all nations when Polk vacated the Presidency. In the midst of more momentous employments, the negotiation of treaties advantageous to American commerce had not been overlooked by him. The example of treating foreign countries liberally in our own ports elicited corresponding favors, which argumentative diplomacy would have sought in vain. * President's message, Dec. 5, 1848, Treasury report, etc. |