Читать книгу The Promise of American Life - Herbert David Croly - Страница 24

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The Jacksonian Democrats were not, of course, absolutely dominant during the Middle Period of American history. They were persistently, and on a few occasions successfully, opposed by the Whigs. The latter naturally represented the political, social, and economic ideas which the Democrats under-valued or disparaged. They were strong in those Northern and border states, which had reached a higher stage of economic and social development, and which contained the mansions of contemporary American culture, wealth, and intelligence. It is a significant fact that the majority of Americans of intelligence during the Jacksonian epoch were opponents of Jackson, just as the majority of educated Americans of intelligence have always protested against the national political irresponsibility and the social equalitarianism characteristic of our democratic tradition; but unfortunately they have always failed to make their protests effective. The spirit of the times was against them. The Whigs represented the higher standards, the more definite organization, and the social inequalities of the older states, but when they attempted to make their ideas good, they were faced by a dilemma either horn of which was disastrous to their interests. They were compelled either to sacrifice their standards to the conditions of popular efficiency or the chance of success to the integrity of their standards. In point of fact they pursued precisely the worst course of all. They abandoned their standards, and yet they failed to achieve success. Down to the Civil War the fruits of victory and the prestige of popularity were appropriated by the Democrats.

The Whigs, like their predecessors, the Federalists, were ostensibly the party of national ideas. Their association began with a group of Jeffersonian Republicans who, after the second English war, sought to resume the interrupted work of national consolidation. The results of that war had clearly exposed certain grave deficiencies in the American national organization; and these deficiencies a group of progressive young men, under the lead of Calhoun and Clay, proposed to remedy. One of the greatest handicaps from which the military conduct of the war had suffered was the lack of any sufficient means of internal communication; and the construction of a system of national roads and waterways became an important plank in their platform. There was also proposed a policy of industrial protection which Calhoun supported by arguments so national in import and scope that they might well have been derived from Hamilton's report. Under the influence of similar ideas the National Bank was rechartered; and as the correlative of this constructive policy, a liberal nationalistic interpretation of the Constitution was explicitly advocated. As one reads the speeches delivered by some of these men, particularly by Calhoun, during the first session of Congress after the conclusion of peace, it seems as if a genuine revival had taken place of Hamiltonian nationalism, and that this revival was both by way of escaping Hamilton's fatal distrust of democracy and of avoiding the factious and embittered opposition of the earlier period.

The Whigs made a fair start, but unfortunately they ran a poor race and came to a bad end. No doubt they were in a way an improvement on the Federalists, in that they, like their opponents, the Democrats, stood for a combination between democracy and nationalism. They believed that the consolidation and the development of the national organization was contributory rather than antagonistic to the purpose of the American political system. Yet they made no conquests on behalf of their convictions. The Federalists really accomplished a great and necessary task of national organization and founded a tradition of constructive national achievement. The Whigs at best kept this tradition alive. They were on the defensive throughout, and they accomplished nothing at all in the way of permanent constructive legislation. Their successes were merely electioneering raids, whereas their defeats were wholly disastrous in that they lost, not only all of their strongholds, but most of their military reputation and good name. Their final disappearance was wholly the result of their own incapacity. They were condemned somehow to inefficiency, defeat, and dishonor.

Every important article in their programme went astray. The policy of internal improvements in the national interest and at the national expense was thwarted by the Constitutional scruples of such Presidents as Monroe and Jackson, and for that reason it could never be discussed on its merits. The Cumberland Road was the only great national highway constructed, and remains to this day a striking symbol of what the Federal government might have accomplished towards the establishment of an efficient system of inter-state communication. The re-charter of the National Bank which was one of the first fruits of the new national movement, proved in the end to be the occasion of its most flagrant failure. The Bank was the national institution for the perpetuation of which the Whig leaders fought most persistently and loyally. They began the fight with the support of public opinion, and with the prestige of an established and useful institution in their favor; but the campaign was conducted with such little skill that in the end they were utterly beaten. Far from being able to advance the policy of national consolidation, they were unable even to preserve existing national institutions, and their conspicuous failure in this crucial instance was due to their inability to keep public opinion convinced of the truth that the Bank was really organized and maintained in the national interest. Their policy of protection met in the long run with a similar fate. In the first place, the tariff schedules which they successively placed upon the statute books were not drawn up in Hamilton's wise and moderate national spirit. They were practically dictated by the special interests which profited from the increases in duties. The Whig leaders accepted a retainer from the manufacturers of the North, and by legislating exclusively in their favor almost drove South Carolina to secession. Then after accomplishing this admirable feat, they agreed to placate the disaffected state by the gradual reduction in the scale of duties until there was very little protection left. In short, they first perverted the protectionist system until it ceased to be a national policy; and then compromised it until it ceased to be any policy at all.

Perhaps the Whigs failed and blundered most completely in the fight which they made against the Federal executive and in the interest of the Federal legislature. They were forced into this position, because for many years the Democrats, impersonated by Jackson, occupied the Presidential chair, while the Whigs controlled one or both of the Congressional bodies; but the attitude of the two opposing parties in respect to the issue corresponded to an essential difference of organization and personnel. The Whigs were led by a group of brilliant orators and lawyers, while the Democrats were dominated by one powerful man, who held the Presidential office. Consequently the Whigs proclaimed a Constitutional doctrine which practically amounted to Congressional omnipotence, and for many years assailed Jackson as a military dictator who was undermining the representative institutions of his country. The American people, however, appraised these fulminations at their true value. While continuing for twelve years to elect to the Presidency Jackson or his nominee, they finally dispossessed the Whigs from the control of Congress; and they were right. The American people have much more to fear from Congressional usurpation than they have from executive usurpation. Both Jackson and Lincoln somewhat strained their powers, but for good purposes, and in essentially a moderate and candid spirit; but when Congress attempts to dominate the executive, its objects are generally bad and its methods furtive and dangerous. Our legislatures were and still are the strongholds of special and local interests, and anything which undermines executive authority in this country seriously threatens our national integrity and balance. It is to the credit of the American people that they have instinctively recognized this fact, and have estimated at their true value the tirades which men no better than Henry Clay level against men no worse than Andrew Jackson.

The reason for the failure of the Whigs was that their opponents embodied more completely the living forces of contemporary American life. Jackson and his followers prevailed because they were simple, energetic, efficient, and strong. Their consistency of feeling and their mutual loyalty enabled them to form a much more effective partisan organization than that of the Whigs. It is one of those interesting paradoxes, not uncommon in American history, that the party which represented official organization and leadership was loosely organized and unwisely led, while the party which distrusted official organization and surrounded official leadership with rigid restraints was most efficiently organized and was for many years absolutely dominated by a single man. At bottom, of course, the difference between the two parties was a difference in vitality. All the contemporary conditions worked in favor of the strong narrow man with prodigious force of will like Andrew Jackson, and against men like Henry Clay and Daniel Webster who had more intelligence, but were deficient in force of character and singleness of purpose. The former had behind him the impulse of a great popular movement which was sweeping irresistibly towards wholly unexpected results; and the latter, while ostensibly trying to stem the tide, were in reality carried noisily along on its flood.

Daniel Webster and Henry Clay were in fact faced by an alternative similar to that which sterilized the lives of almost all their contemporaries who represented an intellectual interest. They were men of national ideas but of something less than national feeling. Their interests, temperament, and manner of life prevented them from instinctively sympathizing with the most vital social and political movement of their day. If they wanted popularity, they had to purchase it by compromises, whereas Andrew Jackson obtained a much larger popular following by acting strictly in accordance with the dictates of his temperament and ideas. He was effective and succeeded because his personality was representative of the American national democracy, whereas they failed, on the whole, because the constituency they represented concealed limited sympathies and special interests under words of national import. Jackson, who in theory was the servant and mouthpiece of his followers, played the part of a genuine leader in his campaign against the National Bank; while the Whigs, who should have been able to look ahead and educate their fellow-countrymen up to the level of their presumably better insight, straggled along in the rear of the procession.

The truth is that the Democrats, under the lead of Jackson, were temporarily the national party, although they used their genuinely national standing to impose in certain respects a group of anti-national ideas on their country. The Whigs, on the other hand, national as they might be in ideas and aspirations, were in effect not much better than a faction. Finding that they could not rally behind their ideas an effective popular following, they were obliged to seek support, partly at the hands of special interests and partly by means of the sacrifice of their convictions. Under their guidance the national policy became a policy of conciliation and compromise at any cost, and the national idea was deprived of consistency and dignity. It became equivalent to a hodge-podge of policies and purposes, the incompatibility of whose ingredients was concealed behind a smooth crust of constitutional legality and popular acquiescence. The national idea and interest, that is, was not merely disarmed and ignored, as it had been by Jefferson. It was mutilated and distorted in obedience to an erroneous democratic theory; and its friends, the Whigs, deluded themselves with the belief that in draining the national idea of its vitality they were prolonging its life. But if its life was saved, its safety was chiefly due to its ostensible enemies. While the Whigs were less national in feeling and purpose than their ideas demanded, the Democrats were more national than they knew. From 1830 to 1850 American nationality was being attenuated as a conscious idea, but the great unconscious forces of American life were working powerfully and decisively in its favor.

Most assuredly the failure of the Whigs is susceptible of abundant explanation. Prevailing conditions were inimical to men whose strength lay more in their intelligence than in their will. It was a period of big phrases, of personal motives and altercations, of intellectual attenuation, and of narrow, moral commonplaces—all of which made it very difficult for any statesman to see beyond his nose, or in case he did, to act upon his knowledge. Yet in spite of all this, it does seem as if some Whig might have worked out the logic of the national idea with as much power and consistency as Calhoun worked out the logic of his sectional idea. That no Whig rose to the occasion is an indication that in sacrificing their ideas they were sacrificing also their personal integrity. Intellectual insincerity and irresponsibility was in the case of the Democrats the outcome of their lives and their point of view; but on the part of the Whigs it was equivalent to sheer self-prostitution. Jefferson's work had been done only too well. The country had become so entirely possessed by a system of individual aggrandizement, national drift, and mental torpor that the men who for their own moral and intellectual welfare should have opposed it, were reduced to the position of hangers-on; and the dangers of the situation were most strikingly revealed by the attitude which contemporary statesmen assumed towards the critical national problem of the period—the problem of the existence of legalized slavery in a democratic state.