minds and polished manners, like European statesmen; and all except Monroe had been men of extraordinary ability. In Jackson, the first president from beyond the Alleghanies, the idol of the rough pioneer west, we had a very different type of man. There was immense native energy, with little training; downright honesty of purpose, with a very feeble grasp of the higher problems of state-craft. Jackson was a man of violent measures and made many mistakes. His greatest mistake was the use of government offices as rewards for his friends and adherents. Heretofore the civil service had been practically independent of politics, as it is to-day in England. There had been but one instance of a great party overthrow; that was in the election of 1800. Jefferson's followers then wished him to turn Federalist postmasters and collectors out of office, and put Republicans in their places; but he had been too wise to do so. In 1829 Jackson introduced into national politics the principle of "rotation in office," by which government officials were liable to be turned out every fourth year, not for any misconduct, but simply to make room for hungry applicants belonging to the opposite party. Jackson was not the inventor of this system. It had already been tried in state politics, and brought to something like perfection in New York. It was a New York politician, William Marcy, who first used the phrase, "to the victors belong the spoils," thereby implying that a public office is not a public trust but a bit of plunder, and that the services of an officer paid by the people are due, not to the people, but to a party or a party-chief. The author of the phrase doubtless never supposed that he was making one of the most infamous remarks recorded in history; and the honest Jackson would probably have been greatly surprised if he had been allowed a glimpse of the future, and seen that he was introducing a gigantic system of knavery and corruption which within forty years would grow into the most serious of the evils threatening the continuance of our free government.

Whigs come into Power. - Jackson made another mistake, which was trivial compared with the adoption of the spoils system, but which created much more disturbance at the time. His antip

athy to the National Bank led him not only, in 1832, to veto the bill for the renewal of its charter, but in the following year to withdraw the public money deposited in the bank, and distribute it among various state banks. This violent measure led to a series of events, which in 1837 culminated in the most distressing commercial panic that had ever been known in America. Martin Van Buren, of New York, was then President, having been elected in 1836 over the western soldier, Harrison. Van Buren belonged to Jackson's wing of the Democratic party, in the ranks of which a schism was appearing between the nullifiers and the men who were devoted to the Union. He was what would now be known as a "machine politician," but of the more honorable sort. His administration was a fairly able one. In the course of it one phase of the National Bank question reached a satisfactory solution in the so-called sub-treasury system, which after some vicissitudes, was finally established in 1846, and is still in force. By this system the public revenues are not deposited in any bank, but are paid over on demand to the treasury department by the collectors, who are required to give bonds for the proper discharge of their duty. The establishment of this system was creditable to Van Buren's administration, but the panic of 1837 caused so much distress as to make many people wish for a change in the government. Turning to their own uses the same kind of popular sentiment which had elected Jackson, the Whigs nominated again the plain soldier, Harrison, who had lived in a log cabin and had hard cider on his table. In the famous "hard-cider campaign" of 1840, Harrison won a sweeping victory, getting 234 electoral votes to Van Buren's 60. The Whigs had a majority in both houses of Congress. But the managers of the party had made a mistake such as has since recurred in American politics. For Vice-President, they had nominated a Democrat, John Tyler, of Virginia, in the hope of getting votes from those Democrats who were dissatisfied with Jackson and Van Buren. Just one month after Harrison's inauguration he died, and Tyler became President. By this unexpected event the Whigs lost the fruits of their victory. The President was able, by his vetoes, to defeat their measures, and thus

their attempts to undo the work of Jackson and Van Buren, as regards the National Bank, ended in failure.

Oregon and Texas. - Under Tyler's administration, questions of foreign policy, involving chances of war, again came into the foreground; but they were very different questions from those which had occupied our attention in the beginning of the century, and the mere statement of them gives a vivid impression of the enormous growth of the United States since the war of 1812. The northwestern corner of North America, down to the parallel of 54° 40', now known as the territory of Alaska, was then a kind of appendage to Siberia, and belonged to Russia. The region between Russian America and California, known as Oregon, was claimed by the United States, on the ground of the discoveries of Lewis and Clark. But Great Britain also had claims upon this region, and since 1818 it had been subject to the joint occupation of Great Britain and the United States. But by 1842 the American stream of westward migration, crossing the Rocky Mountains, had poured into Oregon, and it began to be a question how this vast territory should be divided. The Americans claimed everything, and the Democrats went into the next presidential campaign with the alliterative warcry, "Fifty-four forty or fight"; but popular interest in the question was not strong enough to sustain this bold policy. Great western statesmen, like Benton, appreciated the importance of Oregon much better than great eastern statesmen like Webster; but none were fully alive to its importance, and the southerners, represented by Calhoun, felt little interest in a territory which seemed quite unavailable for the making of slave states. Accordingly in 1846 the matter was compromised with Great Britain, and the territory was divided at the forty-ninth parallel, all above that line being British, all below American. If the feeling of national solidarity in the United States had been nearly as strong as it is to-day, we should probably have insisted upon our claim to the whole; in which case we should now, since our purchase of Alaska from Russia, possess the whole Pacific coast north of Mexico to Behring's Strait. It is perhaps to be regretted that such a bold policy was not pursued in 1846. It had many chances of success, for

our available military strength, all things considered, was then probably not inferior to that of Great Britain.

Very different was the popular feeling with regard to Texas. That magnificent country, greater in extent than any country of Europe except Russia, had been settled by emigrants from the United States, and in 1835 had rebelled against Mexican rule. In 1836 the American General Houston had defeated the Mexican General Santa Anna in the decisive battle of San Jacinto, and won the independence of Texas. After this the slave-holders of the southern states wished to annex Texas to the Union. Lying south of the parallel of 36° 30', it might become a slave state, and it was hoped that it might hereafter be divided into several states, so as to maintain the weight of the southerners in the United States Senate. After the admission of Arkansas in 1836, and Michigan to balance it in 1837, the South had no more room for expansion, unless it should acquire new territory; whereas the North had still a vast space westward at its command. It seemed likely that the North would presently gain a steady majority in the Senate; and in the House of Representatives, where strength depended on population, the North was constantly gaining, partly because the institution of slavery prevented the South from sharing in the advantages of the emigration from Europe, and partly for other reasons connected with the inferiority of slave labor to free labor. It was, therefore, probable that before long the North would come to control the action of Congress, and might then try to abolish slavery. This was a natural dread on the part of the South, and the abolitionist agitation tended to strengthen and exasperate it. The only safeguard for the South seemed to be the acquisition of fresh territory, and thus the annexation of Texas came now to furnish the burning question in politics, and to array the northern and southern states against each other in a contest for supremacy which could only be settled by an appeal to arms. In the presidential election of 1844, the Democratic candidate was James K. Polk, of Tennessee, and the Whig candidate was Henry Clay; and there was a third nomination, which determined the result of the election. The abolitionists had put forward James Birney as a

presidential candidate in 1840, but had got very few votes; they now put him forward again. The contest was close. The success of the Whigs seemed probable, until the weakness of Clay's moral fibre ruined it, -a lesson for American politicians, by which too few have had the good sense to profit. In the idle hope of catching Democratic votes, he published a letter favoring the annexation of Texas at some future time. This device met the failure which ought to follow all such flimsy manœuvres. It won no Democratic votes for Clay, but angered a great many anti-slavery Whigs, who threw away their votes upon Birney, and thus carried the state of New York over to Polk, and elected him President. It was the most closely contested election in our history, except those of 1800, 1876, and 1884.

§ 4. THE SLAVE POWER.

War with Mexico. - The Democratic party, thus reinstated, was quite different from the Democratic party which had elected Jackson and Van Buren. Its policy was now shaped mainly by the followers of Calhoun, the representatives of slavery and nullification, though the latter political heresy was not likely to assert itself, so long as they could control the Federal government. With the election of Polk, the North and South are finally arrayed in opposition to each other; the question as to slavery comes to the front, and stays there until the Civil War.

In 1845 Texas was admitted to the Union, with the understanding that it might hereafter be divided, so as to make several slave states. Mexico was offended, but no occasion for war arose until it was furnished by boundary troubles, due to that peculiar craving for territory which at this moment possessed the minds of the slave-holders. The boundary between Texas and Mexico was a matter of dispute; and early in 1846, Mr. Polk ordered General Taylor to march in and take possession of the disputed territory. This action was resented by Mexico, and led to a war, which lasted nearly eighteen months. In the course of it California was conquered by Fremont, New Mexico by Kearney, and the northern