in the Senate, Nathaniel Silsbee, voted against him,
and in the House such personal adherents as Edward Everett and
Isaac C. Bates recorded themselves in the negative. There was a
great deal of what in modern phase would be called "fencing for
position" in the votes on this test question of the day. The names
of no less than five gentlemen who were afterwards Presidents of
the United States were recorded in the yeas and nays on the passage
of the bill in the two Houses,--Mr. Van Buren, General Harrison,
John Tyler, in the Senate, and Mr. Polk and Mr. Buchanan in the
House.

There was a general feeling that the Act of 1828 marked a crisis
in the history of tariff discussion, and that it would in some way
lead to important results in the fate of political parties and
political leaders. Mr. Calhoun was this year elected Vice-President
of the United States, with General Jackson as President, and Mr.
Van Buren was transferred from the Senate to the State Department
as the head of Jackson's cabinet. When by his address and tact he
had turned the mind of the President against Calhoun as his successor,
and fully ingratiated himself in executive favor, the quarrel began
which is elsewhere detailed at sufficient length. In this controversy,
purely personal at the outset, springing from the clashing ambitions
of two aspiring men, the tariff of 1828, especially with the vote
of Mr. Van Buren in favor of it, was made to play an important
part. The quarrel rapidly culminated in Mr. Calhoun's resignation
of the Vice-Presidency, his leadership of the Nullification contest
in South Carolina, and his re-election to the Senate of the United
States some time before the expiration of the Vice-Presidential
term for which he had been chosen. The result was a reduction of
duties, first by the Act of July, 1832, and secondly by Mr. Clay's
famous compromise Act of March 2, 1833, in which it was provided
that by a sliding-scale all the duties in excess of twenty per
cent. should be abolished within a period of ten years. It was
this Act which for the time calmed excitement in the South, brought
Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay into kindly relations, and somewhat
separated Mr. Webster and Mr. Clay,--at least producing one of
those periods of estrangement which, throughout their public career,
alternated with the cordial friendship they really entertained for
each other.

THE PROTECTIVE TARIFF OF 1842