iff of 1828. The most suggestive
proof of its strength and popularity was found in the contest of
1844 between Mr. Polk and Mr. Clay, where the Democrats in the
critical Northern States assumed the advocacy of the tariff of 1842
as loudly as the supporters of Mr. Clay. Other issues overshadowed
the tariff, which was really considered to be settled, and a
President and Congress were chosen without any distinct knowledge
on the part of their constituents as to what their action might be
upon this question. The popular mind had been engrossed with the
annexation of Texas and with the dawn of the free-soil excitement;
hence protection and free-trade were in many States scarcely debated
from lack of interest, and, in the States where interest prevailed,
both parties took substantially the same side.

A deception had however been practiced in the manufacturing States
of the North, and when the administration of Mr. Polk was installed,
the friends of protection were startled by the appointment of a
determined opponent of the tariff of 1842, as Secretary of the
Treasury. Robert J. Walker was a senator from Mississippi when
the Act was passed, and was bitterly opposed to it. He was a man
of great originality, somewhat speculative in his views, and willing
to experiment on questions of revenue to the point of rashness.
He was not a believer in the doctrine of protection, was persuaded
that protective duties bore unjustly and severely upon the planting
section with which he was identified; and he came to his office
determined to overthrow the tariff Act, which he had been unable
to defeat in the Senate. Mr. Walker was excessively ambitious to
make his term in the Treasury an era in the history of the country.
He had a difficult task before him,--one from which a conservative
man would have shrunk. The tariff was undoubtedly producing a
valuable revenue; and, as the administration of Mr. Polk was about
to engage in war, revenue was what they most needed. Being about
to enter upon a war, every dictate of prudence suggested that
aggressive issues should not be multiplied in the country. But
Mr. Walker was not Secretary of War or Secretary of State, and he
was unwilling to sit quietly down and collect the revenue under a
tariff imposed by a Whig Congress, against which he had voted,
while Buchanan in directing our foreign relations, and Marcy in
conducting a successful war, would far outstrip him in public
observation and i