of the
Southern senators and representatives left both branches of Congress
under the control of the North, and by a considerable majority
under the direction of the Republican party. In the preceding
session of Congress the House, having a small Republican majority,
had passed a bill advancing the rate of duties upon foreign
importations. This action was not taken as an avowed movement for
protection, but merely as a measure to increase the revenue.
During Mr. Buchanan's entire term the receipts of the Treasury had
been inadequate to the payment of the annual appropriations by
Congress, and as a result the government had been steadily incurring
debt at a rate which was afterwards found to affect the public
credit at a critical juncture in our history. To check this
increasing deficit the House insisted on a scale of duties that
would yield a larger revenue, and on the 10th of May, 1860, passed
the bill. In the Senate, then under the control of the Democratic
party, with the South in the lead, the bill encountered opposition.
Senators from the Cotton States thought they saw in it the hated
principle of protection, and protection meant in their view, strength
and prestige for the manufacturing States of the North. The bill
had been prepared in committee and reported in the House by a New-
England member, Mr. Morrill of Vermont, which of itself was sufficient
in the eyes of many Southern men to determine its character and
its fate.

Mr. Robert M. T. Hunter of Virginia was at the time Chairman of
the Senate Committee of Finance. He was a man of sturdy common
sense, slow in his methods, but strong and honest in his processes
of reasoning. He advanced rapidly in public esteem, and in 1839,
at thirty years of age, was chosen Speaker of the House of
Representatives. He was a sympathizer with the South-Carolina
extremists, and coalesced with the Whigs to defeat the regular
Democrats who were sustaining the Administration of Mr. Van Buren.
In 1847 Mr. Hunter was chosen senator from Virginia, and served
continuously till the outbreak of the war. He was a conservative
example of that class of border State Democrats who were blinded
to all interests except those of slavery.

The true wealth of Virginia, in addition to her agriculture and in
aid of it, lay in her vast deposits of coal and iron, in her
extensive forests, in her unsurpassed water power. Her natural
resources were beyond computation, and suggested for her