diture, unskilful agriculture, the costliest system of
labor in the world, and no immigration, still kept _Irelandizing_ the
Southern States; while the North was advancing and improving to such a
degree as to attract emigrants from all lands. The contrast was
painful to Southern men, and to most of them it was mysterious.
Southern politicians came to the conclusion that the cause at once of
Northern prosperity and Southern poverty was the protective tariff and
the appropriations for internal improvements, but chiefly the tariff.
In 1824, when Mr. Calhoun went home, the tariff on some leading
articles had been increased, and the South was in a ferment of
opposition to the protective system. If Mr. Calhoun had been a wise
and honest man, he would have reminded his friends that the decline of
the South had been a subject of remark from the peace of 1783, and
therefore could not have been caused by the tariff of 1816, or 1820,
or 1824. He would have told them that slavery, as known in the
Southern States, demands virgin lands,--must have, every few years,
its cotton-gin, its Louisiana, its Cherokee country, its _something_,
to give new value to its products or new scope for its operations. He
might have added that the tariff of 1824 was a grievance, did tend to
give premature development to a manufacturing system, and was a fair
ground for a national issue between parties. The thing which he did
was this: he adopted the view of the matter which was predominant in
the extreme South, and accepted the leadership of the extreme
Southern, anti-tariff, strict-constructionist wing of the Democratic
party. He echoed the prevailing opinion, that the tariff and the
internal improvement system, to both of which he was fully committed,
were the _sole_ causes of Southern stagnation; since by the one their
money was taken from them, and by the other it was mostly spent where
it did them no good.

He was, of course, soon involved in a snarl of contradictions, from
which he never could disentangle himself. Let us pass to the year
1828, a most important one in the history of the country and of Mr.
Calhoun; for then occurred the first of the long series of events
which terminated with the surrender of the last Rebel army in 1865.
The first act directly tending to a war between the South and the
United States bears date December 6, 1828; and it was the act of John
C. Calhoun.

It was the year of that Presidential election which placed Andre