mise law of 1833 was the result.
This gave the planters a reduction to twenty per cent, a lower rate than
Jackson had offered, but the reductions were to be made gradually during
a period of ten years, thus giving time for the industrial men to
readjust their affairs without great losses. There was one joker in the
scheme which the Southerners seem to have winked at: that which exempted
the wool-growers of the Middle States and the West from the reductions.
The author of the American System now hotly urged the men who a year
ago would defy the "South, the Democratic party, and the Devil" to undo
all their work. On March 1, three days before the close of the session,
both the President's "Force Bill" and Clay's compromise tariff passed.

Meanwhile South Carolina, acting on Calhoun's advice, had postponed the
enforcement of her nullifying ordinance, and now, as Congress adjourned,
the former Vice-President, ill and greatly discouraged, hurried by rapid
stages to Columbia to make sure that the crisis should be brought to a
peaceful close. The convention was reassembled; an embassy from Virginia
was on the ground urging peace, and, as was natural, the ordinance was
repealed. The planters had really won a victory and the rising
industrial groups understood this both at the time and later, when they
clamored for the restoration of their privileges. The cotton and tobacco
men, producing the larger part of the national exports, had shown their
strength. Their opponents, the manufacturers and the bankers of the
East, with a much greater income, were as yet not so strong as the
planters. The West and the South were their markets, and concessions
must be made; the Union was to them essential, while to the South,
selling its huge crops in European markets, it was less important. As
yet the West, with its hero the master in Washington, had obtained none
of the reforms for which it had so long striven. Benton and his friends
looked to the next Congress for results. Would they be disappointed?

BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

_The Messages and Papers of the Presidents_ (1900), vol. _II_, gives
Jackson's official statements. Bassett's and Parton's biographies,
already mentioned, are still very serviceable. There is no full
biography of Clay, but C. Colton's _The Private Life of Henry Clay_
contains some of Clay's letters. Carl Schurz's _Henry Clay_ and T. H.
Clay's _Henry Clay_, already noted, offer some good information. The
best source for