ipient opposition to Union threw itself with the
intensest heat into the opposition to Adams; and Jackson, who was
victorious through his own popularity, was elected by a vast majority.
Jackson was honest, patriotic, and brave: he refused his confidence to
the oligarchical party, represented by Calhoun and Macduffie; and after
passionate struggles, which convulsed the country, he defied their
hostility, and told them to their faces, "The Union must be preserved."

The bitterness of disappointed ambition led to the formation and gradual
enunciation of new political opinions. In the strife about the practical
effects of Nullification, the question was raised by the Nullifiers,
whether obedience to the laws of a State was a good plea for resistance
to the laws of the United States; and so, for the first time in our
history, a political party came to the principle, that primary
allegiance was due to the State, a secondary one only to the United
States; and this view was taught in schools and colleges and popular
meetings. The second theory, that grew up with the first, was, that
slavery was a divine institution, best for the black man and best for
the white.

At the election which followed the retirement of Jackson, the Democratic
party stood by its old tradition of the evil of slavery, and the hope
that by the innate vigor of the respective States it would gradually be
thrown off; the opposite party likewise held to the same tradition, in
the belief that the progress of commerce and domestic industry would in
due time quietly remove what all sound political economy condemned. The
new party, the party of State Sovereignty and Slavery,--for the two
heads sprung from one root,--had not power enough to prevent the
election of one who represented the policy of Jackson. But they were
full of passionate ardor and of restless activity; and in the next
Presidential election they threw themselves upon the Whig party, with
which they joined hands. The Whig party was at that day strong enough to
have done without them; but the uncontrollable wish for success, which
had been long delayed, led to the cry of "Tippecanoe and Tyler too," and
this meant a union of the interests of the North with the interest of
Slavery. Harrison had votes enough to elect him without one vote from
the Southern oligarchy; but the compact was made; Harrison was elected
and died, and the representative of the oligarchy, a man at heart false
to the national fla