But again the Slave Power won, and again Congress obeyed its wish. The financial and industrial ruin was not yet complete, and the duties were still further reduced by the Tariff of 1857. We must now meet the statement that this Tariff was voted for by the Republican Congressmen of the North, and particularly from New England. The method of framing and passing a Tariff law was then much the same as now. It was not the question before the Thirty-fourth Congress. To begin with, months had been spent in the election of a Speaker, and the bill as it finally passed was from a conference committee, where it had been sent on a disagreement between the two Houses, and it in no wise represented either the views of the Senate or the House. The revenues were known to be too large, and a reduction was desirable. Had there been an internal revenue law, as now exists, the Tariff would not have been resorted to as a means for reducing the revenue, but the internal revenue would have been reduced to meet the requirements of the situation. As it was, the Tariff law was taken as the means to this end, and the question of Slavery and of Kansas, and the iniquitous workings of the Fugitive Slave law, all completely overshadowed the changing of the Tariff law, presumably to correct the surplus revenue.

Another reason why manufacturers, particularly those of New England, wanted a further reduction of duties on raw materials, was because there was absolutely no hope of getting an increase of duties on competing goods. The President and Senate were against them, and the House was Democratic on all questions save that of Slavery. Their only advantage, then, lay in lower duties on raw materials, which they advocated and got.

The report was accepted, in the House of Representatives, by a vote of 123 to 72, and in the Senate by a vote of 33 to 9. While so-called "Americans" in the House, with one or two exceptions, voted against the bill, yet they are found in the Senate voting for it. Collamer and Foot of Vermont both voted against the measure, as did Brodhead of Pennsylvania, and Allen and James of Rhode Island, Wade of Ohio, Wright of New Jersey, and Geyer of Missouri. Professor

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Taussig, in his History of the Tariff, correctly states the whole case as follows: "The revenue was redundant in 1857, and this was the chief cause of the reduction of duties."' But the legislators of 1857 were either very ignorant of the true situation, or else they were so entranced by what seemed to be far greater questions as to ignore entirely the true causes of the "redundancy" of revenue in the years 1857 and just preceding.

Had it not been for the very unusual and unprecedented sales of public lands, from which nearly thirty millions of dollars were received during the three years preceding 1857, instead of a surplus in the National Treasury, there would have been a deficit. The customs receipts each year were less than the expenditures, and the surplus was not due to the workings of the Tariff of 1846. Under all the circumstances noted, then, it is not surprising that the new Tariff plunged the country into further financial and industrial difficulties on every hand. They were immediate, far-reaching, and lasting, but the result was exactly what had been desired and intended by those who had brought it about.

Franklin Pierce was in the presidential chair; his Secretary of the Treasury was James Guthrie, and Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War. The act was hastily signed on March 3d, within twenty-four hours of the expiration of this administration, although the law did not go into effect until July 1st of the same year. It is enough to say of the law of 1857, that it brought financial ruin so quickly and so widely that it still further checked the industrial growth of the country, and was such a menace to agricultural progress, that the Democratic administration itself was forced to accept another Tariff law with more or less protective features, which was signed by President Buchanan on March 2, 1861, two days before the inauguration of Abraham Lincoln, and the beginning of an administration Republican in all its branches.

This was called the Morrill Tariff, receiving its name from Justin S. Morrill, who took a very prominent part in framing the bill, and reported it from a subcommittee of the Ways and Means Committee, after which it was passed by the House by a vote of 105 to 64, May 11, 1860.

This may be called the first great Republican measure which became a law. It was held up by the Democratic Senate for nearly a year, and probably would not have passed that body had not several of the Southern Senators vacated their seats in the early part of 1861. The Morrill bill so-called was, however passed by the Senate on February 20 1861, by a vote of twentyfive to fourteen. The Annual Cyclopedia for 1861, after devoting nearly sixty pages to the proceedings of the second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress, adds the following sentences:

A revenue law affording uncommon protection to manufactures was enacted. This was proposed not for the purpose of husbanding the resources of the country in anticipation of approaching strife, but chiefly as a great party measure, and to secure an increase of prosperity to this great national interest. It has proved to be the wisest measure adopted during the session. It immediately checked the importation of foreign manufactures, secured the reduction of the debt of the country to other nations, caused a large importation of specie in payment of exports, and thereby enabled the citizens to advance loans to the Government in its most pressing hour.

The general impression in recent years has always been, that the Morrill Tariff was a war measure. This point should be distinctly understood. The Morrill bill was introduced early in 1860, some time prior not only to the presidential election of that year, but even to the nominating conventions. It was framed and passed the House of Representatives by Republi can votes, because the country needed such a measure to check importations of commodities, and the exportation of gold; to restore confidence to the financial interests of the country; to build up our manufactures, and restore prosperity to the agricultural interests of the country.

Even though the Slavery question with the attendant Kansas crime, the John Brown raid, and the heated controversy over The Impending Crisis, augmented by the provocation caused daily by the workings of the Fugitive Slave law overshadowed all else, in spite of all these the Republican plurality framed this law and passed it through the House of Representatives. A great part of the credit of this work from subcommittee to the final passage of the law is due to Justin S.

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Morrill, a Representative from Vermont, and afterwards a most honored United States Senator.

The ad valorem features of the law of 1857 were to a large extent substituted by specific duties, and not only was the question of revenue fully considered, but it was intended to give a considerable, if not ample Protection to American labor and industry. There was no thought, whatever, of providing for war in the Morrill Tariff. There was no thought of doing anything except to correct the existing Tariff, and credit must be given to the Republican party, then having only a plurality in one branch of the national legislature for framing and presenting a law that was a purely protective measure.

It had not been done before, simply for the reason that there had been no opportunity. The National platform of 1856 contained no allusion, whatever, to the Tariff question, and while its leaders knew that the party would stand for a Protective Tariff at the first opportunity, still it was thought wise to devote its whole attention to the great paramount question of the day, the non-extension of Slavery.

Perhaps the first adoption of a Protective Tariff plank in any Republican platform was that found in the resolutions of the Vermont State Convention, which met on July 13, 1854, in which the demand was made for "a Tariff for revenue with proper discrimination in favor of American industry." This it will be seen was adopted just one week after the date which we give as the formal birth of the party at Jackson, Michigan. It is well to identify the Republican party with the great principles of a Protective Tariff from the start, as second only to the one great purpose for which the party was formed. From the first its devotion and adherence, for the most part unqualified and uncompromising, has been given to the protection of American labor and industry. It was fitting that Mr. Morrill's name should be attached to the first Republican Tariff law, even though it was signed by a Democratic President, when we find that the first allusion made to Protection in any Republican platform was that given by the little Republican band in Vermont, the home of Mr. Morrill, only seven days after the party was born in the far West.

CHAPTER XII.

THE HOMESTEAD LAW-LINCOLN'S COOPER INSTITUTE SPEECH-SEWARD THE CONVENTIONS AND

THE

CAMPAIGN OF 1860.

HE enactment of the Morrill Tariff law was not the only attempted legislation by the Republican party before it came into complete control of the three branches of the Government. Among the Republicans elected to the Thirtyfourth Congress, and who helped elect Nathaniel P. Banks Speaker, was Galusha A. Grow of Pennsylvania, who may well be called to-day the patriarch of the Republican party.

Mr. Grow was born in 1823; he was first elected to Congress in 1850, succeeding David Wilmot, the author of the famous Proviso; he was elected from the same district six consecutive terms, once by a unanimous vote; he was at first elected as a Free-Soil Democrat, and for the last three terms mentioned above, as a Republican. When he entered Congress in December, 1851, he was the youngest man on the floor of the House of Representatives, and his maiden speech was on "Man's Right to the Soil." After this for ten years, at the beginning of each session of Congress he introduced a Free Homestead bill into the House, and though it was year after year defeated, he was finally triumphant, and it became a law in 1862. While we shall have more to do with the career of Mr. Grow, it is at this point that we wish to call attention to his efforts, backed by his Republican colleagues, before that party was in a position to pass the laws for which it stood.

In 1859 it was estimated that within the States and Territories of this Government there were about one thousand mil