the hero of New Orleans, and the savior of his country, had been cheated out of his rights by two rascally politicians, Clay and Adams, who had corruptly usurped the highest offices of the government, and plotted to destroy the liberties of the American people.
The twentieth Congress, which had been elected while all this was going on, and which assembled in December, 1827, had a majority hostile to the administration in both branches, — a thing which, as Adams dolefully remarked, had never occurred during the existence of the government. Moreover, that opposition was determined, if it could, not only to harass the administration, but utterly to destroy it in the opinion of the country. The only important measure of general legislation passed at this session was the famous tariff of 1828, called the “tariff of abominations,” on account of its peculiarly incongruous and monstrous provisions. Members of Congress from New England, where, since 1824, much capital had been turned into manufacturing industry, from the Middle States, and from the West, no matter whether Republicans or Federalists, Jackson men or Adams men, vied with one another in raising protective duties, by a wild log-rolling process, on the different articles in which their constituents were respectively interested. It created great dissatisfaction in the planting states, and more will be said of it when we reach the nullification movement.
The time not occupied by the tariff debate was
