The Life of Robert Toombs (1913)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III A SOUTHERN WHIG IN CONGRESS TO understand the character and policies of the Southern wing of the Whig party in the eighteen-forties it is necessary to consider the condition of Southern society and the origin of the Whig coalition. The negro-slave-plantation system created and maintained in the Southern community a great special vested interest, clashing from time to time with the local non- slaveholding interest and with the manufacturing interests in the Northern states. The planters were always a minority of the voting population in their several states and in the United States; and for the sake of security to their regime they were obliged to find and retain allies in both local and national politics. They had to check the progress of theories and policies disturbing to the established order; when campaigns were impending against them they had if possible to divide the opposition; when defeat was all but sure they had either to disarm their antagonists by soft words or rout them by counter attack as the case might require. In short when once the lines were drawn, the planting interest because of its minority position could be saved from a steady series of encroachments and defeats only by constant alertness and expert strategy. The waves of Jeffersonian and Jacksonian Democracy successively put the conservatives of the South (the plantersand their allies) upon the defensive. Neither of these movements paid heed to the peculiar basis of plantation industry, and each in turn threatened danger to the fabric. The champions of the established regime had to support it against each of these waves, and to use for their purpose such means and such allies as could be found. Hence the career of the Southern Federalists in Jefferson’s time and the Southern Whigs i…