into intense hatred,
which was fatal to the aspirations of Calhoun for the presidency; for no
man could be President against the overpowering influence of Jackson.
This was a bitter disappointment to Calhoun, for he had set his heart
on being the successor of Jackson in the presidential chair.

There were two subjects which had arisen to great importance during Mr.
Calhoun's terms of executive office which not only blasted his prospects
for the presidency, but separated him forever from his former friends
and allies.

One of these was the tariff question, which gave him great uneasiness.
He opened his eyes to see that protection and internal improvements, so
ably advocated by Henry Clay, and even by himself in 1816, were becoming
the policy of the government to the enriching of the North. True, it was
only an economical question, but it seemed to him to lay the axe to the
root of Southern prosperity. It was his settled conviction that tariffs
for protection would increase the burdens of the South by raising the
price of all those articles which it was compelled to buy, and that
large profits on articles manufactured in the United States would only
enrich the Northern manufacturers. The South, being an agricultural
country exclusively, naturally sought to buy in the cheapest market, and
therefore wanted no tariff except for revenue. When Mr. Calhoun saw that
protectionist duties were an injury to the slaveholding States he
reversed entirely his former opinions. And what influence he could
exert as the presiding officer of the Senate was now displayed against
the Adams party, which had favored his election to the vice-presidency,
and of course alienated his Northern supporters, especially Adams, who
now turned against him, and as bitterly denounced as once he had favored
and praised him. Calhoun had now both the Jackson and Adams parties
against him, though for different reasons.

Up to this time, until the agitation of the tariff question began, Mr.
Calhoun had not been a party man. He was regarded throughout the country
as a statesman, rather than as a politician.

But when manufactures of cotton and woollen goods were being established
in Lowell, Lawrence, Dover, Great Falls, and other places in New
England, wherever there was a water-power to turn the mills, it became
obvious that a new tariff would be imposed to protect these infant
industries and manufacturing interests everywhere. The tariff of 1824
had borne h