ut
a program. The men who had driven Martin Van Buren from office in 1840
were in as much doubt what to do for the country as the Jackson men had
been in 1829. Clay had said during the campaign that he might restore
the United States Bank, and he had said he might not do so; the Eastern
Whigs had declared for a higher tariff in 1842, when the compromise of
1833 would expire, while the Southern Whigs had denied that such a move
would be made; the Western men who had deserted Van Buren for a
log-cabin leader demanded now as ever internal improvements, though
their Southern allies bitterly opposed all such propositions. With
counsels so divided Harrison turned readily to Henry Clay, who shaped
the inaugural and filled the Cabinet with his political friends.
Congress was called in extra session for the last of May, 1841, when an
improvised plan of action would be offered and perhaps enacted into law.
The main items were to be a new National Bank, a higher tariff, and the
distribution among the States of the proceeds of the public land sales.
This would enable States to construct their own public improvements and
at the same time avoid a rupture between Southern and Western Whigs.
Thus the chief items of the old Clay and Adams "American System" was to
be reenacted by a Congress whose majority was none too large and more
than heterogeneous in character.

But before the national legislature met, the President had died and John
Tyler had become the head of the Administration. Virginia politics were
at that time and long after dominated by a state banking system, and
both Virginia and the lower South opposed all forms of tariff
protection. The new President had been nominated by the Whigs in spite
of his political views, and only in the hope that he might carry his
State, in which they had been disappointed. Clay thought, however, that
he could control the Administration, and undertook with the assistance
of the Cabinet to bring all into a harmonious support of his "system."
The law creating the Independent Treasury, for which Jackson and Van
Buren had labored industriously for six years before its final passage,
was promptly repealed. In place of the Independent Treasury there was to
be a National Bank, but the President was reported to be hostile to such
a bank unless it should be located in the District of Columbia, and the
consent of the States should be made necessary before branches could be
established anywhere. Aware of